As liberating as getting out of jail: Yes, it's Boris on UK quitting the EU
LEAVING the EU would be as liberating as escaping from jail, Boris Johnson has said.
The London Mayor yesterday ridiculed David Cameron for warning of Brexit ‘terrors’ and insisted Britain could have a ‘wonderful’ future as an independent nation.
He also revealed Government lawyers had blocked plans for a law enshrining the sovereignty of Parliament over EU diktats.
This was the final straw that persuaded him to back the Out campaign, he said, adding that the Prime Minister failed to achieve the ‘fundamental reform’ he had promised.
Mr Johnson told the BBC’s Andrew Marr that British officials had developed ‘Stockholm syndrome’ – the phenomenon where people held in long-term captivity sometimes end up siding with their captors.
Criticising the scaremongering tactics of the In campaign, he said: ‘This is like the jailer has accidentally left the door of the jail open and people can see the sunlit land beyond.
‘And everybody is suddenly wrangling about the terrors of the world outside.
‘Actually, it would be wonderful. It would be a huge weight lifted from British business.’ Mr Johnson put regaining sovereignty at the centre of his argument, claiming that the loss of control to Brussels had become ‘injurious to government in this country’.
Revealing how Government lawyers had blocked plans for legislation on the matter, he said: ‘In the days leading up to that [EU] summit, there was a huge effort … to make sense of the socalled sovereignty clauses … creating this language by which we could somehow ensure our courts, our Supreme Court, our House of Commons, could overturn judgments at the European Court of Justice … Finally, we had some language that seemed to have some bite, that seemed to work … It went back to the Government lawyers and they said this basically voids our obligations under the 1972 European Communities Act … We cannot express the sovereignty of Parliament and accept the 1972 European Communities Act. There is no way of doing both at the same time.’
Asked if this was the tipping point in his referendum decision, Mr Johnson said: ‘Yes. We were told there was going to be fundamental reform. We didn’t achieve that. I think the lesson of the
whole business has been [that] reform is not achievable.’
But he was unclear about whether he wanted Britain to continue with full access to the EU’s single market, or would be happy with a looser trade deal. He accused Mr Marr of spouting ‘BBC claptrap’ when the presenter claimed the single market was an area of ‘complete free trade’.
Mr Johnson pointed out that the single market sets down rules for trade in different areas and said the ratchet effect of EU laws meant further political integration would inevitably follow if Britain stays in the EU.
He added that there could be no vote for the status quo ‘because the single market is changing and the project now is to rescue the euro by creating an ever denser series of political arrangements’.
Mr Johnson also appeared to suggest some jobs could be lost during the transition that followed a Brexit vote. But he suggested this would be more than compensated by the ability to strike trade deals with fast-growing parts of the world.
A Cabinet source said: ‘It is painfully clear the Leave campaign can’t explain what Brexit would look like. They are heaping confusion on confusion.’
Mr Johnson claimed EU rules had prevented him banning potentially unsafe lorries from London. He also said Stockholm syndrome led UK officials to interpret an EU transport directive as a demand that tunnels for the capital’s Crossrail project be expanded to allow for German trains.
‘Such is the Stockholm syndrome capture in this country [ officials] decided to interpret the directive on interoperability of trans-European networks in such a way as to say Cross Rail tunnels had to be 50 per cent bigger in order to accommodate German trains,’ he said. ‘That would have cost billions and we had to spend literally a year trying to fend off that demand.
‘Second, it was absolutely horrific to be told that there was nothing I could do as mayor, there was nothing the secretary of state for transport could do, to ensure that we had safer tipper trucks on the streets of London.’