After victory, Johnson pledges Brexit and more
Brexit will happen, Prime Minister Boris Johnson vowed as he started his postelection era, adding that improving public health care was the nation’s top priority.
“We will get Brexit done on time on the 31st of January — no ifs, no buts, no maybes,” Johnson told a gathering of his supporters early Friday morning.
Hours later, after being formally asked by Queen Elizabeth II to form a new government, Johnson made the traditional speech to the nation outside No. 10 Downing St., beginning with a claim that Conservatives had “an overwhelming mandate from this election to get Brexit done.”
But he followed with a pitch that Labour politicians had made the core of their campaign: the government must improve the cherished but much-diminished National Health Service.
Labour candidates had warned that the Conservatives would harm care by privatizing parts of the health service and striking a trade deal with President Donald Trump that would raise drug prices.
Johnson repeated his big-spending campaign promises to hire thousands of doctors and tens of thousands of nurses and police officers, to build new hospitals, and create “better infrastructure, better education, better technology.”
Striking a conciliatory tone, he said, “we are going to unite and level up” all parts of the country.
With all districts declared, Johnson’s Conservatives had won 365 seats — 48 more than they won in the last election, in 2017.
The victory is the party’s biggest since Margaret Thatcher captured a third term in 1987 — “literally before many of you were born,” Johnson told supporters Friday morning. It gives him a comfortable majority in the 650-seat House of Commons.
Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party had to reach even further back to find a more extreme result. It won 203 seats, down 59 from the previous vote, in its worst showing since 1935. It had not suffered a similar drubbing since 1983, when it took 209 seats.
The Scottish National Party captured 48 of Scotland’s 59 seats, a gain of 13. The Liberal Democrats, who were hoping to ride an anti-Brexit stance back to prominence, won just 11 seats, one fewer than in 2017.