Boris Johnson

“I am hoping very much to get re-elected but it is going to be a tough fight.”

“So I'm definitely in favour of stimulating the dynamic wealth creation sectors of the economy.”

“I just find it absolutely bizarre that we are being lectured by the Americans about giving up our sovereignty and giving up control when the Americans won't even sign up to the international convention on the law of the seas, let alone the International Criminal Court.”

“If we judged everybody by the stupid, unguarded things they blurt out to their nearest and dearest, then we wouldn't ever get anywhere.”

“That is the best case for Bush; that, among other things, he liberated Iraq. It is good enough for me.”

“If we get outside the EU, if we leave the EU system, we will be relieved of a huge amount of unnecessary regulation that is holding this country back. We will be able to set our own priorities, make our own laws and set our own tax policies to suit the needs of this country. We have a huge opportunity also to make people's votes count for more.”

“If you turn a blind eye to fare evasion, if you accustom people to getting away with minor crime, you are making it more likely that they will go on to commit more serious crimes. That is why we have so much disorder in London. It is a disgrace.”

“Most people would accept that people come to London from across the world, from all kinds of backgrounds, and are accepted here irrespective of their origins.”

“I think the risks that people see of terrorism are incredibly important but we are very confident we have got the right people on it and the risks have been minimised.”

“What I really think about Banksy is I think he's a genius; he's a great artist, and I like his stuff. But he's got to accept it if, from time to time, someone will need to paint over his work.”

“I used to get very, very frustrated by people being told what to do by nanny in Brussels. And I remember once I rang the official who was actually responsible for banning the prawn-cocktail-flavoured crisp, which I think contained a dye called Arithrazine or something like that.”

“If I'd been on the Remain side I would have tried to have seen the best in Europe and tried to explain that. Instead, what they've done is endlessly try and talk up what they see as the weaknesses of Britain and they aren't there. That's a total mistake.”

“London is the most commercially important city in Europe, and it's the most populous city. It should be for the whole of the European continent what New York is to America. That's what it should be.”

“I promised to run the most open and transparent administration in Britain. That is why, with this brutally honest and unprecedented progress report, I am determined to level with Londoners.”

“I have more in common with a three-toed sloth or a one-eyed pterodactyl or a Kalamata olive than I have with Winston Churchill.”

“I have as much chance of becoming Prime Minister as of being decapitated by a frisbee or of finding Elvis.”

“The idea that the EU is somehow the guarantor of peace on the continent - that is in itself rash, in my view, and risks undermining the vital role of Nato.”

“It is easy to make promises - it is hard work to keep them.”

“The truth is that the history of the last couple of thousand years has been broadly repeated attempts by various people or institutions - in a Freudian way - to rediscover the lost childhood of Europe, this golden age of peace and prosperity under the Romans, by trying to unify it.”

“My point is that this Potter business has legs. It will run and run, and we must be utterly mad, as a country, to leave it to the Americans to make money from a great British invention. I appeal to the children of this country and to their Potter-fiend parents to write to Warner Bros and Universal, and perhaps, even, to the great J K herself. Bring Harry home to Britain—and if you want a site with less rainfall than Rome, with excellent public transport, and strong connections to Harry Potter, I have just the place.”