Boris the human bulldozer has triumphantly freed us from the EU. Now he must use the same iron will to free us from the tyranny of lockdowns

FEW Prime Ministers actually manage to change the countries they govern. In the past 80 years, only Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee, Margaret Thatcher, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair could claim to have done so – Wilson and Blair very much for the worse.

Now, thanks to his achievement of a negotiated departure from the EU, Boris Johnson joins that number, and in this case the change is definitely for the better. Having won a majority that fashionable opinion said was unattainable, he has once again pulled off what almost everyone said was impossible. Four days from now, Britain will be a fully independent country again, for the first time in almost half a century.

To see what a triumph this is, just remember the awful Groundhog Days of Theresa May’s Government, month after month of futile circling and failed talks, as foolish people, who could not accept the democratic verdict, childishly refused to grant the loser’s consent which is at the heart of our democracy.

Like a human bulldozer, Mr Johnson has shoved those obstacles aside, in his own party, in Parliament, in the Civil Service and finally in the gruelling battle to get the EU to see that he meant what he said – and would walk away with No Deal if he could not get a good deal.

He had to risk some rough actions to establish this, but in doing so he was following the example of Germany’s famed Iron Chancellor, the supreme realist Otto von Bismarck, who said that in dealing with a gentleman, he would be a gentleman and a half – but in dealing with a pirate, he would be a pirate and a half.

The silly self-interested manoeuvres of France’s President Macron, eventually pushed to one side by the EU’s Ursula von der Leyen, came close to piracy and needed to be combated by Mr Johnson’s total determination. He did what every hard and successful Yorkshire businessman knows how to do (but few politicians understand or can manage). He held on, unblinking, unflinching, till the other side gave way.

Others deserve great credit, especially chief negotiator Lord Frost, an astute bargainer who refused to concede the initiative, and turned his negotiators into a united, determined team. They affirmed their solidarity by wearing Union Jack badges in the talks and so signalled to their opposite numbers that they were the representatives of a sovereign nation, immovable from their settled purpose. In a time when so many acquire titles and decorations for little or nothing, it is good to see someone honoured who truly deserves it. His colleague Oliver ‘Sonic’ Lewis also deserves much credit, for fighting off key EU demands with great technical skill.

Now the abiding question is what this country does with the vast and significant freedoms it has regained at such cost and after such a long struggle. Of course it will be good to have our own sovereign Parliament and courts again, and not to be compelled to fly the flag of another power at our embassies abroad. But the hard practical liberty that this has given to our economy will be the most immediate effect.

Our entrepreneurial spirit has always been great – look at the determination of our small businesses, which even during the miseries of lockdown have used every inch of available freedom to stay above water, turning inventively to ‘click and collect’ and takeaway services to keep themselves in business.

Enterprise, large and small, is something we know how to do at home and abroad, and it is how we will pay for our future – and sustain and expand our freedom and prosperity in these uncertain times.

Which is why Mr Johnson needs to turn his determination and attention to another fight

‘The PM held on, unblinking and unflinching, till the other side gave way’

‘Macron’s silly, self-interested manoeuvres came close to piracy and they needed to be combated’

‘Imagine the pure joy when the trappings of lockdown are laid aside’

for freedom – the battle to release us from shutdown and restriction. These restrictions, costly, miserable and a drag on the enterprise we need so much, must end soon. If they do not, they will be harder and harder to enforce and will do less and less good.

And there is one way out, through the anti-Covid vaccines that this country has developed and pioneered. Significantly we are already vaccinating by the tens of thousands while the sclerotic EU (held as always to the speed of the slowest by its cumbersome rules) has hardly begun to get going on its inoculation programme.

Our immunisation campaign can, and must, now be reinforced and accelerated, so that in the cming few months we protect the vulnerable in their millions. By targeting those groups in society who are most at risk from the coronavirus, we can enormously reduce the danger that our hospitals will be hit by a concentrated wave of dangerous infections.

The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is likely to be approved imminently and come on stream alongside the Pfizer jab, greatly increasing the number who can be treated. If this is pursued with proper energy, it will not be long before the main argument for shutdown – the need to protect the NHS against being overwhelmed – will simply cease to apply.

And just imagine the delight, relief and pure joy as the loathed trappings of lockdown, from screens and masks to the

relentless badgering of health propaganda, are laid aside, our stifled freedoms to live normally, to hug and be hugged, to mix freely, to entertain and be entertained, to leave our homes without restriction, are restored – and we put this miserable era of fear and apprehension behind us.

This is, after all, a time of year when we are supposed to be hopeful. We have, on this occasion, justified reasons for hope and they have come together in one good moment.

Not only have we at last undone what most now recognise to have been a historic mistake – the discredited and outdated 1960s belief that, having lost an empire, we needed to dissolve ourselves in the Brussels superstate.

As for the virus, we are also on the brink of escaping from its bonds, having borne it with patience and stoicism but now facing restrictions which grow daily more oppressive and intolerable.

Boris Johnson has shown that he can shoulder his way through obstacles that others thought could not be shifted or bypassed – through Labour’s vaunted ‘Red Wall’ of supposedly impregnable parliamentary seats; through the EU’s refusal to believe that anyone would actually have the nerve to refuse its sticky embrace.

And now he can do the same to the Covid misery. In the strong hope that he will swiftly and resolutely do so, once again brushing aside naysayers, pessimists and doubters, we wish both him and you, our readers, a happy, liberated New Year, free of oppressions and limits, from whatever direction.