Boris Johnson’s ‘bum boy’ slur makes him ‘unfit for public life,’ says gay Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price
Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price attacked Boris Johnson. (Getty/ITV)
Adam Price compared Boris Johnson’s use of homophobic and Islamophobic slurs to Donald Trump’s infamous “grab her by the p****” remark.
The Plaid Cymru MP, the first openly gay leader of a major UK political party, said that it was a “sad reality” that Johnson “referred to gay men like myself as ‘bum boys in tank tops”” and “to Muslim women as looking like ‘letterboxes.'”
“This is actually creating the climate where abuse becomes acceptable whether it’s abuse of women or minorities and that’s why neither Trump nor Boris Johnson are fit to be in public life,” he said during Sunday night’s ITV election debate.
“The sad reality is we have a Prime Minister who referred to gay men like myself as ‘bumboys in tank tops’, referred to Muslim women as looking like ‘letterboxes’. This is creating the climate where abuse becomes acceptable.”#ITVDebate pic.twitter.com/V2X5cMRfJ7
— Plaid Cymru (@Plaid_Cymru) December 1, 2019
Rishi Sunak, a Conservative MP who stood in for Johnson, tried to deflect the criticism by shifting the conversation to the prime minister’s voting record.
“When it comes to LGBT rights the prime minister’s record is very clear,” he said.
“He was the first leading Conservative politician to come out in favour of same sex marriage.”
As Mayor of London, Johnson came out in favour of marriage equality in a 2010 interview with PinkNews. He was the highest-ranking Conservative to have voiced his support at the time.
Just nine years earlier, he had compared same-sex marriage to bestiality in his book Friends, Voters, Countrymen, one of many unedifying quotes to have resurfaced during his premiership.
“If gay marriage was OK,” he wrote, “and I was uncertain on the issue – then I saw no reason in principle why a union should not be consecrated between three men, as well as two men, or indeed three men and a dog.”
Nigel Farage defended Donald Trump’s ‘grab her by the p****’ comments.
Price was one of seven party representatives who took party in the ITV debate,
His attack on Farage came as the opposition leaders rounded up on Farage over his relationship with Trump.
Jo Swinson, leader of the Liberal Democrats, said: “It seems like there’s three people in the special relationship. Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and Donald Trump.”
Having been asked by an audience member whether the UK should retain its close links with the US under its current president, she said: “We obviously have a hugely important relationship with the US. But make no mistake, the current occupant of the White House is not somebody who shares our values.”
Labour’s Richard Burgon said that both Trump and Johnson had “given the green light to sexism, homophobia and racism, and that cannot be allowed to flourish.”
He accused Trump of wanting “to conspire with Boris Johnson and the leader of the Brexit party in order to get his fat cat friends access to the NHS.”
Farage defended Trump, describing him as “our most important friend in the world.”
When challenged directly about the president’s use of sexually violent language, Farage said: “It was crass and it was crude and it was wrong. And men say dreadful things sometimes.
“But if all of us were caught out after a night out with a drink then none of us would be here. I’m sure you’ve lived the purest life of anyone and never said a word wrong about anyone.”
