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David Cameron has hit back at the claim he threatened to “f***” Boris Johnson up forever if he backed Brexit in the 2016 referendum, saying he finds it “hard to believe”.
Lord Cameron channelled the late Queen Elizabeth II in saying “recollections differ” after Mr Johnson had claimed those were his “exact words”.
Speaking out for the first time since Mr Johnson made the explosive claim, Lord Cameron said: “I find that hard to believe.”
“What I do remember saying is, Boris, you’ve never backed Britain leaving the EU before, you’ve always said, let’s reform it, let’s change it. I said, why back it now when we got a better deal?” Lord Cameron added.
He told Times Radio he urged Mr Johnson to get behind a better deal with the bloc, telling the then London mayor: “You might not like my deal. You might think you can do better when you become prime minister, as you probably will in a few years time. But don’t suddenly back something you’ve never backed before.”
And he said: “I don’t remember any language any fruitier than that. But you know, memories, recollections differ, as they say."
Mr Johnson’s allegation comes in his book Unleashed, in which he details a tennis match with Lord Cameron. The then PM is claimed to have urged Mr Johnson: “Come on – go with the campaign to stay in and I’ll make sure you get a top-five job in the Cabinet.”
Mr Johnson then described a phone call from Lord Cameron while he was in City Hall urging him to decide.
In the book, Mr Johnson said: “I was torn, I said. I wanted to back him, but over the years I had written hundreds if not thousands of articles attacking the undemocratic features of the EU. I felt I had to be consistent.
“‘This isn’t about articles!’ he spluttered. ‘It’s about… the future of the country!’
“Well, I said, we were agreed on that but I was still thinking of voting Leave.
“‘If you do that,’ he said – and these were his exact words – ‘I will f--- you up forever.’”
Mr Johnson added: “I had to admit that the threat sounded serious. Did I want to be f***ed up? Forever? By a prime minister equipped with all the f***ing-up tools available to a modern government, and thousands of f***er-uppers just waiting to do his bidding?”
It is the latest claim from Mr Johnson’s recently-published memoir to be called into question, after Buckingham Palace denied that it had asked him to attempt to persuade Prince Harry to stay in the UK.
In the book, he said he was urged to give the Duke of Sussex a “manly pep talk” to convince him to stay in Britain and not step back from royal duties.
The pair had a 20-minute meeting behind closed doors on the margins of a UK-Africa investment summit in London’s Docklands, on 20 January, 2020. In the meeting, Mr Johnson did suggest to Prince Harry that he should remain in the UK.
But after Mr Johnson made the claim public, sources with knowledge of the meeting insisted the Palace did not ask him to intervene.
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