By Aiyeku Timothy
The father of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Stanley Johnson, has applied for French citizenship with Britain now cut off from the European Union.
Stanley Johnson’s reason for making the move is because he had always seen himself as French and part of the European Union as his mother was born in France.
While his son fronted the Leave campaign, the 80-year-old former Conservative Member of the European Parliament voted Remain in the 2016 Brexit referendum.
Confirming that he applied for citizenship, Stanley Johnson said “It’s not about becoming French, It’s about reclaiming what I already have.”
He said that “You can’t tell the English ‘you’re not European’. Europe is more than the single market, it’s more than the European Union.
“That said, to have a link like that with the EU is important,
“I will always be European,” he added.
It would be recalled that Stanley Johnson, served as an MEP 40 years ago, and was one of the first UK civil servants to work in Brussels after Britain joined the European Union, formerly called the European Economic Community, in 1973 and later work for the European Commission.
However, it is feared that the Brexit issues have divided the Johnson family as the prime minister’s sister, the journalist Rachel Johnson, left the Conservative Party to join the Liberal Democrats before the 2017 election in protest against Brexit.
Their brother, the Conservative MP Jo Johnson, also resigned from the cabinet in 2018 to highlight his support for closer links with the EU.
With Britain succeeding to exit the European Union, their transition period ended at 11pm on Thursday, after parliament voted through the prime minister’s post-Brexit trade deal on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Stanley Johnson is not the only one to have made this decision as thousands of Britons have acquired EU citizenship since the Brexit vote. Hundreds of thousands had applied for the nationality of another EU State.
