Boris Johnson Brexit speech - as it happened: Foreign Secretary seeks to woo remainers but key address light on detail
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Boris Johnson has warned that reversing the 2016 referendum result will be a “disastrous mistake” as he set out his vision for Brexit in a major speech.
In an attempt to reach out to pro-Europeans in Britain, Mr Johnson, a prominent Leave campaigner, added in his speech: “It is not good enough to say to Remainers – you lost, get over it; because we must accept that many are actuated by entirely noble sentiments.”
During the speech he also left open the option of resigning from the Cabinet if he fails to get the clean break Brexit he is demanding.
Asked to guarantee he would not walk out - if his senior colleagues decide to keep close alignment with EU regulations, in a long-term trading deal – the Foreign Secretary ducked the question.
Instead, he said only: “We are all very luck to serve. And I am certainly one of those.”
The comment came at the end of a major speech in which Mr Johnson said it would be “intolerable and undemocratic” if Britain had to follow EU laws over which it had no say.
Q: Will you guarantee not to resign from Cabinet (if doesn’t get what he wants on alignment)?
BJ: “We are all vey luck to serve. And I am certainly one of those”
In response to Boris Johnson's speech Eloise Todd CEO of the anti-Brexit organisation Best for Britain said:
“Bungling Boris can ruffle his hair and conjure any argument he wants but the facts do not change - this Brexit is not liberal - in any shape or form. Boris might seem himself as liberal but this is not and there is no debate about it.
"Boris won his campaign by offering to cut immigration and to boost spending the NHS. It is deeply cynical to try and re-frame his Brexit disaster as liberal.
"Usually people hope to be swept off their feet on Valentine’s day but this speech was a Valentine's day disaster.
"The only thing Boris wants on Valentine's is the love of the Tory party.
"Liberalism is freedom and free trade but not the kind espoused by Boris today, who is supposed to be the man in charge of protecting our interests abroad: instead he is the architect destroying our economy and our reputation all for his own political gain."
Tory MP Sarah Wollaston on Boris Johnson's speech: "Nor will global Britain be advanced by a vision of exporting stag parties or innuendo about visitors to Thailand."
Asked for his response to Mr Johnson saying he wanted to create a superstate, Jean Claude Juncker said: "Some in the British political society are against the truth, pretending that I am a stupid, stubborn federalist, that I am in favour of a European superstate.
"I am strictly against a European superstate. We are not the United States of America, we are the European Union, which is a rich body because we have these 27, or 28, nations.
"The European Union cannot be built against the European nations, so this is total nonsense."
Commenting, Chuka Umunna MP, leading supporter of Open Britain, said:
“This was an astonishing exercise in hypocrisy from Boris Johnson. His vision of Brexit may be many things, but it is not liberal.
“His plan would see Britain sever trade ties with our largest trading partner, weaken protections for workers, consumers and the environment, and jeopardise the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, a subject he didn't even bother to mention.
“The scaremongering, mistruths, lack of detail and utter disregard for the economic realities of Brexit were an alarming throwback to the referendum campaign. More than 18 months since the referendum, this was simply more of the same Project Fantasy.
“He lectures others about betrayal, yet he is unrepentant about the lies he has peddled, be it on how Brexit will deliver £350m extra a week for the NHS, the ridiculous claim that Turkey was joining the European Union, or the assertion that Britain would immediately start negotiating new trade deals with countries around the world when there have been none.”
On Boris's speech, Lord Adonis, a supporter of the Best for Britain organisation, who resigned from the Government's infrastructure commission at the end of 2017, said:
“This speech failed on its own terms. Mr. Johnson claims that he wants to reassure us that there is a plan for Brexit and that we can indeed have our cake and eat it.
"But what he has shown, with his offensively content-free ramblings, is what a mess he and his Government have made. They are no closer to outlining a real vision for Britain and so we continue to be passengers, trapped in the back of a driverless car as it careers towards a cliff edge - no amount of optimistic assertions and risqué jokes change that.
"Characteristically, the most revealing segment of today’s Johnson spectacle came when the Foreign Secretary was speaking about himself. Johnson's refusal to deny that he would resign should he be thwarted in his ambitions for Brexit is just more juvenile game playing. In fact he should resign now because after more than a year as Foreign Secretary he has yet to demonstrate any understanding of Britain’s place in the world or of our relationships with our friends and neighbours. For as long as he remains in post, the joke, I’m afraid, is on all of us.”
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