‘Many horrible people have been popular’: Tory Muslim chief compares Boris Johnson to Hitler

Mohammed Amin, the Conservative Party’s Muslim chief, says he’ll quit after 36 years if Boris Johnson becomes prime minister, as he believes the former foreign secretary doesn’t have the “basic morality and integrity” for the job.

Johnson won more MP votes than his three closest rivals combined in a Tory leadership vote on Thursday, but Amin contends that popularity is not an adequate measure of a candidate’s worthiness for the role of prime minister.

“There are many horrible people who have been popular,” Amin told BBC Radio 4’s Today show. “A lot of Germans thought that Hitler was the right man for them,” he said, before clarifying that he doesn’t believe Johnson “wants to send people to the gas chamber. Clearly he doesn’t, he’s a buffoon.”

As chairman of the Conservative Muslim Forum, Amin may have a particular ax to grind with Johnson after the latter’s comments comparing Muslim women in hijabs to letterboxes and bank robbers in an article for the Daily Telegraph last summer.

“We don’t expect our politicians, our prime ministers, to be saints… [but] he chose to mock Muslim women who wear niqab and burka for his own purposes.”

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