Former Mayor of London, Conservative MP and prominent Vote Leave campaigner Boris Johnson has been forced to defend comments he made in a speech, when he seemed to compare the European Union with Nazi Germany. Johnson clashed with journalists while campaigning for a Brexit on Monday (16 May 2016).

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The Uxbridge and Ruislip MP said: "The argument is very simple. What happened over the past 2,000 years or so is that various people have tried re-create the idea of a single European state as we had under the Roman empire. They did it very often with extreme force, the EU is a very different proposition, but it fundamentally comes from that idea that you can unify Europe".

But he was interrupted a number of times by reporters, who questioned whether bringing up Adolf Hitler and comparing creation of the EU with the Third Reich and Second World War in 1939 was appropriate.

The Tory MP replied, "Actually, I was making a comparison to 9AD".

Johnson had made the controversial remarks on 15 May. He said, "Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out [unifying Europe], and it ends tragically. The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods".

Earlier in 2016, fellow former mayor of London Ken Livingstone was suspended from the Labour Party for remarks he made claiming that Adolf Hitler was a Zionist.

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