Speaking at the Lord Mayor's banquet in London he claimed lightsabers had been invented in his Uxbridge constituency, rather than in the mind of Star Wars creator George Lucas.
And in an odd, and possibly distasteful analogy, he compared lightsabers to Novichok, the deadly nerve agent used to attack Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.
He said of Vladimir Putin's Russian regime: "They make Novichok, we make lightsabers. One a hideous weapon that is specifically intended for assassination, the other an implausible theatrical prop with a mysterious buzz.
"But which of these two weapons is really more effective in the world of today? Which has done more for our respective economies? Which has delighted the imaginations of three generations of children and earned billions? Which one is loved and which one is loathed?
"I tell you that the arsenals of this country and of our friends are not stocked with poison, but with something vastly more powerful. The power of imagination and creativity and innovation that comes with living in a free society."
There are many countries that have experienced firsthand the power of British "imagination and creativity," including Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen in this century alone. But not the kind Johnson spoke about. Just last month, the foreign secretary and the cabinet he is part of were welcoming Saudi Arabia's crown prince and de facto ruler Mohammad bin Salman as he visited the country.
Riyadh is among the biggest buyers of British arms, including bombs, which it uses to hit all sorts of targets in Yemen. The strikes include civilian factories, marketplaces and funeral ceremonies, which has been harschly condemned by rights groups. While brushing off responsibility for some of the cases entirely, the Saudis tend to write off others as errors or unavoidable collateral damage, so the British government doesn't seem to be particularly bothered that UK weapons kill civilians in Yemen.
Johnson praised the UK-manufactured light sabers, which make a "mysterious buzz" to inspire children and help the country stand against Russia in a company of "admirers and friends." Somehow the arsenals it sells to Saudi Arabia, fueling the kingdom's three-year bloodbath in Yemen, didn't make their way into the speech.
The missing link?
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