Boris Johnson: ‘I love Brexit. I love Brexit’

Could Britain return to the EU? “Never!” cries Boris Johnson – for it is he – interviewed this week by Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper en route to a journalism conference in Trieste. “I love Brexit, I love Brexit.”

In the interview, Johnson mocks any notion of rejoining the EU as “bullshit”, saying: “So do they want to give up the pound? Give up control of British borders?” 

And what of his feelings for the man whose forensic questioning caused Bozzer’s partygate premiership to come unglued? “Starmer is such a useless, useless, useless prime minister: he is trying to blame absolutely everything for Labour’s economic mistakes,” says Britain’s second most useless prime minister, who has tried to blame something or someone else for everything single thing he has ever done.

Despite being largely responsible for wrenching Britain out of Europe, Johnson thinks it’s for him to tell Europe what it should be doing now: namely, wrenching his old pal Donald Trump out of the massive hole he has dug for himself in Iran.

“We’ve all made a big mistake in Europe, as soon as it was clear that Trump had got into a trap in the Gulf, that there was a kind of checkmate in the Straits, we should have realised that Europe should try as much as possible, within reason, to help America and help America get out of the mess,” says the man who once sat smiling while the US president labelled him “Britain Trump”.

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“I don’t think it was sensible to try to attack Iran in the way that Israel and America did. But I think that now that it has happened, we have to try to help them out of the mess. And I think that instead of saying, no, no, no, we hate Trump – you know, all this sort of ‘this is not our war’ – we should have said, look, we will try to help you diplomatically and with what forces we have to reopen the Straits of Hormuz.”

Asked if he’d spoken to Trump recently, Johnson went unusually coy: “I’m not going to go into it. I talk to lots of people, and I’ve talked to him.”

But at least he endeared himself to his audience as he explained just how bad things had got in Britain under Starmer’s jackboot. “Labour has so weakened the economy with high taxation and driven so many thousands and thousands of people out of the country,” he told the paper. They’re even going to Italy and Milan – I mean, it’s amazing.” Leaving aside that Milan is in Italy, Repubblica readers may not take too kindly to the insinuation that things are so terrible in Britain that even their country seems a better bet!

Meanwhile, closer to home, the man Johnson entrusted to negotiate his Brexit deal, only for him to flounce out of the Cabinet once he realised the state of the mess he’d made of it, has been speaking his brains.

David ‘Frosty’ Frost, the peer being closely watched as a likely Reform defector, was on the BBC’s Politics Live this week downplaying the financial disaster his botched deal had led to.

Told by host Vicki Young that “there are plenty of people who say that it’s hit trade, it’s hit our economic output, that it hasn’t worked”, Frost replied: “There are plenty of people who say that, but there are also plenty of people who don’t. I think they’re wrong.

“We do hear [the case against those arguments] made quite often. Our trade is the highest it’s ever been, there’s no evidence of any economic shock from Brexit at all… there’s simply no evidence of any real change there.”

Well, there’s the estimated 4-8% GDP shortfall compared to the EU and other advanced economies, the estimated 12-18% shortfall in business investment, the stagnant trade growth and increased trade friction… but perhaps Frosty has missed those. What an addition he’ll be to the Reform brains trust once his transfer finally goes through!