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Theresa May's New Cabinet: Boris Johnson Ridiculed After 'Joke' Appointment As Foreign Secretary

'Can somebody please, please reset the matrix.'
Steven Hopkins
By 

Assistant News Editor

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Boris Johnson’s appointment as foreign secretary has been met with a torrent of disbelief on Twitter where an avalanche of reasons why Theresa May’s decision “defies logic” have been piling up.

Firstly, there’s his history of offending foreign leaders, the very people he will soon be negotiating with on behalf of the UK.

Recently Boris won a competition to pen the ‘most offensive’ poem about Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. His £1,000 winning limerick was about Erdoğan having sex with a goat.

Boris Johnson waves as he leaves Downing Street after being appointed foreign secretary
Boris Johnson waves as he leaves Downing Street after being appointed foreign secretary
Jack Taylor via Getty Images

He also once referred to US President Barack Obama as a “part-Kenyan President”, and a visit to China during the Olympics in 2008 didn’t go down that well either.

Boris annoyed the locals who accused him of being “arrogant, rude and disrespectful”, when accepting the Olympic flag.

Then there’s his history of racism.

In a column for the Daily Telegraph in 2002, Johnson mocked Tony Blair’s globetrotting with this horribly offensive quote: “What a relief it must be for Blair to get out of England. 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.”

He also went on to mention “watermelon smiles”.

During the London mayoral race in 2013, he almost apologised for the comments, saying he was “sad” people had been offended. He insisted the words were taken out of context.

Boris has also previously been accused of condoning an article that claimed black people have a lower IQ which was published while he was editor of the Spectator magazine.

In one, columnist Taki wrote that “Orientals ... have larger brains and higher IQ scores. Blacks are at the other pole.”

In another, he described black American bastketball players as having “arms hanging below their knees and tongues sticking out”.

He later told the Evening Standard: “I am sorry for what was previously written as it does not reflect what is in my heart.”

None of this was lost on other MPs and political commentators.

Former Huffington Post UK political editor Mehdi Hasan also pointed out that Boris’ failings were not lost on his new team either.

Comedian Ricky Gervais didn’t even need to try to crack a funny...

Meanwhile, in other corners of the internet, Boris was getting a more direct roasting.

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Northern Ireland Secretary - James Brokenshire
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