‘It’s time to believe in our great Britain’
Boris Johnson in rallying call for the nation to look to a brighter, post-brexit future
BRITAIN must believe in itself after Brexit, Boris Johnson says today in a call to arms for a more positive vision of leaving the European Union.
In an article for today’s Daily Telegraph – his first public comments since resigning as foreign secretary – Mr Johnson attacks the “lack of self-confidence, in the current debate on the EU, about whether we can do things for ourselves”.
He adds that Britons should use the 2016 referendum result to “rediscover the spirit of dynamism” of the Victorian age and “go back out into the world in a way that we had perhaps forgotten”. Britain should “militate ceaselessly for free trade deals” after Brexit, he adds.
Mr Johnson resigned a week ago along with David Davis, then Brexit secretary, in protest at the Prime Minister’s plans for Brexit which have sparked outrage among Eurosceptic MPS, who fear they will tie Britain to Brussels rules and dictats indefinitely. Donald Trump last week expressed scepticism over a potential US-UK trade deal in the wake of the proposals.
In the next 48 hours, Mrs May faces a series of crucial votes over her trade and customs policies post-brexit. Although she is expected to win the votes, the scale of the potential rebellion will help government whips to assess whether she has the parliamentary support to continue as Conservative leader.
There is growing speculation that she may force a vote of confidence if she struggles to assert her authority in the Commons this week. The Prime Minister used a live appearance on the BBC’S Andrew Marr Show yesterday to urge Eurosceptics “who voted from the heart to leave the European Union” to accept her “hard-headed and practical” deal.
But just hours later, Robert Courts, an unpaid ministerial aide at the Foreign Office, quit. He said the Chequers deal meant he could not look himself in the mirror if he stayed on in government.
In today’s column – his first since rejoining the Daily Telegraph after two years in office – Mr Johnson does not criticise the Prime Minister or her policies directly. However, in a return to the positive rhetoric of the Leave campaign, he urges Britons to find their “self-confidence” for when Britain finally leaves the EU in March next year.
He says that it is time “for all of us – at this critical moment in our constitutional development – to believe in ourselves, to believe in the British people and what they can do, and in our democracy”.
Mr Johnson describes how “the elites of the world” he encountered on his travels are “utterly amazed at the nonsense you read in some sections of the media, the lack of self-confidence, in the current debate on the EU, about whether we can do things for ourselves”.
“They see a first-rate military power, one of the few capable of projecting force 8,000 miles,” he writes. “They see by far the most innovative economy in Europe; the tech capital of the hemisphere; the greatest financial centre; a