Boris Johnson told 'please leave my town' by polite but brutally honest man
People from Yorkshire are pretty well-known for saying it exactly like it is. And UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson got a dose of that honesty during a pretty disastrous visit to the town of Morley in West Yorkshire on Thursday.
Johnson's day didn't exactly get off to a great start — his brother, Jo Johnson, resigned as an MP and minister, citing on Twitter that he feels "torn between family loyalty and the national interest." Yikes.
But later, the PM's day didn't really improve, after a video of Johnson's interaction with a brutally honest member of the public later went viral.
While walking the streets, a man stopped the prime minister, shook his hand and, with a smile, said, "Please leave my town."
Johnson replied, "I will, very soon."
The clip of the BBC footage, posted by Alex Andreou, has gained 3.5 million views, nearly 30K retweets, and 105K likes on Twitter.
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The man responded with an approving tap on the arm and Johnson walked away. And he wasn't the only one to tell the PM where to go that day.
A passerby stopped Johnson and asked him what he was doing in Morley at all, when he could be, say, in Brussels, negotiating the UK's impending exit from the European Union. "You should be in Brussels, you're in Morley," the man said.
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Finally, in the West Yorkshire city of Wakefield, Johnson's speech on police ended when an officer standing behind him fainted. The prime minister turned around and said, "Oh I'm so sorry, I think that is a signal for me actively to wind up," before continuing with his speech.
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Not a great day, all things considered.
Topics Politics
Rachel Thompson is the Features Editor at Mashable. Rachel's second non-fiction book The Love Fix: Reclaiming Intimacy in a Disconnected World is out now, published by Penguin Random House in Jan. 2025. The Love Fix explores why dating feels so hard right now, why we experience difficult emotions in the realm of love, and how we can change our dating culture for the better.
A leading sex and dating writer in the UK, Rachel has written for GQ, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Stylist, ELLE, The i Paper, Refinery29, and many more.
Rachel's first book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into the Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, a non-fiction investigation into sexual violence was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.
