Boris Johnson has said that Brexit saved lives by allowing the UK to vaccinate more quickly and said the numbers on the bus were “an underestimate”.
Speaking to GB News, he said: ” I think in the short term [Brexit] has been the right thing to do. But I think in the long term they will judge that the UK, when you look at the plan to create a federal Europe, and you look at what the agenda actually entails of building a single political entity out of very different countries, I think people will say, well, it was right for the UK, which is quintessentially a European country in many ways.
“But it was right for the UK, which has an ancient parliamentary democracy, has huge global interests, has an enormous British diaspora around the world, not justin Europe and huge trading interests around the world.
“It was right for us to have a different destiny.
“Insofar as the UK economy has underperformed in the last couple of years, I mean, that is entirely thanks to the catastrophic policies of the Labour government.
“If you put up national insurance contributions in the way that they do, if you clobber wealth creators, if you drive entrepreneurs abroad by their thousands. I go around the world and I meet people who are weeping because they want to live in this country, but simply can’t, and it’s a catastrophe for the UK what Starmer has done.
“We’re 10 years on now, and what happened ultimately is that Michael [Gove] was part of the government which did it, the government that I led. We delivered Brexit, and was it a hard Brexit? It was, yeah, it was pretty hard.
“It was hard to negotiate, hard to do, but basically it meant that we took back control of our laws, of our borders, of our money. We have full constitutional independence again.
“And I think that in a 21st century economy, 22nd century economy, that is going to be very important for a country like ours. You need to have flexibility, you need to have agility.
“I think people are happier if they feel that they’re in control of their lives, and if they feel that the politicians they elect can actually do what they say.
“Without Brexit, it is absolutely true to say, because I remember it vividly, we would not have been able to vaccinate the people of this country. Whatever you think about vaccination, whether you are for or against it, I think it was very useful during the Covid pandemic of a few years ago.
“And because of Brexit, we were weeks and weeks ahead of other countries in approving vaccines, and that meant that we were months ahead when it came to coming out of lockdown measures and that meant we had a faster economic rebound.
“So Brexit saved lives because we, and then we were able to see an economic rebound as well.
“On the famous bus, I think now is the time, admit that the numbers on the bus were wrong: they were an underestimate. It was too low.
“Seriously, when you now look at it, if we’d stayed in, we would have been on £450 million a week, at least [EU contributions] and that’s quite a serious amount of dosh; you can build a pretty big hospital for £450 million quid per week.
“What I really feel about the bus and stuff, does anybody remember the lies that were told by the Remain side? I mean, what they said about the pound and there’d be an emergency budget, a property price crash – from the Treasury!
“The Treasury sent out letters to people and instead it’s our side that get teased.
“So what’s the view going to be in 100 years’ time? That depends entirely on what we do with it. Brexit is not a state of being. Brexit is a utensil for governing yourself differently.
“And it only works if you use that utensil. There’s no point in escaping from Alcatraz if you then walk back in the front lobby which is what Labour want.
“First of all, when I was Prime Minister, Reform were on 0%. I know that ex people are trying to, you know, because they have various motives.
“Number two, when you look at what actually happened when we came out of the EU, we took back full legal control. So the first year of my premiership, we had the lowest immigration for 40 years.
“And then what happened? What actually happened was I’m afraid that the system believed the rubbish remain propaganda that everybody had fled as the UK. Remember, there was all this idea that we were a sort of leper colony, plague island.
“Since then, Starmer’s lot have been able to use powers that we secured through our hard Brexit to cut immigration. I’m proud that we secured the power under Brexit, without which there’d be absolutely nothing Starmer – or Starmer anymore – nothing anybody could do to cut immigration from the European Union.
“I took back control. I got the legal power to have zero immigration. By the way, I not only did that, I had the power to do the Rwanda scheme, which would have fixed the small boats, and that’s the thing.
“The thing that drives people really nuts is illegal immigration. We have the legal to have zero immigration and if we only bought Rwanda we can cut the illegal immigration too.”
