Boris Johnson on Brexit: Nauseating and excruciating in equal measure

He was rather short of things with which to back up this preposterous claim but that has not stopped him before.

What we got was the usual rambunctious performance.

However, it seemed telling that, when pressed by LBC presenter Nick Ferrari to give Brexit a score out of 10, he seemed reluctant indeed to do so.

He qualified his answer, and it was only after he was asked if he would give it four or three out of 10, after quite the pantomime, that he went for nine.

Mr Johnson gave Brexit 10 out of 10 for “constitutional purity”, whatever that means.

He did not respond directly to the huge hit to UK gross domestic product from Brexit, put by Mr Ferrari at 3.9%. Several heavyweight forecasters have estimated the impact of Brexit on UK economic output at a similar quantum or even greater.

And Mr Johnson did not engage with the presenter’s point that only a small minority of people in the UK now believe Brexit has gone well.

Rather, instead of addressing the huge impact on the UK economy, the former prime minister favoured some whataboutery, talking about the performance of Germany and noting it was in the European Union.

It was typical fare from Mr Johnson, pretty much exactly the sort of big proclamations and avoidance of the crucial economic points that we saw when he was leading the country.

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He declared: “It’s 10 out of 10 for constitutional purity.”

Then we had this from Mr Johnson: “In terms of delivering yet for the country, clearly it’s going to take time before it delivers on its potential.”

It has been more than eight years since the Brexiters won the June 2016 referendum vote. And it is nearly four years since Mr Johnson and his government took the UK out of the single market at the end of 2020. He and his fellow Leavers had their technical Brexit on January 31 that year but thankfully nothing much changed for the worse until the close of 2020 - at least we had another 11 months of effectively having the huge benefits of being in the EU.

In case anyone has forgotten what these benefits were, they were free movement of people between the UK and European Economic Area and frictionless trading with the country’s biggest trading partner.

We also had this from Mr Johnson, about Brexit, in the LBC interview: “I’d give it 10 out of 10 for what it enabled us to do during the pandemic and that was the biggest problem I had during my time in government."

Oh dear. Clutching at straws does not even come close.

Mr Johnson continued: “I think the problem is not with the decision itself, it’s not even with the implementation of the decision, the problem is with the use we make of it right now and the championing of Brexit.”

The problem, if you look at the economic and societal damage, is clearly all about the decision itself and its implementation.

Mr Johnson’s jam tomorrow rhetoric about the “championing of Brexit” amounts to no more than hot air.

And why would anyone champion a failure?

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This brings us neatly to another of Mr Johnson’s interviews in recent days in which Brexit was brought up, with GB News.

Mr Johnson declared in this interview that Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is “of course” seeking to reverse Brexit.

This is a baffling claim.

Sir Keir, in what seems an enormously unwise stance from an economic and societal perspective, has ruled out the UK rejoining the EU, single market or even the customs union.

It is difficult to know how much more specific he could have been about this.

And it is worth noting that even if Sir Keir did move to take the UK back into the European single market (rather than the EU), absolutely unimaginable as this seems, he would still not be reversing Brexit, so it is difficult to know on what Mr Johnson is basing his claim.

Mr Johnson trotted out the same stuff about coronavirus vaccines in his interview with GB News.

It is all a very different story from the talk of big, brave huge new free trade deals that came from Mr Johnson and his fellow Brexiters ahead of wrenching the UK out of the single market.

Of course, there is no place to hide for the Brexiters on this, although it will probably not stop many of them continuing to try to talk a good game on the trade front.

The benefits delivered by the new free trade deals agreed by the Conservatives post-Brexit with the likes of Australia and New Zealand are absolutely tiny, on the Tories’ own calculations.

The promised US trade deal never materialised. In any case, the benefits estimated by the Conservatives when they were in power from such an agreement were also absolutely trifling relative to what has been lost in terms of UK economic output from Brexit.

Sir Keir, for his part, continues to talk about making Brexit work, and did so again as he visited Brussels earlier this month. This is an incredible notion.

The Brexit damage was inevitable, and it has transpired exactly as envisaged.

Mr Johnson is clutching at straws as he continues to try to claim Brexit was a good thing.

Yet Sir Keir declines to do anything significant to ameliorate the ongoing colossal damage.

He is warmer in tone to the EU than the Conservatives were, and this is better than being hostile, but this amounts to a hill of beans in terms of addressing the very large, real and continuing effects of Brexit.

Sir Keir wants to tinker around the edges of the Brexit agreement.

The Prime Minister is perhaps not “championing” Brexit, to use Mr Johnson’s own word. Maybe this is because he knows, deep down, the damage that Brexit is causing. He certainly argued vociferously enough against the folly when he was in opposition in late 2019.

However, we must make no mistake: Sir Keir has fully embraced the hard Brexit delivered by Mr Johnson, something which is greatly to the detriment of the UK economy and society.