The former prime minister has asked the audience if they agreed with Brexit, Boris Johnson was left with an even more perplexed expression than normal.
When Mr. Johnson asked the audience at a conference in London to raise their hands if they thought leaving the European Union had been a success, nearly no one did.
I got the feeling that might be the case as we went along, but I’m undaunted, Mr. Johnson added as the conference host urged the audience to raise their hands if they thought Brexit was a good idea.
He tried to move quickly on, and said: ‘The problem at the moment, it’s about what we’re not getting right now.
‘I’ve said this before, it’s a Brexit government or it’s nothing.
‘We got a massive mandate to change, people wanted change in their lives, people wanted to see things done differently, and I’ve got to put my hands up for this as much as anybody, we haven’t done enough yet to convince them.
‘That it can deliver the changes they do want to see, I think they are particularly dismayed about the small boats crossing the channel and they also don’t feel the economic change.
Brexit fails to find backers at ‘soft power’ conference after Boris Johnson speech
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‘We’ve got to break out of the model that we’re in.’
He also raised concerns about Rishi Sunak’s new Brexit deal for Northern Ireland and said he will find it ‘very difficult’ to vote for it.
He said: ‘I’m going to find it very difficult to vote for something like this myself, because I believed we should’ve done something very different. No matter how much plaster came off the ceiling in Brussels.
‘I hope that it will work and I also hope that if it doesn’t work we will have the guts to employ that (Northern Ireland Protocol) Bill again, because I have no doubt at all that that is what brought the EU to negotiate seriously.’
Jet-setter Johnson has been travelling around the world for lucrative speaking gigs in recent weeks, and raised his head for the first time today.
In recent weeks the UK has been hit by a number of fruit and vegetable shortages, with some supermarkets limiting the amount customers can buy.
These shortages have been blamed on Brexit by some political commentators, with others saying it is due to bad weather in the areas where crops are grown.
When Boris took over Tory party leadership in 2019 he was the force behind a no-deal Brexit.
He insisted that the UK would leave the EU on October 31, with or without a deal.
Just five months after becoming leader Johnson won an 80-seat majority in the general election, giving him the backing to push through Brexit legislation.
And in January 2020, the Brexit deal became law after approval by U.K. Parliament, with the European Parliament approving the deal six days later.
Last week Johnson was accused of trying to ‘wreck’ the deal, as he warned dropping the Protocol Bill he masterminded – letting the UK scrap parts of the Brexit treaty – will be ‘a great mistake’.
Lord Mandelson, a former Labour Northern Ireland secretary, said: ‘He wants, and his supporters want, to undermine the PM.’
Labour’s Lord Hain, who also held the job, said Mr Johnson was ‘mischief-making’.
But cabinet minister Penny Mordaunt insisted: ‘Boris is being Boris, but I wouldn’t say it’s a completely unhelpful intervention.’