Boris Johnson: 'Tories who defect to Ukip are kind of people who have sex with vacuum cleaners'

London's Mayor goes on bizarre rant at Conservative Party conference
Speech: Boris Johnson with a 'Boris' dragon puppet which a supporter made for the Tory conference (Picture: PA)
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Boris Johnson has made a bizarre jibe at Tories thinking of defecting to Ukip - saying they are the kind of people who have sex with vacuum cleaners.

Addressing a rally at the party's annual conference in Birmingham, Mr Johnson said would-be defectors were the kind of people who might inflict "barely credible" injuries on themselves by "vacuum cleaner abuse".

He said he had turned down an approach from Nigel Farage 20 years ago and believed it would make more sense for the eurosceptic party's leader to defect to the Conservatives.

He made the incredible comments in the wake of the defection of two Tory MPs to Ukip.

Speaking to Conservative Party members, he suggested Ukip should throw its weight behind the Tories in order to defeat Labour and secure an in/out referendum on Britain's EU membership in next year's general election.

He told the rally: "The EU commission wants to ban vacuum cleaners on the grounds that they are too powerful.

"If you do not handle your vacuum cleaner correctly, you may end up inhaling the hamster - the budgerigar through the bars of the cage.

"And I have read that there are some people - probably the type who are thinking of defecting to Ukip - who present themselves at A&E with barely credible injuries sustained through vacuum cleaner abuse."

Mr Johnson said it was time for "the great conservative family" to unite to defeat Labour and for Ukip supporters to recognise that the only party capable of delivering their priorities is the Conservatives.

He won a warm reception from hundreds of activists at the ConservativeHome rally, but there was not the frenzy seen over the last few years, when his arrival overshadowed events elsewhere in the conference.

In contrast to previous years, he failed to fill much more than half the seats in the cavernous hall booked for his appearance, which comes ahead of his keynote speech tomorrow.

Mr Johnson joked that he felt offended not to have had "so much as a whisper or a sniff or the tinsiest soupcon of a suggestion that I should defect to another party", as Tory MPs Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless have done.

"I did meet Nigel Farage in a pub about 20 years ago, in the mid-1990s, and as is traditional in such cases, he pushed across the caviar and vodka that Moscow Central always use when they are trying to woo potential defectors," said Mr Johnson.

"And you know what I said to him? I said `No, Nigel, you join us'. I repeat my message today, because it is only the Conservatives who are able to deliver the kind of things he is talking about and it is only if the great conservative family unites and we stop Ed Miliband seizing back control of this country that we will be able to deliver the referendum that this country wants and deserves."

He added: "I say to the quitters, the splitters and the 'Kippers, there is only one party that can sort out the European issue, there is only party that is going to sort out the constitutional anomaly that allows Scottish MPs to vote on matters that only affect England when English MPs have no corresponding say over those questions in Scotland."

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