Brexit news: Boris Johnson 'wrong' to claim no-deal a preferred option, watchdog rules

Boris Johnson has breached House of Commons rules by failing to declare a financial interest within the required time limit (Picture: PA)

Boris Johnson wrongly claimed there was polling evidence that a no-deal Brexit was the public's preferred outcome, the press regulator has ruled.

IPSO ordered the Daily Telegraph to print a corrent after finding the MP's column was inaccurate.

The prominent Brexiteer wrote in a Daily Telegraph piece headlined "The British people won't be scared into backing a woeful Brexit deal nobody voted for" that a no-deal Brexit was “by some margin preferred by the British public".

The page 18 article claimed that polls had supported this view, but IPSO has ruled that while columnists are free to “campaign, be partisan and express strong opinions,” the article had made factual claims which were not supported by evidence.

The Telegraph had argued that the article was "clearly comically polemical".

File photo: The Daily Telegraph must now print a correction to the article (PA)

Satistician Mitchell Stirling complained to the regulator about the piece, published on January 7, and said “it was inaccurate to claim that polls showed that a no-deal Brexit was more popular 'by some margin' than remaining in the EU or Theresa May’s deal".

Responding to the complaint, the Telegraph said that “the writer was entitled to make sweeping generalisations based on his opinions and that the complainant had misconstrued the purpose of the article; it was clearly comically polemical, and could not be reasonably read as a serious, empirical, in-depth analysis of hard factual matters.”

They added that the article was “clearly an opinion piece, and readers would understand that the statement was not invoking specific polling – no specific dates or polls were referenced.”

The Telegraph also argued that "by amalgamating various combinations of the responses contained within these four polls, each poll could be said to reflect support for a no deal scenario over Theresa May’s deal or remaining in the EU".

The paper must now print a correction in its corrections and clarifications column and as a footnote to the online article, IPSO said.

The column appeared a week before MPs rejected Theresa May's Brexit deal for the first time by a historic margin.