Boris’s Britain of bridges and buses
PM plans massive building spree – and says that no achievement is beyond our reach
BORIS JOHNSON’S post- Brexit Britain will be a world of bridges, buses, building projects – and a vibrantly independent trading relationship with the rest of the globe.
The Prime Minister will tomorrow use his first speech since Britain left the EU to set out his vision for ‘unleashing Britain’s potential’ and to demand a Canada-style trade deal with the bloc which allows the UK to diverge from Brussels rules and assume a new place on the world stage.
Mr Johnson is expected to declare: ‘No achievement lies beyond our reach.’
He will argue that, finally freed from the draining psychodrama of Brexit, the Government will direct its energies to his domestic priorities – health, law and order and the turbo-charging of grand infrastructure projects.
Apart from high-profile flagship issues such as HS2 and the expansion of Heathrow, Mr Johnson is also keen to kick- start smaller projects: as London Mayor, he became personally associated with the capital’s redesigned Routemaster buses and he hopes to repeat the trick by commissioning fleets of buses in northern parts of the country that are served by slow and inefficient rail lines.
More bridges will be built to free up traffic flow – although Mr Johnson’s coveted plan to build a bridge from Northern Ireland to Scotland is unlikely to reach fruition – and up to half a million houses will be built. Under one plan being considered, the country’s 20 largest landowners would be approached to allow ten per cent of their land to be built on.
A No 10 source said: ‘If there is a river, a bridge will be built on it. Many of the Beeching cuts to rail lines will be reversed. A new fleet of Boris buses will be rolled out in the North. Housebuilding programmes will be accelerated.’
The source added: ‘All this can be done now that the gridlock in the Commons has been broken.’
Mr Johnson is also likely to make clear his anger at the EU’s insistence on alignment with its rules as the price of a deal.
The Prime Minister, who will address an audience of businesspeople and foreign ambassadors, will call on the EU to offer the
UK a Canada- style deal which restores this country’s ‘powers of self- governance’ before the end of the post-Brexit transition period in December.
The 2016 Canada deal eliminated 98 per cent of tariffs on goods, ranging from Canadian duties on clothes and medical equipment to European levies on maple syrup and car parts. It also lowered the market barriers on products such as wine and medicine.
Mr Johnson and his chief Brexit negotiator, David Frost, are said to be ‘infuriated’ by the European Union demanding continued influence over our regulations.
A Government source said: ‘There will be no alignment, no jurisdiction of the European courts and no concessions. There will be no relaxation of food hygiene, workers’ rights and environmental protections. UK standards already outstrip those of the EU in significant areas such as maternity leave, where UK mothers get over three times as much maternity leave as the minimum EU requirement.’
As a result of Brexit, the UK now sits separately from the EU on the World Trade Organisation and Mr
‘It’s all because Brexit gridlock was broken’
Johnson will make clear that he expects Britain to be ‘treated as equals’ with the EU; a ‘friendly’ relationship ‘based on free trade as sovereign equals’ which will not inhibit the UK’s ability to strike new deals with countries such as the US, New Zealand, Australia and Japan. And he will highlight how new transatlantic trading opportunities are likely to benefit
Northern cities such as Glasgow and Liverpool.
A No 10 source said: ‘The UK will now have its own place on the world stage.
‘ We will be able to turn our attention to the domestic priorities that were lost in the uncertainty and division caused by Brexit.’
DONNY EBERHID was embracing his freedom. ‘I’m liberated,’ he told me, proudly flourishing his Union flag over Parliament Square. His friend Tracey Chandler concurred. ‘Nothing was getting done. I was so angry. Then Boris came in and sorted it out.’ Britannia – not her real name – had been on a different journey. ‘I voted Remain,’ she explained, ‘but I’m here as a patriot. I believe in democracy.’
Her costume wasn’t quite as elaborate as it seemed. ‘ It’s basically just a bed sheet. Though the shield took a bit of work.’
In the background, a video was showing the road to Brexit. Nigel Farage and Boris drew enthusiastic cheers. Tony Blair got booed, as did the BBC Six O’Clock News logo. Then they played We Are The Champions. The mood was festive, party more than political rally.
Someone who wasn’t partying was Alastair Campbell. The champion of the People’s Vote campaign was presumably out drumming up support for his latest crusade – a boycott of the new 50p Brexit coins. ‘I for one shall be asking shopkeepers for two 20p pieces and a 10p if they offer me a 50p coin pretending that Brexit is about “peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations”, given it puts all three at risk,’ he announced last week.
Terry Christian also gave the festivities a miss. Hard on the heels of his description of Leave voters as ‘pitiable saps’, the Mancunian TV presenter tweeted: ‘As the zombies and xenophobes gather in Parliament Square tonight to celebrate their forthcoming poverty and job losses, I’m proud that MANCHESTER IS REMAIN.’
Lord Adonis was also conspicuous by his absence. Though earlier in the week the exLabour Minister had made his views clear in an article for The New European, headlined: ‘The case for rejoining the EU is growing – we may be back sooner than you think.’ In it, he observed: ‘We are once again, as Orwell put it, a family with the wrong members in control.’
IGET the anger and pain of the Remainers. I was once a Remainer myself. But we lost. Actually we didn’t lose. We were obliterated. Annihilated in the most catastrophic and seismic defeat in British political history. And what can’t fathom this morning is the myopic unwillingness of my former Europhile comrades to try to understand why.
The answers are right there in front of them. Take the reaction to the minting of the commemorative 50p coin. When the debate began, it was the Leavers who were caricatured as Brexit ideologues – David Cameron’s infamous ‘ fruitcakes and loonies’.
But as we leave the EU, the roles have been reversed. It is Steve Baker who is now issuing mature pleas for reconciliation, while Campbell rages against politically incorrect coinage.
Picture the scene: Blair’s former spin doctor defiantly lecturing a teenage shopworker about how the 50p coin in his hand is putting the peace and prosperity of Europe in mortal peril.
But lecturing has become the Remainers’ default setting. To be fair, few are foolish – or honest – enough to go as far as Christian in openly expressing the hope people who voted for Brexit will die soon. But his cartoonish outpourings expose a deeper reality.
The Remainers have transitioned from fearing Brexit to actively hoping Brexit will indeed prove the catalyst for national catastrophe. Their entire world view is predicated on Brexit’s failure.
The economy has to slump, then crash. The NHS and other vital public services have to collapse. Britain has to be isolated, then shunned, by the global community.
These are no longer things that fill Remainers with trepidation, but with longing. They absolutely have to be proved right. And the only way they can be proved right is through Brexit Armageddon. Because if Brexit works, the world as they know it vanishes around them. And then they have to adopt the Brexiteers’ old lament: ‘I don’t recognise my own country any more.’
The nation knows this. Everyone can now see the extent to which the hard-core anti-Brexiteers are invested in catastrophe. And they resent it. People don’t want their jobs and livelihoods and futures sacrificed just so the Remainers earn the right to say ‘I told you so’.
Over the past three and a half years, there have been many occasions when Brexit seemed an incomprehensibly complex and insoluble issue. But at its heart there has always been a single, simple truth.
After the referendum had been lost, I had a conversation with Ryan Coetzee, who worked for Remain. He told me the story of attending one of the first focus groups of the campaign. The respondents had all been telling him they would use the referendum to send a message to the politicians. He asked what that message would be. One of them – I think he said he was a fireman – looked him straight in the eyes. ‘I want respect,’ he said.
It’s never really been about trade. Or laws. Or sovereignty. Or even ‘taking back control’. It’s always been about respect. The politicians actually respecting the views of the people, rather than talking down to them. And the Remainers don’t respect the people. They have pretended to. But they have been found out. They have mouthed their mantra ‘ We must respect t he result’. And then done everything in their power to overturn it.
So again, Andrew Adonis deserves praise for his honesty. When he writes, ‘ we’re a family with the wrong members in control’, he means it. He would claim those words refer to Boris and Dominic Cummings and the rest of their evil Brexiteer cabal. But they don’t. He was talking about the people I met out in Parliament Square. The people who voted the wrong way. The wrong sort of people.
That’s why the Remainers lost. Because they proved to be just as ideologically obsessed and blinkered as their opponents. Because they had no interest in listening, only in proving they knew best. Because when they were asked to show some respect for the British people, all t hey could muster was contempt.
The nation saw all this. They saw it three and a half years ago. And they see it this morning. So the Remainers will lose again. And again. And again. And they will keep losing until they finally pause to ask themselves why it’s always the wrong sort of people who end up partying in Parliament Square.
Remainers have transitioned from fearing Brexit to actively hoping it will cause a national catastrophe