Boris Johnson has called for resignations at The Guardian following criticism of a cartoon it published featuring the former BBC chair Richard Sharp. The newspaper took down the controversial image on Saturday after critics said it included a series of antisemitic tropes.
The former Tory prime minister, who was also depicted in the cartoon – sitting naked atop a pile of excrement and holding two large sacks of money – told The Mail on Sunday: “Frankly, whoever commissioned and printed this has made a far worse mistake than Richard Sharp. They should take his lead.”
Apologising, cartoonist Martin Rowson said that through “carelessness and thoughtlessness I screwed up pretty badly”. The Guardian said the cartoon did not meet its editorial standards.
Mr Sharp stepped down as BBC chair this week after a report criticised him for failing to disclose his role in arranging an £800,000 loan guarantee for Mr Johnson.
The cartoon showed him leaving office with his CV in hand, carrying a box marked “Goldman Sachs” – the name of his former employer – that contains toys or puppets of a squid and Rishi Sunak.
The idea of Jewish people as “puppet masters” has a long history as an antisemitic trope.
Some critics said the squid could also be read as an octopus spreading its tentacles, an idea that has also featured in antisemitic propaganda.
Dave Rich, an author who has written extensively on antisemitism, said on Twitter that the cartoon “falls squarely into an antisemitic tradition of depicting Jews with outsized, grotesque features, often in conjunction with money and power”.
Mr Rowson said the cartoon had gone “horribly wrong”, and that, while the representations were inadvertent, he took full responsibility.
“Satirists, even though largely licensed to speak the unspeakable in liberal democracies, are no more immune to f***ing things up than anyone else, which is what I did here,” he said.
The cartoonist said Mr Sharp’s “Jewishness never crossed my mind as I drew him” but that “there are sensitivities it is our obligation to respect in order to achieve our satirical purposes”.
“The cute squid and the little Rishi were no more than that, a cartoon squid and a short prime minister,” he continued. “It never occurred to me that some might see them as puppets of Sharp, this being another notorious antisemitic trope.”
