Boris Johnson called Emmanuel Macron ‘Putin’s lickspittle’ and demanded an ‘orgy of frog-bashing’, his former director of communications Guto Harri has claimed, informs “The Telegraph”.
Guto Harri said Mr Johnson launched into a foul-mouthed tirade about the French president after he criticised his handling of the Ukrainian refugee crisis.
The reported outburst came in the wake of Mr Macron using an EU summit held three weeks into the war to accuse Britain of failing to live up to its “grand statements” on asylum, saying he hoped that Ukrainians who made the journey to their families in Britain would be “better treated”.
Mr Harri said: “When the British press was giving the British Government a hard time over our response to the refugee crisis, Macron turbocharged it by criticising Boris pretty directly and his words were all over the front page of The Guardian.
“Much as Boris is not prone to getting really cross, nor using particularly strong language, this was one [time] where he really flipped. At our morning meeting, with a small gang of us, he just launched into a violent attack on Emmanuel Macron.
“And basically saying: ‘He’s a four-letter word that begins with ‘c’, he’s a weirdo, he’s Putin’s lickspittle, we need to go studs up on this one‘ – a rugby term that basically means gloves off – ‘we need an orgy of frog-bashing, I’m going to have to punch his lights out’… Pretty strong stuff.”