Macron tried to punish me for Brexit, Boris Johnson complains

LONDON — Emmanuel Macron tried to make Britain suffer for leaving the European Union, Boris Johnson laments in a new book.

In the latest extract from his memoir “Unleashed,” the former U.K. prime minister accused the French president of “weaponizing” irregular migration to undermine Brexit.

He said Macron seemed prepared to turn a blind eye to gangs smuggling people across the English Channel, and claimed that the French leader saw Brexit as “a terrible snub to the EU and to his view of the world.”

There were, Johnson argued, “a host of issues where, given the chance, he would not hesitate to put his Cuban-heeled bootee into Brexit Britain,” doling out a “punishment beating” and leaving Johnson to “more or less despair” of the French president.

The two leaders had a frosty relationship when Johnson was in office, with sharp disagreements over Brexit, the war in Ukraine, and fishing rights among other topics. Macron held out against a renegotiation of Britain’s post-Brexit deal on Northern Ireland.

Elsewhere in his memoirs, Johnson writes that then-Prime Minister David Cameron tried a carrot and stick approach to stop Johnson backing the Brexit cause.

Cameron offered a “top five” Cabinet job to Johnson if he backed Remain — then threatened to “f*** you up for ever” if Johnson chose the opposite path.