Boris Johnson, the favorite to become Britain’s next prime minster, used his trademark lyrical language to dismiss claims he worked closely with Steve Bannon as “codswallop.”
The hard-line former aide to President Trump made a cameo appearance in the British Conservative Party leadership race at the weekend when video emerged of him claiming he offered advice by text message ahead of Johnson’s resignation as foreign secretary last year.
The details were seized on by left-wing critics who said it highlighted Johnson’s relationship with a populist strategist trying to foment a far-right revolution across Europe.
But in an interview on Tuesday, Johnson said: “This is the biggest load of codswallop I have ever heard.”
Johnson is the clear front-runner to win the Conservative leadership contest and replace Theresa May as prime minister next month. He has promised to lead Britain out of the European Union on Oct. 31 and end the political stalemate over the results of the 2016 Brexit referendum.
He resigned from the government in protest at May’s handling of Brexit in July last year, accusing the prime minister of “dithering” during his resignation speech to Parliament.
Bannon was in London at the time. He was interviewed by Alison Klayman, an American filmmaker, for her documentary The Brink. Unused footage obtained by The Observer newspaper captures him discussing Johnson and preparations for his resignation speech.
“I’ve been talking to him all weekend about this speech,” he says. “We went back and forth over the text.”
He claimed he swapped text messages with Johnson encouraging him to repeat ideas from the address he delivered in the final hours of the campaign to leave the EU in June 2016.
“And all I was telling him all weekend was just to incorporate those themes. Those same themes,” he says. “Basically, he was saying that June 23 was independence day for Great Britain. Their independence day being like our July 4.”
However, Johnson dismissed any kind of influence.
“I have met Mr. Bannon in the White House … as you would expect in the course of my duties as foreign secretary,” he told LBC radio in London.
“It is perfectly true that when the president came to this country last year — was it last year or the year before? — anyway, Steve Bannon texted me on a couple of occasions trying to fix a meeting. I texted back to say that meeting was not possible,” he said.
He said the episode was being exploited by enemies who wanted to destroy his record as a modern, progressive Conservative. “Yet, this is turned by people who wish to stop me from achieving what I want to achieve into some crazy alt-right conspiracy involving me and Steve Bannon,” he said.
Since leaving the White House in 2017, Bannon has been working on a project to harness Europe’s populist, nationalist, and far-right leaders as part of a wider political grouping.
He has forged close links with Nigel Farage, leader of Britain’s booming Brexit Party, but has seen his efforts to build a network of like-minded leaders rebuffed by the likes of Marine Le Pen, the face of France’s far right.
