Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson has told Times Radio it's a "credible assertion" for Donald Trump to say that if he won the 2020 US election there "would have been no Russian invasion of Ukraine".

Speaking to Stig Abell for an interview that can be heard in full at 7pm Thursday he also defended Trump over the January 6th attack on the US Capitol:
I personally don't think he intended to overthrow the constitution and what actually happened was the peaceful transfer of democratic power from one administration to another. And that's what should happen.
Stig Abell: And it's got to happen in November.
Boris Johnson: And it's got to happen in November. But on Ukraine, look, I think that some of the pessimism is overdone and I think that Donald actually...he gave the javelins to the Ukrainians where the Democrats didn't, right? When I was Foreign Secretary, he kicked out those Russian spies. Sixty of them. So he can surprise very much on the upside.
I happen to believe that when Donald Trump says that had he been president in 2022, there would have been no Russian invasion of Ukraine. My view is that that is a credible assertion. I really do think that's credible.
On Partygate, he says Sue Gray should be held "about as responsible as I was" for "stuff that was happening in the Cabinet Office" during pandemic restrictions:
If you think I was responsible for stuff that was happening in the Cabinet Office...
Stig Abell: You were the boss..
Boris Johnson: Who was the second permanent secretary of the Cabinet Office? Can you remember? Can you remember the name of the second permanent secretary of the Cabinet Office?
Stig Abell: Go on...
Boris Johnson: It was somebody called Sue Gray.
Stig Abell: So she was responsible?
Boris Johnson: She was certainly about as responsible as I was...the whole thing was very, very peculiar, let me put it that way.
He's spoken about mistakes over issues such as immigration in the wake of the Covid pandemic:
Immigration had clearly gone off the cliff during the pandemic, and the numbers went massively down. But after the pandemic, the issue that we faced was inflation. And you will recall what happened. We didn't have anybody to stack the shelves. We had serious price inflation. We had massive labour cost inflation. We didn't have any fuel drivers. And every single business group, every single secretary of state, was saying, you know, we need the labour force...
Stig Abell: Let's put this in plain English. You opened the doors too wide?
Boris Johnson: I think that we did in that year, 2022, because we were desperate to contain inflation. Inflation is a massive destroyer of people's livelihoods and of economic, of hope, of investment, of growth. Inflation is a disaster for the UK.
He's apologised for calling Theresa May "old grumpy knickers" in his autobiography Unleashed:
That's not fair. Sorry about that...Theresa is...occasionally a bit starchy but with a very warm heart beneath it.

Join this channel to get access to perks -
   / @listentotimesradio  

📻 Listen to Times Radio - https://www.thetimes.co.uk/radio
🗞 Subscribe to The Times https://www.thetimes.co.uk/subscribe/...
📲 Get the free Times Radio app https://www.thetimes.co.uk/radio/how-...