Boris: I need ten more years

BORIS Johnson wants another decade in power as he aims to beat Margaret Thatcher’s term in office, it has been claimed.

The Prime Minister said in an interview for a new book that his ‘levelling up’ agenda would take ten years and it would benefit the South as well as the North.

He also said he was determined to avoid the ‘catastrophic’ economic failures of the past 40 years.

Mr Johnson said he would be seeking to frame the 2024 general election around Brexit, warning that Britain would ‘slump back’ into following EU laws if Labour wins.

The interview with Mr Johnson was carried out for a new book, Broken Heartlands, which is being serialised in The Times.

One Cabinet minister told the paper: ‘Boris will want to go on and on. The stuff Dom [Cummings] was saying about him going off into the sunset [to make money] was nonsense. He wants to go on for longer than Thatcher.’

Mrs Thatcher was in Downing Street for 11½ years.