James Forsyth James Forsyth

The three messages Boris Johnson wanted to get across

Boris Johnson’s conference speech felt more like an after-dinner speech than a traditional leader’s speech at times. There were more jokes than policy announcements. The purpose of this speech, though, wasn’t to set out a series of detailed policy prescriptions but to try and get three messages across.

First, Boris Johnson wanted to persuade the public that he had made a reasonable offer to the EU and that if they wouldn’t engage with it, then no deal was the only way to get this done. He repeatedly stressed that he was compromising in the hope of getting a deal. He claimed that if the EU wouldn’t agree, they’d be going for no deal over ‘what is essentially a technical discussion of the exact nature of future customs checks’.

But Boris Johnson’s language about the EU was far more emollient than his language about parliament.

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