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, he hopes, 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 parts of the country outside London 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 Scotland to Northern Ireland 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 No10 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
‘It’s all because Brexit gridlock was broken’
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 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 cities outside London such as Glasgow and Liverpool.
A No10 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.’
British diplomats have been instructed to signal an immediate break with their former EU allies at international summits, it was claimed last night.
Reports said a leaked document revealed that Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has told his officials to ‘sit separately’ from their EU counterparts at the meetings and ‘adopt a stance as a confident, independent country’.