Jeremy Hunt says ‘I’ve been waiting for this moment for all my life’ as he channels Phil Collins in PM bid
JEREMY Hunt has channelled Phil Collins in his bid to be Britain’s next prime minster, saying: “I have been waiting for this moment for 30 years of my life”.
In an interview with the BBC, he also said Britain’s next prime minister should be trustworthy and able to deliver an improved Brexit deal, or would risk letting Jeremy Corbyn into Number Ten.
The foreign secretary was speaking amid the race for the Tory leadership between himself and Boris Johnson, with the winner set to replace Theresa May as prime minister on July 24.
He went on to acknowledge that the deals he and Johnson were aiming to negotiate very similar deals with the European Union, but added that the ability to do so would be “about the personality of the prime minister”.
Theresa May negotiated a deal that would have seen Britain leave the European Union earlier this year, but failed to persuade enough MPs to back the agreement to get it through parliament.
Hunt said he believed that a better deal could still be negotiated, and that he was the best person to do it.
“We’ve had a lot of discussion about how, but we need to have more of a discussion about who,” he said.
The UK is currently scheduled to leave the EU on October 31, after an extension to the original March deadline was granted, and Johnson has pledged to leave on that date come what may.
But Hunt said the date was a “fake deadline”, and said that sticking too rigorously to it could “trip us into a general election and hand the keys to Jeremy Corbyn and we will have no Brexit at all”.
He said that he would not pursue a no-deal Brexit while a prospect of a better deal remained, adding that he believed the UK government would “know very soon, well before October 31” whether a new deal could be negotiated.
WAITING ALL MY LIFE
In The Air Tonight was a 1980 hit for Genesis singer and drummer Phil Collins.
The song was the lead single on Collins’s debut solo album Face Value.
It remains his best-known song, and was famoulsy the backing of a 2007 Cadbury chocloate advert featuring a gorilla playing the drums.
Its chorus runs:
And I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord /
Well I’ve been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord /
I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord /
Well I’ve been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord, oh Lord.
Both men have wanted the top job for a long time, and have engaged in a war of words of late.
On Monday, Hunt dubbed Johnson a “coward” for refusing to confirm whether he would take part in further televised debates, while the front runner’s campaign said the foreign secretary should avoid “personal abuse”.
Asked by the BBC whether he meant to imply that Boris Johnson was untrustworthy, he said: “No, I’m saying I am trustworthy and I believe that I can be trusted to deliver that deal.
He added that if Mr Johnson became prime minister he would serve him to the “best of my ability” and that he hoped Mr Johnson “would do the same as me”.
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