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Brexit: Boris Johnson arrives at Tory conference for speech – live news
Brexit: Boris Johnson warns of 'grave consequences for trust in democracy' in conference speech – live news
(32 minutes later)
Johnson says he has been PM for only 70 days.
Johnson turns this into an argument about confidence.
But he has seen so many things that have given him hope.
I do not for one moment doubt the patriotism of people on all sides of this Brexit argument but I am fed up with being told that our country can’t do something
I have seen so many things that give cause for hope
when I believe passionately that it can
hospitals that are finally getting the investment to match the devotion of the staff
thanks to British technology there is a place in Oxfordshire that could soon be the hottest place in the solar system
schools where standards of reading are rising through the use of synthetic phonics
the tokamak fusion reactor in Culham
police colleges where idealistic young men and women are enrolling in large numbers to fight crime across the country
and if you go there you will learn that this country has a global lead in fusion research
shipyards in Scotland that are building superb modern type 26 frigates for sale around the world –
and that they are on the verge of creating commercially viable miniature fusion reactors for sale around the world
and every one of those high wage high skill jobs in shipbuilding is a testament to the benefits of belonging to the United Kingdom
delivering virtually unlimited zero-carbon power
Boris Johnson starts.
now I know they have been on the verge for some time
He says he thinks some members may have been “peppered with abuse” as they arrived.
it is a pretty spacious kind of verge
If they were, they should not worry. Conservatives are not abashed by that, he says.
but remember it was only a few years ago when people were saying that solar power would never work in cloudy old Britain
He starts with a tribute to his predecessor, Theresa May. The party will continue with her work tackling domestic violence and modern slavery.
and that wind turbines would not pull the skin off a rice pudding
Boris Johnson is arriving in the hall, shaking hands as he heads towards the stage, including shaking hands with members of his cabinet.
well there are some days when wind and solar are delivering more than half our energy needs
The lights are down, and a video is now being played. It has featured a baby and a puppy, among other things. There is a recording of Boris Johnson talking about taking first steps, in relation to Brexit.
we can do it
He says the Tories will restore trust in democracy, and get Brexit done.
we can beat the sceptics
Here is an extract from Boris Johnson’s speech released overnight.
Johnson says he wants to get more young people on the housing ladder. He urges Tories to back Shaun Bailey, the party’s candidate for London mayor.
Voters are desperate for us to focus on their other priorities - what people want, what leavers want, what remainers want, what the whole world wants – is to move on.
And he turns to technology.
That is why we are coming out of the EU on October 31. Let’s get Brexit done -- we can, we must and we will.
In the West Midlands we are seeing a 21st-century industrial revolution in battery technology. One in five of the electric cars sold in Europe is now made in the UK and that is before we have begun Andy Street’s vision of a West Midlands metro.
Corbyn wants to turn the whole of 2020 – which should be a great year for this country – into the chaos and cacophony of two more referendums - a second referendum on Scottish independence, even though the people of Scotland were promised that the 2014 vote would be a once in a generation vote, and a second referendum on the EU, even though we were promised that the 2016 vote would be a once in a generation vote.
With infrastructure education and technology we will drive up the productivity of this country and bring it together.
Can you imagine another three years of this? That is the Corbyn agenda – stay in the EU beyond October 31, paying a billion pounds a month for the privilege, followed by years of uncertainty for business and everyone else.
Johnson says he wants to expand superfast broadband for the same reason.
My friends, I am afraid that after three and a half years people are beginning to feel that they are being taken for fools. They are beginning to suspect that there are forces in this country that simply don’t want Brexit delivered at all. And if they turn out to be right in that suspicion then I believe there will be grave consequences for trust in democracy.
And it is for exactly the same reason – to increase connectivity and liveability - that we are putting in gigabit broadband, spreading across the country like tendrils of superinformative vermicelli.
Let’s get Brexit done on October 31 so in 2020 our country can move on.
Because that is the way to unite the country, to spread opportunity, to bring the country together.
Boris Johnson will be addressing the Tory conference shortly.
Johnson says the government will invest in youth services and in education. Education funding is being levelled up.
Cabinet ministers have been coming into the hall to take their seats.
The government will invest in transport, he says. And he turns to buses. (See 8.46am.)
In an interview with Emma Barnett on Radio 5 Live Liz Truss, the international trade secretary, said that if the UK did not agree a Brexit deal with the EU, it would leave on 31 October anyway.
And yes I admit I am a bit of a bus nut. I confess that I like to make and paint inexact models of buses with happy passengers inside.
Asked how that would be possible given that the Benn Act requires the PM to request an extension in these circumstance, Truss admitted that she did now know. She said:
But it is not just because i am a bus nut that we want to expand bus transport with clean, green buses and contactless payment by card or phone.
I don’t know the precise details of exactly what we will do, and even if I did I wouldn’t tell you.
a good bus service can make all the difference to your job. To your life. To your ability to get to the doctor. To the liveability of your town or your village. And to your ability to stay there and have a family there and start a business there.
Arlene Foster, the DUP leader, has signalled that she is content with the Brexit plans drawn up by Boris Johnson. Speaking to the BBC, she declined to say if she had seen the proposals in detail. But she continued:
Back in Manchester, Johnson says to spread opportunity the government must keep people safe.
What we are doing with his prime minister is working very closely with him and we will continue to work closely with him over the next couple of hours and days, and I hope we do get a deal that is acceptable to the European Union and one that is good for the whole of the United Kingdom.
We are committing now to rolling up the evil county lines drugs gangs that predate on young kids and send them to die in the streets to feed the cocaine habits of the bourgeoisie and we will succeed.
What people need to remember is after the withdrawal agreement and the backstop came out, what was happening was Northern Ireland was going to be in a different customs union, we were going to be in separate regulations without any democratic say.
And yes, we will be tough on crime. We will make sure that the police have the legal powers and the political backing to use stop and search because it may be controversial. But believe me that when a young man is going equipped with a bladed weapon there is nothing kinder or more loving or more life-saving you can do than ask him to turn out his pockets.
I think it is important that we now try and get a deal that is good for Northern Ireland as well as the rest of the UK.
If you want to watch PMQs, there is a live feed here:
The backstop has always been identified as the huge stumbling block. Let’s fix it and let’s get a deal.
Johnson says London is a model for a place with “dynamic enterprise culture and great public services”.
At the Conservative party conference, Alister Jack, the Scottish secretary, has described suggestions that a no-deal Brexit would lead to severe delays at cross-channel ports as “absolute nonsense”. Responding to a question during a Q&A session a few minutes ago, he said:
Johnson says the Tories must speak up for capitalism.
I don’t subscribe to this theory that very much different is going to happen. I think the ports will all continue to flow much as they do now, to be honest. The idea that suddenly we’re not going to get medicines in, or all these other ridiculous scaremongering stories – I can’t see why.
How we are going to grow the UK economy. I will tell you that it is by raising the productivity of the whole of the UK not with socialism, not with deranged and ruinous plans borrowed from the playbook of Bolivarian revolutionary Venezuela, but by creating the economic platform for dynamic free-market capitalism.
Hauliers have to finance their trucks and pay for them. That means the wheels have to keep turning. Ferry companies have to finance their ferries. The ferries keep flowing. The ports employ people. They need the income from traffic going through the ports. This idea everything is going to seize up, and there’s going to be a disaster, especially in the event of a no-deal Brexit, I think is absolute nonsense. Business will find a way through.
Yes, you heard it right – capitalism – and when did you last hear a Tory leader talk about capitalism?
Tory members applauded him warmly.
We are the party of the NHS precisely because we are the party of capitalism.
Jack’s comment did not take account of the fact that his own government has spent billions preparing for a no-deal Brexit, with the Department for Transport making plans to spend up to £300m on freight capacity to compensate for possible gridlock at cross-Channel ports. It also did not square with what the chief executive of the port of Dover told a conference fringe meeting yesterday about how, based on the government’s own assessment of how a no-deal Brexit would disrupt traffic at the port, Dover would lose trade worth £1bn a week for some months.
Johnson says the Tories “are the party of the NHS”.
Jack is MP for Dumfries and Galloway, which includes the port of Cairnryan. He said he hoped it would have more trade with Ireland going through it after Brexit.
In the next 10 years we will build 40 new hospitals in the biggest investment in hospital infrastructure for a generation. Because after 70 years of the existence of the NHS – 44 of them under a Conservative government – it is time for us to say loud and clear …
In his speech to the Tory conference, Julian Smith, the Northern Ireland secretary, announced some growth deal funding for Northern Ireland. He said:
We are the party of the NHS.
This morning I announced that the people and businesses of Mid-South West Northern Ireland and Causeway Coast and Glens will benefit from £163m of UK government funding, supporting economic growth, job creation and investment in local projects. This means that every part of Northern Ireland now benefits from growth deal funding.
Johnson makes the case for building and refurbishing hospitals.
His speech hardly mentioned Brexit.
On Monday I went to the North Manchester general hospital and I saw the incredible work they are doing with reconstructive maxillo-facial surgery on people who only a decade ago would have been permanently disfigured by their traumas and for whom hope and confidence is so important.
These are from RTE’s Europe editor, Tony Connelly.
I talked to the patients and every one of them was bursting with praise for the staff and their energy and devotion, but, conference, that fantastic hospital was built in 1876 to serve the workhouse.
Here's the choreography of the day's events from Brussels: The European Commission is expecting to receive the UK proposals later this morning, around the time of Boris Johnson's speech. There may be confirmation during the Commission's daily midday briefing to journalists
We were walking down long, narrow Nightingale wards that were designed by the pioneer of nursing, and, as one of the managers told me, that asking those professionals to work in that environment is like asking a Premiership footballer to play on a ploughed field.
2/ David Frost, the UK's chief negotiator, will meet members of the Commission's Article 50 Task Force this afternoon to formally present the text, and to have technical discussions.
And so I was proud to tell them under this government we will totally rebuild that hospital.
3/ Michel Barnier, the EU's chief negotiator, will later then brief Brexit coordinators, ie diplomats from 27 EU member states, on the UK paper. He will also brief the European Parliament's Brexit Steering Group. EU27 Ambassadors will also assess the text.
Johnson says the values he learned from his mother are embodied in the NHS.
4/ On the basis of the feedback and direction from member states and the European Parliament, Michel Barnier and Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker will make a call as to whether the paper is the basis for intense negotiations over the coming days...
The NHS is holy to the people of this country because of the simple beauty of its principle that it doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from, but when you are sick the whole country figuratively gathers at your bedside and does everything it can to make you well again and everybody pays to ensure that you have the best doctors and the best nurses and the most effective treatments known to medical science.
5/ ...or if they fall too far short of the EU's demands that the paper meets the same objectives as the original backstop. "We're not going to sit in a room for nothing," says one EU source. "But both options are conceivable."
And after 70 years the results are – on the whole –amazing. When I was a kid the word cancer was a death knell and heart attack was a terrifying thought. Well, we are slowly defeating the legions of disease.
6/ However, Brussels is urging caution. "We will wait to see what is in the actual text. We will listen to the UK side."
This country has seen the fastest falls in breast cancer in Europe
Section 10 of the European Union Withdrawal Act 2018 – which prohibits any “border arrangements” between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland – will cause a problem for the government’s latest Brexit plan, the businesswoman and legal campaigner Gina Miller has warned.
Johnson turns to his family.
Speaking at a breakfast meeting at the London law firm Bird & Bird, Miller said there could be many more “legal twists and turns” before the Brexit crisis is resolved.
You are entitled to ask yourselves about my core principles and the ideals that drive me and are going to drive me as your prime minister.
Quoting from section 10 of the act, Miller – who has won two landmark cases at the supreme court against the government – said it could prove a problem for the government.
I am going to follow the example of my friend Saj. I am going to quote that supreme authority in my family -– my mother (and by the way for keen students of the divisions in my family you might know that I have kept the ace up my sleeve – my mother voted leave).
Section 10 outlaws anything that would “diminish any form of north-south cooperation provided for by the Belfast agreement (as defined by section 98 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998)”.
He says he learnt important lessons from his mother.
It also bans any move to “create or facilitate border arrangements between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland after exit day which feature physical infrastructure, including border posts, or checks and controls, that did not exist before exit day and are not in accordance with an agreement between the United Kingdom and the EU.” It has been raised in Northern Ireland Brexit court cases.
My mother taught me to believe strongly in the equal importance, the equal dignity, the equal worth of every human being on the planet and that may sound banal but it is not.
Miller also revealed she is frequently approached by EU citizens who thank her for her legal cases but tell her: ‘Goodbye. I’m leaving. We have been here for 20 years but because we don’t have the right papers for filling out a complicated process, [we’re off].’ Miller added:
Johnson says if the EU does not accept his offer, the alternative will be a no-deal Brexit.
I’m absolutely disgusted that this is something that parliament, which I had fought so hard to come back, has not been talking about. We must stop these divisions.
And I hope very much that our friends understand that and compromise in their turn. Because if we fail to get an agreement because of what is essentially a technical discussion of the exact nature of future customs checks, when that technology is improving the whole time, then let us be in no doubt that the alternative is no deal.
Boris Johnson’s final “take it or leave it” Brexit offer to Brussels is in danger of being dead on arrival after it was rounded on by government and opposition parties in Ireland, my colleagues Lisa O’Carroll and Daniel Boffey report.
That is not an outcome we want. It is not an outcome we seek at all. But let me tell you this, conference, it is an outcome for which we are ready.
Irish officials dismiss Boris Johnson’s Brexit offer as 'unacceptable'
Johnson says he is tabling Brexit plans in Brussels.
Philippe Lamberts, co-leader of the Greens-European Free Alliance in the European parliament and a member of the parliament’s Brexit steering group, told Sky News that the EU had yet to see what the UK was offering, but that he was worried by the government’s claim it was a “take it or leave it” offer.
Today in Brussels we are tabling what I believe are constructive and reasonable proposals
He said he saw “major problems” in the plans as leaked to the Telegraph. He said:
Which provide a compromise for both sides
The British government cannot seriously expect us to basically destroy the single market. That is what would happen if for instance, as Stephen Barclay [the Brexit secretary] suggested, we should keep a 500km border open into the single market.
We will under no circumstances have checks at or near the border in Northern Ireland
He also said he did not think Boris Johnson was committed to getting a deal anyway. He explained:
We will respect the peace process and the Good Friday agreement
My sense, but it is only my guess, is that what he is seeking is a no-deal Brexit, but with the ability of putting the blame on the EU27. That is consistent with the way he has behaved, with his public statements, the way he has antagonised both the EU27 and his own parliament. He doesn’t seem like a person who genuinely seeks a deal.
And by a process of renewable democratic consent by the executive and assembly of Northern ireland
This is what Brandon Lewis, the Home Office minister, told Newsnight last night about this being the UK’s “final offer”. Lewis said:
we will go further and protect the existing regulatory arrangements for farmers and other businesses on both sides of the border
The offer the prime minister will make is the offer he is going to make to the European Union. We will publish it tomorrow. That is our final offer.
And at the same time we will allow the UK - whole and entire - to withdraw from the EU, with control of our own trade policy from the start.
And to protect the union
And yes this is a compromise by the UK
Johnson claims that the Tories, and the British, are pro-European.
It cannot be stressed too much that this is not an anti-European party and it is not an anti-European country.
We love Europe. We are European. At least, “I love Europe,” Johnson says.
After what seems like a moment’s hesitation, the audience applaud.
Johnson is back to the case for getting Brexit done.
I am afraid that after three and a half years people are beginning to feel that they are being taken for fools. They are beginning to suspect that there are forces in this country that simply don’t want Brexit delivered at all.
And if they turn out to be right in that suspicion then I believe there will be grave consequences for trust in democracy. Let’s get Brexit done on 31 October.
Let’s get it done because of the opportunities that Brexit will bring, not just to take back control of our money and our borders and our laws. To regulate differently and better, and to take our place as a proud and independent global campaigner for free trade.
Let’s get it done because delay is so pointless and expensive. Let’s get it done because we need to build our positive new partnership with the EU.
Johnson uses the pre-briefed passage about how 2020 would be a year of chaos under Labour. (See 11.33am.)
