But the EU’s “disastrous” failures have fuelled tensions between member states and allowed Germany to grow in power, “take over” the Italian economy and “destroy” Greece, he warns. Mr Johnson invokes Winston Churchill’s war-time defiance, urging the British people to be “the heroes of Europe” again, set the country free and save the EU from itself by voting to leave in the referendum next month.

The former mayor of London, who is a keen classical scholar, argues that the past 2,000 years of European history have been characterised by repeated attempts to unify Europe under a single government in order to recover the continent’s lost “golden age” under the Romans. “Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically,” he says. “The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods.”

Yesterday, Mr Johnson travelled to Bristol, as Vote Leave staged 300 events around the UK. In his interview, he suggests that the economic benefits of EU membership have been exaggerated, when in fact the euro has fuelled tensions between member states. “The Italians, who used to be a great motor-manufacturing power, have been absolutely destroyed by the euro – as was intended by the Germans,” Mr Johnson claims.

“The euro has become a means by which superior German productivity is able to gain an absolutely unbeatable advantage over the whole eurozone.” He adds: “This is a chance for the British people to be the heroes of Europe and to act as a voice of moderation and common sense, and to stop something getting, in my view, out of control.”