It is almost exactly three years since Boris Johnson won his “stonking” 80-seat majority in the general election of December 2019. I marked the anniversary of that joyous occasion by rereading the Conservatives’ election manifesto (as one does). Revisiting it now, in the midst of Broken Britain’s bleak midwinter, is like reading the fantastical ravings of the deranged. Were it a book, it would be placed in the fiction section of public libraries, next to Alice in Wonderland perhaps.
It talked of “getting Brexit done” so we could “move on to unleash the full potential of this great country”. It said that “for the last three and a half years, [Britain] has felt trapped, like a lion in a cage”. It confidently asserted that getting Brexit done would “end the division and deadlock that have been so bad for our country” and unlock “a pent-up tidal wave of investment”. It would allow us to “focus on the priorities of the British people, funding the NHS and tackling the cost of living”, and to “do more on the international stage”.
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