Boris Johnson going Vegan? Shock Horror

Boris Johnson, of all people, appears to be turning vegan. He’s had a makeover courtesy of his girlfriend, environmentalist Carrie Symonds who has served as senior advisor to ocean conservation group Oceana. She is over 20 years younger than him and so the fact that she is from a different generation shows in her difference in attitude. A former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party, she is a committed conservationist who regularly tweets about environmental and animal issues.

As well as the new haircut and smarter clothes Boris has lost a lot of weight from having been eating vegan, and he is now seriously thinking of going vegan full time. According to the Daily Mail Johnson told a fellow MP that he is “toying with going vegan…..I’m trying it out.”   

The new-look relatively svelte Boris Johnson has certainly had more than just a new makeover.  According to that article, Johnson told a fellow MP that he had lost 12lb in just two weeks after ditching meat, eggs and dairy.

This is quite a turnaround from the guy who in 2008 wrote, in response to a UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which urged a reduction in meat consumption: 

‘If they seriously believe that I am going to give up eating meat — in the hope of reducing the temperature of the planet — then they must be totally barmy.’

In his Daily Telegraph article at the time, he made a personal statement to Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the distinguished chairman of the panel saying in his own particularly cheeky way that we would not have a single meat-free day per week and he certainly would not become a gradual vegetarian. In fact, he found the very idea ‘so irritating’ that he was tempted to eat more meat in response!

He has also in the past expressed support for fox hunting and bullfighting. So if Boris Johnson does go fully vegan then Gordon Ramsay and he will be in serious contention for the award for the biggest vegan U-Turn.