Boris Johnson says his comparison of Irish border to Islington and Camden was 'a valid point'

Boris Johnson today insisted he was making “a valid point” when he compared crossing the Irish border to moving between two London boroughs.

Mr Johnson was ridiculed last year when addressing the challenges Brexit would pose transporting goods across the 310-mile Irish border. He compared this with travelling between the borders of Islington and Camden.

He was accused of “stupefying ignorance” of the Troubles between 1968 and 1998 which cost more than 3,000 lives.

But on an LBC phone-in show with Nick Ferrari on Wednesday, the former foreign secretary stood by his comments and drew on his experience chairing Transport for London (TfL) when he was Mayor of London.

A caller named Will asked why someone who is tipped as a future Prime Minister could not know the difference between the two sets of borders. He called on Mr Johnson to apologise to the people of Northern Ireland for “trivialising a situation that cost hundreds of lives”.

Mr Johnson replied: “I don’t think anybody could conceivably want to trivialise or minimise the symbolic importance of that border. I have been there several times in my journalistic career. I have stood there.

“It was a valid point.”

He continued: “In a long career of giving offence, one thing you learn is that sometimes you say things that are taken in the wrong way. And you simply have to repeat yourself gently and explain yourself to try to get over that you meant no offence and it’s a shame that offence was taken.

“All I am trying to get at, on alternative arrangements, to make sure we don’t need any kind of hard border in Northern Ireland. That is the crucial thing.

“All I was trying to say, from my own experience of running a transport network [TfL] is that there are ways of identifying vehicles crossing borders without necessarily checking them and stopping them.”

The caller said: “Boris, all you need to do is hold your hands up and say: ‘I’m sorry, I got it wrong.’ That’s what I find politicians do not do any more, and has set a precedent for this country.”

Mr Johnson replied: “If you took offence, then I’m sorry, but sometimes you have got to get your point across.

“And there are technical things that you can do, from my experience, to make sure you that don’t need a hard border in Northern Ireland.”