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PARIS — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s father said on Thursday he wanted to become a French citizen to maintain his ties with the European Union after Brexit.
“If I understand it correctly, I am French. My mother was born in France, her mother was totally French as was her grandfather. So for me it is about reclaiming what I already have. And that makes me very happy,” Stanley Johnson, told RTL radio.
“I will always be a European, that’s for sure. One cannot tell the British people: you are not Europeans. Europe is more than the single market. Having a tie with the European Union is important,” he added in French.
Despite his son Boris leading the Leave campaign in the U.K.’s 2016 referendum, Stanley Johnson supported Remain but later said he had changed his mind.
A former member of the European Parliament, 80-year-old Johnson was one of the first British public servants in Brussels as a member of the European Parliament and worked at the Commission. As a result, Boris Johnson spent part of his childhood in Brussels and learnt French.
Stanley Johnson’s intention to become a French citizen was revealed last March in his daughter Rachel Johnson’s book Rake’s Progress: My Political Midlife Crisis. She wrote that her father was “en route to becoming a French citizen, as his mother had been born in Versailles and his grandmother had been in Paris.” She added: “This is good news — I might be able to become French too.”
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