Boris Johnson vs Boris Johnson: Brexit arguments for and against

Boris Johnson said Britain staying in the EU would be a "boon for the world and for Europe" in a previously unpublished newspaper column.

The Foreign Secretary wrote the article just days before revealing he would back the Leave campaign.

:: Boris Johnson's secret 'Remain' article revealed

Here we compare extracts from what he wrote in his previously-unseen piece and what he subsequently said in his published newspaper column supporting Brexit.

:: On EU membership

Pro-Remain article

"Britain is a great nation, a global force for good.

"It is surely a boon for the world and for Europe that she should be intimately engaged in the EU.

"This is a market on our doorstep, ready for further exploitation by British firms: the membership fee seems rather small for all that access.

"Why are we so determined to turn our back on it?

"Shouldn't our policy be like our policy on cake - pro having it and pro eating it? Pro Europe and pro the rest of the world?"

Pro-Leave column

"This is a truly great country that is now going places at extraordinary speed. We are the European, if not the world, leaders in so many sectors of the 21st-century economy; not just financial services, but business services, the media, biosciences, universities, the arts, technology of all kinds (of the 40 EU technology companies worth more than $1 billion, 17 are British); and we still have a dizzyingly fertile manufacturing sector.

"Now is the time to spearhead the success of those products and services not just in Europe, but in growth markets beyond.

"This is a moment to be brave, to reach out - not to hug the skirts of Nurse in Brussels, and refer all decisions to someone else."

:: On David Cameron's renegotiated membership deal

Pro-Remain article

"If sovereignty is the problem - and it certainly is - then maybe it is worth looking again at the prime minister's deal, because there is a case for saying it is not quite as contemptible as all that.

"He is the first prime minister to get us out of ever closer union, which is potentially very important with the European Court of Justice and how it interprets EU law.

"He has done some good stuff on competition, and repealing legislation, and on protecting Britain from further integration of the euro group.

"Now if this were baked into a real EU treaty, it would be very powerful.

"Taken together with the sovereignty clauses - which are not wholly platitudinous - you can see the outlines of a new role for Britain: friendly, involved, but not part of the federalist project.

"Yes, folks, the deal's a bit of a dud, but it contains the germ of something really good.

"I am going to muffle my disappointment and back the prime minister."

Pro-Leave column

"David Cameron has done his very best, and he has achieved more than many expected.

"There is some useful language about stopping "ever-closer union" from applying to the UK, about protecting the euro outs from the euro ins, and about competition and deregulation.

"There is an excellent forthcoming Bill that will assert the sovereignty of Parliament, the fruit of heroic intellectual labour by Oliver Letwin, which may well exercise a chilling effect on some of the more federalist flights of fancy of the court and the Commission.

"It is good, and right, but it cannot stop the machine; at best it can put a temporary and occasional spoke in the ratchet.

There is only one way to get the change we need, and that is to vote to go, because all EU history shows that they only really listen to a population when it says No.

"The fundamental problem remains: that they have an ideal that we do not share. They want to create a truly federal union, e pluribus unum, when most British people do not."

:: On economic impact of Brexit

Pro-Remain article

"There are some big questions that the 'out' side need to answer.

"Almost everyone expects there to be some sort of economic shock as a result of Brexit. How big would it be?

"I am sure that the doomsters are exaggerating the fallout - but are they completely wrong? And how can we know?"

Pro-Leave column

"We will hear a lot in the coming weeks about the risks of this option; the risk to the economy, the risk to the City of London, and so on; and though those risks cannot be entirely dismissed, I think they are likely to be exaggerated.

"We have heard this kind of thing before, about the decision to opt out of the euro, and the very opposite turned out to be the case."

:: On the implications for Scottish independence

Pro-Remain article

"And then there is the worry about Scotland, and the possibility that an English-only 'leave' vote could lead to the break-up of the union."

Pro-Leave column

"I also accept there is a risk that a vote to Leave the EU, as it currently stands,will cause fresh tensions in the union between England and Scotland.

"On the other hand, most of the evidence I have seen suggests that the Scots will vote on roughly the same lines as the English."

:: On Russian President Vladimir Putin

Pro-Remain article

"There is the Putin factor: we don't want to do anything to encourage more shirtless swaggering from the Russian leader, not in the Middle East, not anywhere."

Pro-Leave column

"We will be told that a Brexit would embolden Putin, though it seems to me he is more likely to be emboldened, for instance, by the West's relative passivity in Syria."