I could not fail to disagree with you less. — Boris Johnson

My interpretation of this ridiculous sentence:

  • "fail to disagree" equates to "agree", therefore, with some substitution:
  • "I could not agree with you less" suggests you're at the maximum end of the disagreement scale.

Regardless, I asked both ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini what the plain English meaning of this statement was and got two completely opposing answers:

  • ChatGPT described the sentence as a triple-negative pretzel, with the plain English meaning: I completely disagree with you.
  • Claude and Gemini both stated the opposite: I totally agree with you.

So what does it mean?