A former leading Downing Street official has said in his podcast that the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson had called the French President Emmanuel Macron “Putin’s lickspittle.”
Johnson also called Macron “a weirdo” for slamming the UK’s efforts for the Ukrainian refugees coming to Britain for safety, it was then claimed that the former Prime Minister threatened an “orgy of frog bashing.”
The former director of communication at Number 10 Guto Harri said that Macron had accused the then Prime Minister for failing to provide the government’s “grand statements” to take in more Ukrainian refugees at the time.
Harri said in his podcast that the former Prime Minister had called the French leader a “four letter word which begins with C.”
The Guardian newspaper had printed on the front page Macron’s criticism of the government’s handling of the Ukrainian refugees.
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Harri explained, “There were tensions early on when people like Emmanuel Macron of France went to Moscow to talk to Putin.
“I think Boris described it privately as ‘nauseating’ and meanwhile I think Macron was feeling the tension from Boris seemingly doing the running with helping Ukraine militarily.
“So 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.”
Harri said, “Much as Boris is not prone to getting really cross, nor using particularly strong language, this was one where he really flipped at our morning meeting.
“He just launched into a violent attack on Emmanuel Macron. 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… We need an orgy of frog bashing.
“I’m going to have to punch his lights out’.”
“I’m pleased to say, weeks later of course, they had patched it up. They got on really well.
“They actually went for a whiskey together at the G7 summit.”
Johnson’s former director of communication’s at Number 10 recalled the time when Putin invaded Ukraine just after 4am.
Harri said that Johnson had spoken with Volodymyr Zelensky, he recalled, “He was anxious, but very calm, considering what was underway,” Mr Harri recalled. “It was harrowing, it was haunting.
“He brought it alive to all of us. It was massively sobering. We really could not believe that this was seriously underway.”
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