‘Many baffled by Brexit debate’

Johnson vows to speed up britain’s departure if he wins election

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is seeking to end the delays over Britain’s departure from the European Union if he wins next month’s election, describing the opposition Labour Party’s plans as political “onanism”.

Johnson was scheduled to make a campaign speech yesterday at a factory in the West Midlands where, according to prepared remarks, he would say that “the rest of the world cannot understand why so much time has been spent agonising over Brexit”.

Britons will vote on Dec 12 in an election called to end three years of deep disagreement over Brexit that has sapped investors’ faith in the stability of the world’s fifth largest economy and damaged Britain’s standing in the world.

Voters, he would say, faced a historic choice between the Conservatives and a Labour Party that threatened more political self-obsession and onanism – an old-fashioned word for masturbation – due to its support for a second referendum.

“The UK is admired and respected around the world, but people are baffled by our debate on Brexit and they cannot understand how this great country can squander so much time and energy on this question and how we can be so hesitant about our future,” the speech read.

“If we can get a working majority we can get parliament working for you, we can get out of the rut.

“We can end the groundhoggery of Brexit,” Johnson said in an apparent reference to the 1993 film

Groundhog Day, in which a TV weatherman finds himself reliving the same day over and over again.

But his day got off to a tricky start. As he observed relief efforts in a flood-hit district of northern England days after the worst of the flooding, two onlookers heckled him.

“You took your time, Boris,” one person told Johnson as he walked through the area accompanied by local officials, while another asked him: “Where’ve you been?”

Opposition parties have criticised Johnson and his government for a slow response to the flooding, which claimed one life last week.

Johnson, 55, hopes to win a majority to push through the lastminute Brexit deal he struck with the EU last month after the bloc granted a third delay to the divorce originally set for March 29.

Johnson was expected to argue in his speech that a vote for Labour will raise the prospect of two more referendums, one on Britain’s membership of the EU, and another on Scottish independence, which risks ripping apart the United Kingdom.

He described that prospect as “an expense of spirit and a waste of shame, more political self-obsession and onanism”.

If we can get a working majority we can get parliament working for you, we can get out of the rut. Boris Johnson