Boris Johnson: 'Winston Churchill would support EU renegotiation'

Winston Churchill would have been a Tory and not a Ukip man, says Boris Johnson

Winston Churchill would have been a Tory and not a Ukip man, says Boris Johnson (Getty)

Sir Winston Churchill would be in favour of renegotiating Britain’s EU membership, but would want the country to be “involved” in Europe, London’s Mayor, Boris Johnson, has said.

Mr Johnson, who has backed a referendum and said Britain must make clear it is ready to leave the EU if it does not get the reforms it wants, insisted that the wartime Prime Minister would not have been “a Ukip man” if he were still alive.

Speaking to the Radio Times about his new book The Churchill Factor, Mr Johnson said he was “genuinely obsessed” by the former PM and used his example as a “justification” for his own approach to politics – including his prolific journalism and his liquid lunches. Considering what Churchill would have thought of the modern Conservative Party, the Mayor said: “He would have been a Tory, by today’s standards. I don’t think he would have been a Ukip man because he had a more generous conception of what it should all be about.

“He’s pretty much all over the place but there is a consistency – he wants Britain to be involved.”