Boris Johnson’s belting speech gave hope to millennials, businesses and delivered a devastating attack on Theresa May’s Chequers plan
A Boris belter
Love him or loathe him, Boris Johnson is our most charismatic politician and by far the best orator.
Yesterday’s speech was electrifying and its argument hard to fault.
Last week a tedious line-up of droning Labour no-marks painted the bleakest possible picture of Britain. This week Tory ministers have delivered worthy but dull speeches to a half-empty hall.
Boris’s event had a two-hour queue. It was packed. And what he said stirred the blood of Tories and Leave voters — who stood, whooped and cheered.
He dismantled Corbyn’s “Tony Benn tribute act” and implored Tories to stand up confidently for THEIR values, not timidly ape Labour’s with more tax and suffocating state interference.
Taxes, he said, should be lower, not higher. Are you listening, Chancellor?
Boris rightly said affordable homes are the key to millennial hearts and to beating socialism again. That only the Tories will back businesses, “grafters, innovators and entrepreneurs” since Corbyn simply has no interest in them.
But the ex-Foreign Secretary’s attack on Theresa May’s Chequers offer to the EU was devastating.
All along, Brussels has focused on hobbling post-Brexit Britain as an independent trading nation.
Chequers, Boris argued, lets them. It doesn’t “take back control” of our £2trillion economy. It hands it to the EU for ever.
That is even before Mrs May’s latest reported compromise, to stick to EU rules on goods indefinitely and all but end the chance of new trade deals.
What happened to the Prime Minister who stood defiant just a fortnight ago?
At this historic moment, Boris said, we must get Brexit right — and right now. A simple Canada-style free trade deal is the way, he says, not a Remainers’ charter cooked up in Downing Street.
Trouble is, neither has the votes to pass through the Commons. But the Tories shortly have to back one, or their self-destruction could gift Britain to the Marxists. And if that deal fails to meaningfully fulfil the Leave vote — with total control of our borders, laws, money AND trade — they are dead anyway.
So Mrs May has a huge speech today.
She must tell the country exactly why sticking with Chequers, her bewilderingly convoluted proposal rejected by the EU and seemingly hated by everyone outside No10, is our best option.
We’re all ears.
Migrant moan
SURPRISE, surprise. The CBI hates Sajid Javid’s curbs on immigration post-Brexit.
Could this be because an unrestricted flow of cheap unskilled EU labour maximises profits for big businesses (while depressing Brits’ pay and putting intolerable strain on public services)?
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The Home Secretary’s plan works for us. No free movement, a level playing field for EU and non-EU arrivals, and a new focus on skilled workers except where the economy’s needs dictate.
If numbers then fall, what’s not to like?