I pay tribute to the fortitude and patience of my predecessor and her deep sense of public service, but in spite of all her efforts, it has become clear that there are pessimists at home and abroad who think after three years of indecision that this country has become a prisoner to the old arguments of 2016 and in this home of democracy we are incapable of honouring a democratic mandate.
And so I am standing before you today, to tell you, the British people, that those critics are wrong – the doubters, the doomsters, the gloomsters are going to get it wrong again. The people who bet against Britain are going to lose their shirts because we are going to restore trust in our democracy.”
This is characteristic Johnson bombast, of the kind his leadership rival Rory Stewart derided as “believe in the bin bags!”: because if you’re trying to shove three bags of rubbish into the dustbin, it doesn’t matter how optimistic you are about it – it won’t work.
The underlying challenges of delivering Brexit remain unchanged; but Johnson’s showing here that he hopes to overcome them with positivity. And despite the nod to Theresa May, the implication is also that his predecessor failed to attack the task with sufficient enthusiasm.
My job is to make your streets safer – and we are going to begin with another 20,000 police on the streets and we start recruiting forthwith.
My job is to make sure you don’t have to wait three weeks to see your GP, and we start work this week with 20 new hospital upgrades, and ensuring that money for the NHS really does get to the front line.
These two domestic policy promises – the first of several, which also included a pledge to fix the broken social care system – are aimed at showing that a Johnson premiership will not just be about Brexit.
He knows that while he needs to complete the job of leaving the EU to neutralise the electoral threat from Nigel Farage, other voters are far less motivated by Brexit and more interested in bread-and-butter domestic issues. There is also a clear signal here that Johnson wants to turn on the spending taps.
And I will tell you something else about my job. It is to be prime minister of the whole United Kingdom, and that means uniting our country, answering at last the plea of the forgotten people and the left-behind towns, by physically and literally renewing the ties that bind us together.
We know from his time as mayor of London that Johnson is a sucker for a high-profile construction project (even a costly non-starter such as the garden bridge).
With this odd turn of phrase, he means that he would like to see improved transport and communications infrastructure outside London. He has mentioned high-speed broadband at every opportunity during the campaign; but also bemoaned the lack of a tram system in Leeds at one event, for example.
In the end, Brexit was a fundamental decision by the British people that they wanted their laws made by people that they can elect and they can remove from office and we must now respect that decision and create a new partnership with our European friends – as warm and as close and as affectionate as possible.
Following a passage about the values represented by the British flag, this is Johnson trying to underline the argument he has made repeatedly since the referendum in 2016 – that leaving the EU need not represent a dramatic cooling of relations with Brussels.
Just as May’s “Brexit means Brexit” mantra in her early days in Downing Street was aimed at reassuring unconvinced leavers in her party, this is Johnson reminding remainers he is not a eurosceptic headbanger, but a liberal at heart.
I say to our friends in Ireland, and in Brussels and around the EU, I am convinced that we can do a deal without checks at the Irish border, because we refuse under any circumstances to have such checks and yet without that anti-democratic backstop. And it is of course vital at the same time that we prepare for the remote possibility that Brussels refuses any further to negotiate and we are forced to come out with no deal.
Johnson’s speech – and the makeup of his cabinet – was being closely scrutinised in Brussels and in EU capitals on Wednesday. There will be considerable alarm at the idea that the new prime minister is doubling down on ditching the backstop.
There had been some hope that he might opt for a more moderate approach of seeking a time-limit or some other tweak to the backstop – but this tough rhetoric appears to rule that out. Johnson also pointed out that in the event of a no-deal Brexit, the economy would benefit from the “lubrication” of the £39bn exit payment – another claim that will infuriate the EU27, since they regard much of it as the UK paying its outstanding financial obligations to the bloc, rather than a quid pro quo for a deal.
Elsewhere in his speech, Johnson said he would not make voters wait 99 days for Brexit, “because the British people have had enough of waiting” – but after setting out such an uncompromising stance, he faces a gruelling summer.
