Boris Johnson has been accused of turning a blind eye to the immediate threats of Covid-driven unemployment and a no-deal Brexit, after he gave a speech to the Conservative conference which instead focused on a Britain of hydrogen-powered trains and zero-carbon jets in 2030.
In his keynote address to the conference – forced online after the planned gathering in Birmingham was cancelled due to Covid – the prime minister said that Britain could not “merely restore normality” once the pandemic is over, but must “build back better”.
Mr Johnson said he had “had more than enough” of the disease and the restrictions to social and economic life it has brought and said he “knew” that the UK would defeat it – indicating that he expects the crisis to be over in time for the next Tory conference in October 2021.
But he predicted that the pandemic would act as “the trigger for an acceleration of social and economic change” that would usher in a “bright future” ahead.
The PM promised to press ahead with manifesto plans to introduce long-term fixed-rate mortgages on 5 per cent deposits to reverse the “disgraceful” decline in home-ownership among the under-40s over the past decade.
He said the government would “explore” the possibility of one-to-one tuition in schools both for pupils who have fallen behind and those of exceptional abilities.
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And he pledged to invest £160m in wind turbine manufacturing to help the UK become “the world leader in low-cost, clean power generation”, with offshore wind powering every home in the country by 2030.
Mr Johnson effectively admitted that he had been wrong to scoff at green energy, claiming that “some people 20 years ago said that it wouldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding”.
However the phrase was in fact used by Mr Johnson himself seven years ago in 2013, when he was Mayor of London.
Although Downing Street claimed, after the about-turn was highlighted on social media, that the PM was being “tongue in cheek” about his former comments, he did not make clear in his speech that he was in fact criticising his own record.
Setting out his plans to “build back better” after the Covid crisis, Mr Johnson said: “After all we have been through it isn’t enough just to go back to normal. We have lost too much. We have mourned too many.
“We have been through too much frustration and hardship just to settle for the status quo ante – to think that life can go on as it was before the plague; and it will not.
“Because history teaches us that events of this magnitude – wars famines, plagues, events that affect the vast bulk of humanity, as this virus has – they do not just come and go.
“They are more often than not the trigger for an acceleration of social and economic change, because we human beings will not simply content ourselves with a repair job.
“We see these moments as the time to learn and to improve on the world that went before.”
The PM said that the UK was suffering from “chronic underlying problems” even before the virus struck, with poor skills, inadequate transport infrastructure, insufficient homes and “far too many people… who felt ignored and left-out”.
“We cannot now define the mission of this country as merely to restore normality,” he said. “That isn’t good enough.”
Reeling off previous pledges to build or renovate 48 hospitals, improve road and rail links, recruit 50,000 nurses and 20,000 police officers and “fix the injustice of care home funding”, Mr Johnson said: “We are resolving not to go back to 2019 but to do better.”
And he said that the key to a more prosperous future was to “raise the overall productivity of the country”.
He compared the situation to 1942, when a wartime government prepared to build a “new Jerusalem” when peace returned. In the event, the war was followed by the creation of the NHS and modern welfare state by Clement Attlee’s Labour government, after they defeated Churchill’s Conservatives in the 1945 election.
Boris Johnson tells conference young, first-time buyers should have access to a ‘long-term fixed-rate mortgage’
But Mr Johnson rejected the argument that the failings of the private sector-led test and trace system meant that the public sector should drive the UK’s rebuilding after the pandemic.
He said that the tough lockdown restrictions imposed during the crisis, and the massive taxpayer support provided by chancellor Rishi Sunak went against Conservative “instincts” but were adopted because there was “no reasonable alternative”.
He warned that maintaining high state spending after the pandemic would lead to “disaster” and said: “We must be clear that there comes a moment when the state must stand back and let the private sector get on with it…
“We must build back better by becoming more competitive, both in tax and regulation.”
The PM also took a “culture war” swipe at Labour, saying: “We are proud of this country’s culture and history and traditions – they literally want to pull statues down, to re-write the history of our country, to edit our national CV to make it look more politically correct.”
And he claimed that an unidentified “they” were “secretly scheming to overturn Brexit and take us back into the EU”.
But Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner said Mr Johnson had offered “bluster” in place of a plan to deal with the country’s immediate challenges.
“The British people needed to hear the Prime Minister set out how he and his government will get a grip of the crisis,” said Ms Rayner.
“Instead we got the usual bluster and no plan for the months ahead.
“We end this Conservative conference as we started it: with a shambolic testing system, millions of jobs at risk and an incompetent government that has lost control of this virus and is holding Britain back.”
The Scottish National Party’s leader in Westminster, Ian Blackford said the speech offered “absolutely nothing” to people fearful for their livelihoods due to the withdrawal of furlough and the impending transition to Brexit.
“Boris Johnson has repeatedly shown himself to be arrogant, incompetent, untrustworthy and not up to the job of prime minister,” said Mr Blackford. “This speech did nothing to change that perception.
“The prime minister offered absolutely nothing to the millions of people who stand to lose their jobs, and see their incomes slashed, as a result of Tory cuts to the furlough scheme and the reckless decision to impose an extreme Brexit in the middle of a pandemic.”
And TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said:
“We have an unemployment crisis – with more job losses being announced every day. Yet this reality was missing from Boris Johnson’s sunny speech.”
Even the Institute of Directors warned that private businesses were concerned about the “precarious” position of Britain’s economy.
Director of policy Roger Barker said: “Business leaders will welcome the Prime Minister’s vow to put the wind in the sails of enterprise. But they are also acutely aware of the precarious state of the economy, with the impending end of the furlough scheme and the conclusion of the Brexit transition period.”
