Boris Johnson said kids of working mums more likely to 'mug you on a street corner'

The children of working mothers are "unloved and undisciplined" and are more likely to "mug you on the street corner", Boris Johnson once claimed.

The PM wrote: "In the last 30 years an ever-growing proportion of British women have been 'incentivised' or socially gestapoed into the workplace, on what seems to me to be the dubious assumption that the harder a woman works the happier she will be, when I am not sure that is true of women or anyone else."

The extract comes from a 2006 piece published before he became London mayor.

In it Mr Johnson said an increasing number of female graduates tended to pair up with male graduates – and that they then pool their advantages.

"The result is that in families on lower incomes the women have absolutely no choice but to work, often with adverse consequences for family life and society as a whole – in that unloved and undisciplined children are more likely to become hoodies, Neets [not in education, employment or training] and mug you on the street corner."

Labour shadow education secretary, Angela Rayner, herself a working mum, said: "It is obvious that Boris Johnson has nothing but contempt for women and working-class people.

"For him to speak about us in such a disgusting manner shows just how out of touch he is. It is clear he only ever stands up for the privileged few."