7 things Boris Johnson has done which are worse than cycling on the pavement

Boris Johnson has claimed the naughtiest thing he had ever done was that he rode his bicycle on the pavement.

Well by now we’re all pretty intimately aware of Boris Johnson’s past.

And so it will come as a surprise to literally no one that bike related offences probably don’t even make the top 50 awful things the Tory leader has done.

Mr Johnson did say that he would only fess up to something that he was “prepared to admit” and that wouldn’t be too politically damaging.

But we don’t feel burdened by Mr Johnson’s self interest in the same way he clearly does.

So here are seven things he’s done which are worse than riding a bike on the pavement.

1. When he discussed having a journalist beaten up

Boris Johnson was secretly recorded in 1990 in a phone call with former Eton pal Darius Guppy, who was jailed for five years in 1993 for his part in an insurance fraud.

Mr Guppy wanted contact details for News of the World journalist Stuart Collier, who was investigating his affairs. “There is nothing which I won’t do to get my revenge,” he said.

Asked by Mr Johnson “how badly are you going to hurt this guy”, he replied the journalist “will not be seriously hurt” but “will probably get a couple of black eyes and… a cracked rib.”

Mr Johnson could be heard seeking assurances he would not get in “trouble” before saying: “OK, Darrie, I said I’ll do it.”

No attack ever took place and Mr Johnson said in 2013 he was just “humouring” his old pal.

But Mr Collier, now 69, said he feared for his family and called on the new Prime Minister to apologise.

2. When he endangered a British mum jailed in Iran

Boris Johnson worsened the plight of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in loose comments he made as Foreign Secretary in 2017.

He wrongly told MPs the British mum, held in Iran on spying charges, was “teaching people journalism”.

That undermined her defence that she was on holiday – one backed up by her employers.

Four days after Mr Johnson’s comments she was threatened with five more years’ jail on charges of “propaganda against the regime”.

Mr Johnson dodged blame, saying his comments “didn’t, I think, make any difference” to the time she spent in jail.

But Nazanin’s husband Richard Ratcliffe said: “Of course they had consequences.”

3. When he called black people ‘piccannies’

Boris Johnson branded black people ‘piccaninnies’ with ‘watermelon smiles’ in 2002.

He wrote in the Telegraph: “It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies.”

Speaking of Tony Blair ’s trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo, he said: “No doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh.

“And the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird.”

Mr Johnson later defended his comments, branding them “wholly satirical”.

But Labour ’s equalities chief Dawn Butler said the racist comments made him “unfit to be Prime Minister”.

4. When he wrote a racist column describing Muslim women as ‘letterboxes’

In August 2018 he branded Muslim face veils “oppressive”, “weird and bullying” and said it was “absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letterboxes.”

Any female student who turned up to school “looking like a bank robber” should be asked to remove their face covering, he added.

He went on to argue against banning the burqa in public, but his snide remarks prompted outrage, including from senior Tories.

He refused to apologise and was cleared of breaching the Conservative Party code of conduct.

5. Breaking Parliament’s rules on declaring financial interests – repeatedly

Boris Johnson broke rules on financial interests three times in less than a year.

He breached the Ministerial Code in August 2018 by starting a £275,000-a-year newspaper column just three days after quitting as Foreign Secretary.

In December he was ordered to apologise for failing to declare £52,723 of income on time.

And in April 2019 he was 11 months late registering his 20% share in a property in Somerset.

Parliament’s Standards Commissioner accused him of a “lack of respect” for the system adding: “I do not accept that this was an inadvertent breach of the rules.”

6. When he blew millions on the Garden Bridge before it was unceremoniously scrapped

As mayor, Boris Johnson backed a failed plan for a “floating paradise” across the River Thames that blew £43million of public money.

The Garden Bridge was beset by controversy from the start until it was finally scrapped by his successor Sadiq Khan in 2017.

As costs spiralled critics blasted the link for being privately run, yet publicly-subsidised, while there was a more pressing need for Thames crossings elsewhere.

Yet Boris Johnson was a doughty defender of the “vanity project” – even making a secretive trip to San Francisco in 2013 in a bid to get Apple to sponsor it.

7. Wasting £300,000 of public money on illegal water cannon

As London mayor he paid £322,000 for three second-hand water cannon devices after the 2014 riots.

The bill included £32,004 for low emission zone compliance, £19,035 for re-painting and almost £1,000 to fit CD players.

But he bought them before they had been licensed for use in Britain.

And they were left to rust in a police firing range after their use was ruled illegal by then-Home Secretary Theresa May .

Finally in 2018 they were sold for scrap – for the princely sum of £11,025.