by Rob Merrick

Boris Johnson has defended his notorious comments about “tank-topped bum boys” and Muslim women looking like “letterboxes”, saying: “I defend my right to speak out.”

The prime minister faced a hostile audience over his past newspaper columns, with the accusation that he had “personally contributed” to rampant racism in Britain. But he denied they were offensive – claiming they could only be “made to seem offensive” if taken out of context.

"If you go through all my articles with a fine toothcomb and pick out individual phrases, there’s no doubt that you can take out things that can be made to seem offensive,” he told the BBC Question Time audience. Mr Johnson has been dogged by the articles he wrote as a journalist, including the recent revelation that he wrote that seeing “a bunch of black kids” scared him.

Andrew Gwynne, Labour’s co-campaign coordinator, said: “Boris Johnson's performance was appalling.

“He failed to take responsibility for the pain caused by austerity and shockingly defended his racist and homophobic comments.” Read more via Independent