Though Cowards Flinch

December 2011, Boris Johnson put out his clearest message to the leader of his party that his position on the EU was doing damage to the country. He said the UK should oppose any change which created a “very dominant economic government” across Europe.

By March of this year, it had been noted by Matthew Barrett that Boris had become the “most senior person in the party to support an in/out referendum“.

In a statement about the general state of play in Europe, Boris has said this:

This idea that if we can find a big enough bazooka, we could blow away the problem by creating a Euro government in which there will be shared fiscal responsibility, I’m afraid that really will, in the long term, and probably even in the short and medium term, simply exacerbate the problem, because that administration, that economic government will have no democratic legitimacy.

But, even though plenty of UKIP supporters have said on the back of this that Boris should get their second vote during the mayoral elections, this hasn’t settled everyone’s opinion.

In the comments section of Barrett’s March article on Conservative Home, one commenter points out, regarding Boris calling for an in/out referendum:

What Boris doesn’t tell us which side he would support let alone vote for!

It will be a very useful in seeing who are the true supporters of the EU and who are the genuinely pro-British amongst them.

Oddly, James in the comments section has put:

Like Cameron, Boris is just another tax hungry socialist pretending to be a Conservative and that pledge isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

Lastly David in the same comments wrote:

Boris a plastic eurosceptic. Wouldn’t depend on him for this (or much else).

So for all the doubt, it should come as some relief that John Hind, writing in a small comment in today’s Observer Food Monthly, gives us the concrete answer on where Boris stands on Europe:

Look, I’m actually rather pro-European, actually. I certainly want a European community where one can go and scoff croissants, drink delicious coffee, learn foreign languages and generally make love to foreign women.

This might be unhelpful in pursuit of his opinions on Europe as an economic community, but now we know what carrot we should dangle in front of him if we want him to support an ‘in’ campaign. Or did we always know that anyway?