In May 2018, Russian pranksters managed to hold an 18-minute long phone call with Johnson by pretending to be Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. During the call, Johnson said the UK would continue to squeeze the Russian regime by targeting London-based oligarchs. The pranksters also brought up the Skripals' poisoning in Salisbury, though Johnson mostly struck to his public pronouncements.

In February 2018, Boris Johnson likened the challenges posed by the Irish border post-Brexit to the boundaries between different London boroughs. The Irish opposition described the comments as extraordinary, adding that "trivializing the very serious concerns relating to Ireland displays a dangerous ignorance that must be challenged."

During a foreign affairs committee hearing in November 2017, Johnson said British-Iranian citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been detained in Tehran while "simply teaching people journalism." Her family criticized the foreign secretary for making reportedly misleading comments that jeopardized her case. Iran has long viewed the BBC's Persian broadcasting service as a subversive arm of MI6.

Addressing a UK business forum in October 2017, Johnson told how fighting in Libya had prevented a group of investors from transforming the coastal city of Sirte "into the next Dubai." Johnson added that "the only thing they have got to do is clear the dead bodies away." Downing Street chided him for his remarks, while Johnson accused his critics of having "no knowledge or understanding" of Libya.

Johnson was accused of "incredible insensitivity" during a state visit to Myanmar in September 2017, as he recited part of a colonial-era Rudyard Kipling poem in front of local dignitaries at a sacred Buddhist site. Visibly embarrassed, Britain's Myanmar ambassador forced the foreign secretary to stop halfway through his impromptu recital.

Johnson caused uproar early on in his career as foreign secretary by comparing then French President Francois Hollande to a WWII prisoner of war guard for seeking to punish the UK for leaving the EU. “If Mr Hollande wants to administer punishment beatings to anybody who chooses to escape, rather in the manner of some World War II movie, I don’t think that is the way forward... ” said Johnson.

In May 2016, as the Brexit campaign was entering its ill-tempered final phase, Johnson told media that European history was marked by repeated attempts to unify the continent. "Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically," Johnson said. “The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods. But fundamentally ... there is no underlying loyalty to the idea of Europe.”

US President Barack Obama's intervention in the Brexit referendum in April 2016 provoked a furious reaction from Johnson. After Obama said the UK would be better off remaining part of the EU, Johnson described the US president "part Kenyan" and accused him of harboring an "ancestral dislike" of the United Kingdom.

After Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan complained about German comedian Jan Böhmermann calling him a "goat f---er" in March 2016, the UK's "Spectator" newspaper, which Johnson used to edit, ran a competition for readers to submit their own poems about Erdogan. Johnson's poem, in which he called the Turkish president from Ankara "a terrific wankerer," was awarded the £1,000 ($1,325, €1,127) prize.

In October 2015, Boris Johnson was forced to apologize as his competitive nature on the sports field saw him knock over a 10-year-old during what was supposed to be an informal game of rugby in Tokyo. Despite being bulldozed to the ground by the then-mayor of London, the young Toki Sekiguchi appeared unfazed by the incident, saying later he "enjoyed" meeting Johnson.

Johnson sought to mark Team GB's first gold medal at the 2012 Olympic Games in London with a high flying zip-line act. However, as he zipped across Victoria Park, the mayor lost momentum and came to a halt, leaving him dangling above a crowd of mystified onlookers. “I think they needed to test this on somebody going a bit faster,” he told onlookers, before urging them to get him a ladder.

Johnson was lampooned for one of his columns in "The Telegraph" in 2006, in which he compared infighting within the UK's Conservative and Labour parties to "Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing." Johnson issued an openly sarcastic apology, saying he did not mean to insult the people of Papua New Guinea, "who I am sure lead lives of blameless bourgeois domesticity."

As editor of the "Spectator" in 2004, Johnson claimed that drunken supporters of Liverpool football club were partly to blame for the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, in which 96 fans lost their lives. Johnson went on to accuse Liverpudlians of wallowing in their "victims' status." A coroner's inquest concluded in 2016 that the supporters were unlawfully killed due to police negligence.

In another column for the "Daily Telegraph" in 2002, Johnson wrote that the Queen loved the Commonwealth "partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies." Also writing ahead of Prime Minister Tony Blair's trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo, the UK's future top diplomat described how "the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles."

Boris Johnson resigned as UK foreign minister on Monday, the second resignation from Prime Minister Theresa May's Cabinet in less than 24 hours. The conservative had been a key face for the Leave campaign ahead of Britain's 2016 referendum. He seemed to quit in protest at May's plans to push through a "soft Brexit." May's position seemed fragile even before two key ministers quit.

Citing disagreement with the prime minister over EU divorce talks, Brexit Secretary David Davis quit his post late on Sunday. Davis, who served as UK's top Brexit negotiator, said Theresa May's policy could leave the UK in an "inescapable" negotiating position.

In April 2018, Home Secretary Amber Rudd resigned when reports surfaced of UK authorities mistreating long-term British residents from the Caribbean. The officials wrongly labeled the so-called "Windrush Generation" as illegal immigrants. London originally invited the migrants to help rebuild UK economy after World War II, with the ship "Windrush" transporting the first group to the UK shores.

Michael Fallon stepped down as British defense secretary in November 2017 after apologizing for touching a journalist's knee in 2002 and other allegations of inappropriate conduct that have not been made public. In his letter of resignation, Fallon said he had "fallen short of the high standards" expected of the military. Fallon was replaced by Gavin Williamson, one of May's trusted allies.

International Development Secretary Priti Patel also reigned in November, after being found to have had 12 undisclosed meetings with officials in Israel, including with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in breach of diplomatic protocol. Patel discussed the possibility of British aid being used to support medical assistance for Syrian refugees arriving in the Golan Heights.

First Secretary of State Damian Green was forced to resign after an inquiry found he made misleading statements about pornographic material found on a computer in his parliamentary office in 2008. A key ally of Prime Minister Theresa May, he was named secretary of state after May lost a parliamentary majority in early elections. Green was among those who urged Britons to vote to say in the EU.

Jo Johnson, the the Remain-backing younger brother of Boris Johnson, quit May's government in November over her "delusional" Brexit plans. Johnson said the withdrawal agreement being discussed by the European Union and British leaders would be a "terrible mistake" that would leave Britain weaker economically and with "no say" in EU rules it must follow, and years of uncertainty for business.