Boris warns Stopping Brexit will be a disastrous mistake
BORIS Johnson faced a string of attacks from Remain campaigners last night after issuing a passionate plea for the country to move beyond the Brexit divide.
In a long-awaited key speech, the Foreign Secretary urged Leave and Remain supporters to put aside their differences and “unite about what we all believe in”.
Setting out a vision of a “liberal Brexit” leading to a country free of Brussels rules and regulations, but still co-operating closely with European partners, he said: “Brexit is about re-engaging this country with its global identity and all the energy that can flow from that.
“It’s not some great V-sign from the cliffs of Dover.”
He said it would be a “disastrous mistake” to try to stop Brexit and “frustrate the will” of the 17.4 million people who voted to leave the EU.
But Labour peer Lord Adonis branded Mr Johnson a “charlatan” and pro-Brussels Tory MP Anna Soubry said his speech would spread “deep despair”.
Mr Johnson’s vision for Britain’s future outside the EU was the first of a series of high-profile Brexit speeches by senior Cabinet ministers over the coming weeks.
“People voted Leave not because they were hostile to European culture and civilisation but because they wanted to take back control,” Mr Johnson said at the Policy Exchange think tank headquarters in Westminster.
“Brexit is not just the great liberal project of the age but a project that over time can unite this whole country. So let’s do it with confidence together.
“It is the expression of a legitimate and natural desire for self-government of the people, by the people, for the people.”
Urging Remainers to acknowledge that Brexit would bring more cash for Britain’s public services and greater democratic accountability, he said: “We will stop paying huge sums to the EU every year and as the PM herself has said, this will leave us with more to spend on our domestic priorities, including, yes, the NHS.”
Mr Johnson also fired a broadside at Cabinet colleagues including Chancellor Philip Hammond, who argue for continuing close ties with Brussels after Brexit.
“We would be mad to go through this process of extrication from the EU and not to take advantage of the economic freedoms it will bring,” he said.
But even before his speech, senior Labour MP Yvette Cooper told BBC radio in an interview: “I don’t really see why we’re taking him seriously at all.”
He also faced a pro-Brussels demonstration from Lib Dem activists, whose headquarters are four floors below the Policy Exchange office, as he arrived.
After the speech, Lord Adonis dismissed the peace offer as “typical bluster” and called Mr Johnson’s supporters “a bunch of charlatans”. And Ms Soubry said: “Far from reaching out, it will drive many to deeper despair.”
But Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg called the speech a “classic of Boris oratory” and Richard Tice, co-chairman of pressure group Leave Means Leave, said: “This is the positive tone the British public have been waiting for the Government to deliver.”
‘People voted Leave because they wanted to take back control’
LEO McKINSTRY & OPINION: PAGE 12
ORCHESTRATING a climate of gloom over Brexit is now the central goal of the Remain zealots. They aim to create such despair about our withdrawal from the EU that the British public will eventually seek to reverse the historic referendum decision. In their relentless propaganda war, these anti-Leave campaigners exaggerate every obstacle in the process of Brexit, hype every bleak economic forecast and cheer every display of aggression by EU negotiators.
But yesterday a brilliant riposte to their narrative of woe was delivered by the Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. In an optimistic speech in central London, the first in a series to be made by senior Cabinet Ministers setting out the Government’s vision for Brexit, Johnson argued that a new era of democracy and prosperity beckons for Britain once we are free from the rule of Brussels. Instead of the usual Remoaner denigration of our capacity for self-governance, the Foreign Secretary extolled the “historic genius” of our British character, declaring that “this country is once again taking the lead in the shaping of the modern world”.
FULL of humour and conviction, his address was a reminder of Johnson’s impressive calibre as a politician. His enemies like to caricature him as a lazy, gaffeprone buffoon but in reality he is a formidable operator who has already left a significant mark on the political landscape. It was his powerful performance in the final televised Brexit debate of 2016, when he resoundingly declared that the referendum would signal Britain’s “Independence Day”, that may have helped to swing the outcome.
That is precisely why he has become such a reviled figure among dogmatic Remoaners, who howl with rage at the very mention of his name. As Johnson admitted yesterday, he is regularly abused in the street, though, with typical ebullience, he did not don the mantle of victimhood but instead expressed his support for the democratic right of British citizens to make such protests.
Indeed the entire tone of his speech was defiantly upbeat, as he rose above the fog of bitter conflict to promise a bright future for an independent Britain. His positive outlook was in stark contrast to the Remoaner pretence that Brexit is just a reactionary, nostalgic force for insularity and xenophobia. As Boris pointed out, the very opposite is true. Through free trade and democracy “Brexit is about re-engaging this country with its global identity”.
Johnson also demolished the myth that the alternative to Brexit is the status quo. In fact, the real choice is between national freedom and membership of a bureaucratic federal empire. As he said, the fundamental purpose of the EU is “to create an overarching European state”, based on “a new sense of European political identity”. Yesterday, in a ferocious response to Johnson’s speech, the Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker dismissed as “total nonsense” the claims about federalism.
But Juncker is the one who is deluding himself. The very existence of the EU is built on the political imperative of “ever closer union”. At the entrance to the European Parliament’s visitor centre there is plaque stating that “national sovereignty is the root cause of most of the evils of our times”, the only “remedy” for which is “the federal union of the people”. In his own so-called “state of the union” address last September in Strasbourg, Juncker called for a “leap forward” towards greater integration through steps such as the creation of a European army, an end to national vetoes, compulsory membership of the euro currency and the establishment of a single presidency.
The EU’s contempt for national democracy is mirrored by the fanatical Remoaners who, in Johnson’s words, “are becoming ever more determined to stop Brexit”. But their victory, he thought, would be “a disastrous mistake”, leading to “permanent and ineradicable feelings of betrayal”.
Interestingly, many sensible Remain voters now recognise the dangers of refusing to accept the will of the British people. This week Alastair Benn, editor of the magazine Cambridge Globalist, wrote of his willingness to accept the result because the Brexit vote was “absolutely decisive. The margin was not small. It was big. More than a million more people voted to leave than to remain.”
THERE is nothing to fear in the embrace of democratic autonomy. Brexit will give Britain the chance to forge its own destiny. We will be far better off on our own, said Boris, rather than “lashed to the minute prescriptions of a regional bloc comprising only six per cent of humanity”. Through independence, our policies can be geared to our national interests. We can fish our own fish, make our own trade deals, set our own levels of immigration, decide our own tax rates and settle our own regulations, just as most other free countries do.
Throughout his career, Boris Johnson has always been misjudged or underrated. In truth, he has made a success of every role he has taken, from magazine editor to mayor of London. His apparently effortless rise provokes jealousy among more mediocre figures, just as his humorous, often poetic, interjections are sneeringly described as “gaffes” by his pofaced detractors.
His critics were at it again yesterday, wailing that he had not provided enough “details” of the Government’s Brexit strategy. But his speech was not a dry agenda for the coming trade negotiations. It was a heroic rallying cry in support of national liberty, exactly what is needed right now.
‘His speech was defiantly upbeat’