FORMER Tory chairman Chris Patten has branded prime minister Boris Johnson "an English nationalist" and said he "fears" for Britain as the outcome of Brexit negotiations hang in the balance.
Lord Patten also claimed that Conservative Party tenets - including standing up for the union - "seem to have gone out of the window".
"What we're seeing is Boris Johnson on this runaway train of English exceptionalism and heaven knows where it is going to take us in the end," he told The Independent.
More than 20 years ago, the former Hong Kong governor oversaw the reform of policing in Northern Ireland in the aftermath of the Good Friday Agreement before going on to be a European Commissioner for External Relations.
"I want the best for my country, I fear for what's happening at the moment and I fear for our reputation around the world, I fear for what will happen economically," he said.
"I hope that I'm wrong to feel so depressed about the outlook but I don't think that Mr Johnson is a Conservative, I think he is an English nationalist.
"And all the things that Conservatives used to believe in - like standing up for the union, like not attacking our institutions, like the judges, like believing in international co-operation - seem to have gone out of the window."
