How Juncker turned me into a Brexit backer, by Boris’s dad
‘Time has come to bail out’
IT was a speech that was too much even for arch-Remainer Stanley Johnson.
For after hearing Jean-Claude Juncker tell of his dream of a European superstate, Boris Johnson’s father has become a Brexiteer.
Mr Johnson accused the European Commission president of fervently pursuing an ‘over-the-top’ dream to create a European super-state.
Despite repeatedly dismissing his son’s Brexit support in the past, Mr Johnson, 77, said it was now unthinkable that the UK could be involved in any push towards a federal system.
He said the turning point came when Mr Juncker delivered his ‘state of the union’ speech last month in which he set out plans for an EU power-grab involving more tax-raising powers. ‘The vision he presented of an EU with a single government and with directly-elected EU ministers… it seemed to me totally over the top,’ said Mr Johnson, who served as an MEP in the early 1980s and worked as a Brussels official.
He previously believed the UK should stay in the bloc to ‘fight from within for change’ but, after his change of mind, said: ‘Mr Juncker’s Federal Express is heading down the track at an ever-increasing speed in a direction we really don’t want to go.
‘Even if Britain stayed on board, I doubt if we would be able to change the points on the track ahead, or even slow the train down.’
Mr Juncker said during his keynote address the UK would ‘soon regret Brexit’ and set out plans for elected EU ministers, broadening the borderfree Schengen zone and the creation of an EU intelligence body.
Mr Johnson also backed a controversial newspaper article written by his son, the Foreign Secretary, that called for a ‘glorious’ Brexit and kickstarted a Cabinet rift over the Government’s negotiating strategy.
‘Boris argued that for 40 years Britain has been trying to nudge the EU towards a different destiny and on the whole we have not had much luck,’ he said. ‘The time has come to bail out, he asserted. I agree.’
But he hinted at opposition to his son’s belief that a post-Brexit transition period should be limited to two years and said the UK should not ‘throw out the baby with the bathwater’. Espousing a belief that the UK maintains key Brussels rules on areas such as the environment, he also said Britain can ‘seize the opportunity to move ahead in areas where EU action still lags’.
The comments by Mr Johnson, an author, are the latest development in his family’s ongoing feud about Brexit after his daughter Rachel – a newspaper columnist – revealed she had joined the Lib Dems earlier this year in a bid to stop the split. One of his other children, Jo, a Tory MP who serves as Universities Minister, also backed the Remain campaign.
Boris was initially undecided before the referendum, writing two newspaper articles – one in favour of Remain, the other for Leave. Only at the last minute did he opt for Leave, defying David Cameron.
His father got a job in the European Commission in 1973 and moved to Brussels with first wife Charlotte and children Boris, Rachel, Leo and Jo.