Johnson made the remarks in a visit to Matlock in Derbyshire, whilst on the campaign trail. Speaking in a factory, the prime minister was promoting his Brexit deal and unwittingly may have let out a racial faux pas. It has long been thought by critics of Brexit that the entire discourse on controlling the UK’s borders does not simply revolve around EU migration, but has become a platform for many in the UK to highlight their issues with all immigration. Additionally, not all people of colour are necessarily immigrants, with many having lived in the UK for decades.
On Thursday, Johnson said Brexit would allow Britain to have “control of our immigration system for the first time in decades, and that will be a good thing.” He went on to say: “I’m in favour of having people of colour come to this country but I think we should have it democratically controlled and have it done that way.”
The issue with Johnson’s remarks is that European immigrants are not referred to as ‘people of colour’, usually being white in ethnicity. If Johnson did say people of colour, his Freudian slip mirrors the way in which people use the immigration issue of Brexit to posit their racist views.
However, Channel 4 has taken the initial clip down and claimed Johnson says ‘people of talent’, which is more of an odd turn of phrase, but perhaps feasible. Nevertheless, it would be unsurprising if Johnson did say ‘people of colour’, given his previous racially-charged remarks about women wearing the burka looking like letterboxes. As Foreign Secretary, he also attempted to recite Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The Road to Mandalay’ during a visit to Myanmar, only stopping after the British Ambassador told him it was not appropriate.
