EU referendum: Boris Johnson defends 'Hitler' EU comments

The former mayor of London had likened the EU's aims to those of Hitler

Boris Johnson has been campaigning for Britain to leave the EU (Getty Images)

Boris Johnson has defended comments made over the weekend in which he likened the aims of the European Union to those of Adolf Hitler.

The former mayor of London had told the Sunday Telegraph newspaper that the EU was an attempt to recreate the Roman Empire’s united Europe.

“Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically,” he told the paper.

“The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods.”

Mr Johnson’s comparison with Nazi Germany attracted criticism, coming just weeks after Ken Livingstone was suspended from the Labour party for bring Adolf Hitler into a discussion about Zionism and antisemitism.

But Mr Johnson on Monday morning robustly defended his comments, repeating his overall hypothesis.

“Over the last few thousands years there have been all sorts of attempts in Europe to recreate the dream of the Roman Empire and very often that’s been done by force. The EU is different – it’s tried to do it in a more bureaucratic way,” he told BBC News.

“The problem is there isn’t a single charismatic authority that anyone feels any loyalty to and it’s completely antidemocratic, that’s the problem.

“This discussion is bedeviled by all sorts of artificial media twit-storms or hysteria of one kind or another. There’s a very good argument against the lack of democracy in the EU.

“Over the last 2000 years people have made repeated attempts to unify Europe by force. The EU is a very different project but it is profoundly antidemocratic.”

In 2007 then European Commissioner Jose Manuel Barroso said the EU was the “first non-imperial empire”.

“Sometimes I like to compare the EU as a creation to the organisation of empire. We have the dimension of empire,” he argued.

Mr Johnson is a senior figure in the campaign to leave the European Union, putting him at odds with David Cameron, who is campaigning to Remain.

The public will vote in a referendum on Britain’s continued membership of the bloc on 23 June this year.