Boris must be bold to deliver on Brexit, says ANN WIDDECOMBE
BORIS Johnson can say thank you to Nigel Farage for the size of his majority.
Election 2019: Conservative MPs say they will 'get Brexit done'
By standing down in all the Tory seats we eliminated the risk in their marginals and kept the Lib Dems at bay. In seat after seat in the North and Midlands, the Brexit Party drew off Labour votes and the Conservatives crossed the line with fewer votes than we had taken. Yet if only the Tories had agreed to a pact at the start, their majority might have been bigger still, as we would have then stood down in marginal seats which they might have won.
Of course Boris won’t actually say thank you because he and Dominic Cummings have far too great a sense of self-entitlement but other, more grateful, Conservatives are saying it sotto voce.
It is now crucial Boris uses that huge majority to deliver a real Brexit. Already the EU has made noises about how he will need to deliver a softer Brexit in order to get a free trade deal.
He should say that if that is their stance then negotiations are pointless and Britain will leave on WTO terms at the end of next year.
For some reason which I cannot fathom he has refused to guarantee that Britain will not be part of the European Defence Union after Brexit. That is not acceptable either for the future of defence industries in this country (the EU has said it wants a single contractor for procurement) or for our continued participation in Nato.
The EU is worried about having a competitor on its doorstep but that is exactly what Brexit should allow us to be. Otherwise, Prime Minister, it is not Brexit. The last time the Tories had a majority of this size their government was bold. This one must be too. There should be a proper debate about the future shape of the NHS.
We need rigour in education, long-overdue measures to guarantee freedom of speech and re-direction of police time amongst much else.
Get cracking, Boris!