Johnson waved his arms, clenched fists and hurled elbows
sees the Foreign Secretary hail the merits of leaving the EU
NOTHING with Boris Johnson is ever boring. That is why the remote Europhile Establishment so envies and disdains him. His speech yesterday hailing the liberal merits of Brexit had its unruly moments.
He was sweating like a Marseilles kebabier. He went off on a couple of eccentric flights and his delivery was staccato, full of plosives and yelps.
But at the core of this speech, amid the Boris brio, was the golden truth that Brexit offers a surer, safer liberalism than that dated ‘stockade’ of the EU (a stockade being where farmers pen dumb sheep).
He knew some would misrepresent this speech as trouble-making.
To that end he was punctiliously warm about Theresa May, saying her Lancaster House and Florence speeches had acquired ‘the lapidary status of the codes of Hammurabi or Moses’.
Coming from anyone else, that could have sounded cheeky.
Coming from Boris, it was a compliment fringed by characteristic humour.
Hammurabi, a Babylonian king circa 1760 BC, was one of ancient Mesopotamia’s mightiest men. Mrs May should count herself esteemed.
Foreign Secretary Johnson began by praising the ‘entirely noble sentiments’ of most Remain supporters and acknowledged three chief areas of their concern: Europe’s future geopolitical strength, Britain becoming insular after independence, and economic uncertainty.
He offered reassurances on all these from a liberal perspective.
It needed saying because Leavers should not just sit back on the referendum victory. ‘We cannot expect the case to make itself.’ Indeed not. Even as the event was being broadcast, the BBC’s News channel was flashing up Twitter messages from the London commentariat. Nearly all of those chosen came from Europhiles. Classic. On the geopolitics, Boris noted that Mrs May said Britain would continue to defend Europe militarily. Our aid spending was 25 per cent of all of the continent’s. That would continue, he said.
On the insular argument, he quoted the late Labour foreign secretary Ernie Bevin: ‘My foreign policy is to be able to take a ticket at Victoria station and to go anywhere I damn well please.’
More Britons lived in Australia than in the EU, said Mr Johnson.
He noted the paradox that our facility
with foreign languages had actually worsened since we joined the EEC. Student exchange programmes would continue.
We would not be returning to a menu of Spam and cabbage and liver (oh – I happen to like all three of those). Brexit was ‘not some great V-sign from the cliffs of Dover’ but merely a demand for self-determination.
All this was put with vigorous arm-waving, clenching of fists, hurling of elbows and narrowing of eyes. Boris puts more oratorical vim into one sentence than Philip Hammond puts into an entire Budget. That matters because it connects and is thus more democratic.
The inventiveness of his language and his theatricality make him watchable, as did the rivulets of sweat that ran down his cheeks. The tiny room at think-tank Policy Exchange was baking.
He quoted 19th century liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill’s belief that ‘only the nation could legitimise the activities of the state’. An electorate moulded by ‘national solidarity’ was essential to keep politicians in check.
‘If we’re going to accept laws we have to know who is making them and we have to be able to interrogate them in our own language.’ Boris said he was often sworn at in the streets. It was a free country. At least voters knew who he was. They did not know who made European laws.
And this led to the best passage, when he pointed out that hardly anyone in Britain has a clue about the ‘Spitzenkandidat’ process, yet it has held sway over us. Ditto, who could explain the difference between the EU’s charter of fundamental rights and its court of human rights? Gulps all round. And that was in a think-tank.
Within seconds of the speech’s completion, the EU-loving Twitterati were attacking it. They always do. Bright, brave, buoyantly British Boris had again skewered them.