Rachel Johnson has said “
Brexit is a s*** idea” and suggested her brother,
Boris Johnson , thinks the same, in a resurfaced interview. Speaking on a Norwegian talk show presented by Fredrik Skavlan, Ms Johnson revealed Brexit “divided the family”. “Brexit has divided the family. Mainly into members who think Brexit is a s**t idea, and those who think it’s a really s**t idea,” she said. Ms Johnson then apologised for her language before being told it is okay to swear because she is “in a free country now”. “This is what I was getting to.. Nothing nothing nothing, that Brexit is anything but a bad idea,” the journalist added. During the Brexit campaign, the Johnson family publicly showed their division over the European Union. The former prime minister’s brother Jo Johnson quit his ministerial post in protest at the direction his brother’s government was taking and his sister Rachel, a prominent Remain supporter, publicly criticised his behaviour in the House of Commons. When quitting, Jo Johnson said there had been an “unresolvable tension” between “family loyalty and the national interest”. Their father Stanley Johnson served as a Conservative MEP from 1979-84 and supported the Remain campaign. However, in October 2017 he came out in support of the
United Kingdom leaving the European Union, stating that “the time has come to bail out”. Boris Johnson also revealed his mother, Charlotte Johnson Wahl, voted to leave the
European Union in the 2016
referendum. Speaking at the Conservative Party conference in 2019, the then prime minister said: “I am going to quote that supreme authority in my family, my mother. “And I know there are some keen students of the alleged divisions in my family on matters of the EU. “Well I want you to know, conference, that I have kept my ace up my sleeve – my mother voted Leave.” Ms Johnson previously revealed that the Johnson family avoid Brexit chat at the dinner table. In a tweet, she said: “The family avoids the topic of Brexit, especially at meals, as we don’t want to gang up on the PM [Boris Johnson].”