British PM Boris Johnson at the London headquarters of the Conservative party. Photo: Reuters / Toby Melville.

New British Prime Minister Boris Johnson once passionately defended Israel at an Oxford Union debate, a top American pollster has revealed.

In a lengthy piece in The Financial Times in praise of Johnson, Frank Luntz said of the prime minister, “He says what he thinks, often to a fault, and that is infuriating to those members of the elite who were raised from birth to mask their feelings.”

“I will give you an example from our Oxford Union days,” wrote Luntz. “There was a motion condemning Israel for being responsible for the conflict in the Middle East. Every debater, on both sides, used facts and historic evidence to make their case.”

“Not Mr. Johnson,” recounted Luntz. “He talked about what it was like to be bullied in the playground — making an unusually sympathetic case for Israel as the victim in the conflict. ‘Shouldn’t we blame the bullies, not the bullied?’ The place was mesmerized.”

“He never took the easy or the expected approach to his Oxford debates, or to his writing or his political career since then,” Luntz stated. “When other people went for the head, Boris went for the heart.”