Boris Johnson has come under fire from the press regulator after he inaccurately claimed that a no-deal Brexit was the most popular scenario among voters.
The Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) ruled that the former foreign secretary breached accuracy rules in his Telegraph column when he said polls showed no deal was more popular “by some margin” than remaining in the EU or Theresa May’s Brexit deal.
A reader complained to Ipso over the weekly column, saying Mr Johnson, who is tipped as a future Tory leader, had failed to cite any evidence for his claim.
The Telegraph argued it was “clearly comically polemical, and could not be reasonably read as a serious, empirical, in-depth analysis of hard factual matters”.
The newspaper also pointed to five polls showing support for different Brexit scenarios.
But Ipso upheld the complaint, describing the piece as a “significant inaccuracy, because it misrepresented polling information”.
The watchdog said The Telegraph had not provided any data that supported the author’s claim either that a no-deal Brexit was the option preferred “by some margin” over the three options listed, or that these represented “…all of the options suggested by pollsters”.
“Instead it had construed the polls as signalling support for a no deal, when in fact, this was the result of the publication either amalgamating several findings together, or interpreting an option beyond what was set out by the poll as being a finding in support of a no-deal Brexit,” it added.
In an online correction, the newspaper said: “This article previously said that of all the options suggested by pollsters – staying in the EU, coming out on Theresa May’s terms, or coming on World Trade terms – a no-deal Brexit was by some margin the outcome most preferred by the British public.
“In fact, no poll clearly showed that a no-deal Brexit was more popular than the other options. This correction is being published following a complaint upheld by the Independent Press Standards Organisation.”
Mr Johnson is paid £275,000 a year to write the weekly column, according to the register of members’ interest, a sum he once described as “chicken feed”.
The leading Brexiteer often uses his pieces to express a view on the state of Britain’s departure from the EU, but he also sparked a major row when he compared Muslim women who wear burqas to letterboxes.
