‘After the pandemic we shall build a new Jerusalem’

UK must stop relying on ‘Uncle Sugar the taxpayer’, PM says in pledge to help free enterprise flourish and have wind farms power every home

BORIS JOHNSON set out a vision of post-covid Britain in better shape than ever before as he drew inspiration from the wartime generation’s determination to build a “new Jerusalem”.

The Prime Minister said that restoring the status quo after the pandemic “isn’t good enough” and that instead the crisis should be used as an opportunity to reshape the country.

He promised to create the economic conditions for free enterprise to flourish and lead the country’s recovery, as he said relying on “Uncle Sugar the taxpayer” was the wrong approach.

Mr Johnson used his speech to the virtual Conservative party conference as an opportunity to show the Government is still working on its domestic agenda and is not completely consumed by coronavirus policymaking.

He announced a plan for more oneto- one teaching in schools, cheaper mortgages for first-time buyers and a revolution in green energy, with every home powered by wind farms by 2030.

He also appeared at odds with the Chancellor, once again, as he talked about the need for “competitive” tax rates a day after Rishi Sunak had warned of tax rises.

Mr Johnson said he had had “more than enough” of the Covid-19 pandemic and the disruption it had caused, but promised to “repel” it, “just as this country has seen off every alien invader for the last thousand years”.

The Prime Minister said the UK economy went into the pandemic with “chronic underlying problems” which he would address, including a longterm failure to tackle the skills deficit, inadequate transport infrastructure and a housing shortage that meant “far too many people across the whole country felt ignored and left out”.

He said: “We can’t now define the mission of this country as merely to restore normality, that isn’ t good enough.

“In the depths of the Second World War, in 1942 when just about everything had gone wrong, the Government sketched out a vision of the post-war new Jerusalem that they wanted to build, and that i s what we’re doing now, in the teeth of this pandemic.”

He went on: “We are resolving not to go back to 2019, but to do better: to reform our system of government, to renew our infrastructure; to spread opportunity more widely and fairly and to create the conditions for a dynamic recovery that is led not by the state but by free enterprise.”

To do so, he said, there must be economic growth, and better productivity, enabling the country to “deal with whatever the next cosmic spanner may be hurtling towards us in the dark”.

Mr Johnson said that by 2030 every home in the country would be powered by electricity from wind farms, and that people would fly in zero carbon jets, carrying “Brexit blue” passports or a digital ID, and with lorries and trains powered by hydrogen. “That is the Britain we can build,” he said. “The greatest place on Earth … even in the darkest moments we can see the bright future ahead, and we can see how to build it, and we are going to build it together.”

A free-enterprise recovery

The Covid crisis forced the Chancellor to “come up with some brilliant expedients to help business to protect jobs and livelihoods”, Mr Johnson said, “but let’s face it, he has done things that no Conservative chancellor would have wanted to do except in times of war or disaster”.

Instead, he said, “we must be clear that there comes a moment when the state must stand back and let the private sector get on with it”.

In the Labour Party, he said, “there are many who regard this state expansion as progress”, but he had “a simple message for those on the Left, who think everything can be funded by Uncle Sugar the taxpayer”.

“It isn’t the state that produces the new drugs and therapies we are using.

“It isn’t the state that will hold the intellectual property of the vaccine, if and when we get one. It wasn’t the state that made the gloves and masks and ventilators we needed at such speed.

“It was the private sector, with its rational interest in innovation and competition and market share and, yes, sales.”

Transformative teaching

Mr Johnson pledged to introduce oneto-one teaching for “exceptional” children in a move t hat would be “transformational” for learning.

He said intensive teaching had been tried during the pandemic, both for gifted children and those falling behind, and that “it is in a crisis like this that new approaches are born”.

The scheme would be an expansion of the national tutoring programme that was launched during lockdown, and Mr Johnson said it would provide “massive reassurance to parents” if it went ahead.

Turning to his long-term aim of “levelling up” the country, he said that as well as increasing per-pupil funding to £4,000 in primary and £5,000 in secondary schools, he was looking at “changes in the lives of young people”.

He said: “I want to take further an idea that we have tried in the pandemic, and explore the value of one-to-one teaching, both for pupils who are in danger of falling behind, and for those who are of exceptional abilities.

“We can all see the difficulties, but I believe such intensive teaching could be transformational, and of massive reassurance to parents.”

Downing Street later said the national tutoring programme had been paid for through the £1 billion catch-up premium during lockdown, and Mr Johnson “wanted this principle of smaller group tuition to be used more widely”.

Covid-19 restrictions

Mr Johnson defended his Government’s often controversial coronavirus restrictions, insisting there had been “simply no reasonable alternative”.

He said: “This Government has been forced by the pandemic into erosions of liberty that we deeply regret and to an expansion in the role of the state from lockdown enforcement to the many bailouts and subsidies that go against our instincts.”

He added: “I have had more than enough of this disease that attacks not only human beings but so many of the greatest things about our country: our pubs, our clubs, our football, our theatre and all the gossipy gregariousness and love of human contact that drives the creativity of our economy.”

Hero inside yourself

Mr Johnson said he had “read a lot of nonsense recently” about how his

‘He has done things that no Conservative chancellor would have wanted to do except in times of war or disaster’

battle with Covid-19, which required treatment in intensive care, “has somehow robbed me of my mojo”.

He described such reports as “selfevident drivel, the kind of seditious propaganda that you would expect from people who don’t want this Government to succeed, who wanted to stop us delivering Brexit and all our other manifesto pledges”. He added: “I can tell you that no power on Earth was and is going to do that – and I could refute these critics of my athletic abilities in any way they want: arm-wrestle, legwrestle, Cumberland wrestle, sprintoff, you name it.”

But he admitted that “the reason I had such a nasty experience with the disease is that although I was superficially in the pink of health, when I caught it I had a very common underlying condition. My friends, I was too fat. And I have since lost 26lb, and you can imagine that in bags of sugar, and I am going to continue that diet”.

Referencing the 1994 hit single by M-people, he added: “You’ve got to search for the hero inside yourself in the hope that that individual is considerably slimmer.”

Competitive tax regime

Mr Johnson praised Mr Sunak as he sought to dispel speculation about a rift between the two over the response to the coronavirus crisis, saying: “The Chancellor has come up with some brilliant expedients to help business, to protect jobs and livelihoods but, let’s face it, he has done things that no Conservative chancellor would have wanted to do except in times of war or disaster.”

But he appeared out of step with No 11, which has made it clear that tax rises are on the way to pay for the pandemic, as he said: “We must build back better by becoming more competitive, both in tax and regulation.

“We need to make this the best place to start a business, the best place to invest, and we need to unleash the urge not just to build but to own.”

Generation Buy

As the Prime Minister first revealed to The Daily Telegraph last week, he wants to encourage lenders to bring back 95 per cent mortgages to bring down the cost of deposits and turn “generation rent” into “generation buy”.

The Prime Minister said: “For most people it is still true that the overwhelming instinct is to buy.

“We believe that this policy could create t wo million more owner occupiers, the biggest expansion of home ownership since the Eighties. We want to spread that opportunity to every part of the country; and that is the difference between us Conservatives and the Labour Opposition.

“They may have million- pound homes in North London, but they deeply dislike home ownership for anyone else.

“We want to level up – they want to level down.”

Captain hindsight

No conference speech would be complete without a broadside at the Opposition, and Mr Johnson said that while the Government had taken tough decisions on Covid, Labour had “simply sniped from the sidelines”.

He said: “We are proud of this country’s culture and history and traditions; they literally want to pull statues down, to rewrite the history of our country, to edit our national CV to make it look more politically correct.

“We aren’t embarrassed to sing old songs about how Britannia rules the waves.”

He accused Labour of “secretly scheming to overturn Brexit and take us back into the EU” and described Sir Keir Starmer and his MPS as “Captain Hindsight and his regiment of pot-shot, snipeshot fusiliers”.