Boris Johnson: I searched for the hero inside myself

Boris Johnson speaks of his 12kg weight loss, promises the UK will see off Covid as it has ‘every invader for 1,000 years.’

Boris Johnson leaves 10 Downing Street, before giving a speech to the Conservative Party's annual conference. Picture: AFP.

An energised Boris Johnson has promised the United Kingdom will be reshaped using the coronavirus pandemic as an opportunity, and said relying on “Uncle Sugar the taxpayer’’ was wrong.

Mr Johnson, back to his enthusiastic optimism, used a keynote address to a virtual Tory Party conference to expound a vision of wind-driven power by 2030; hydrogen powered cars; a booming private sector and 95 per cent loans for first home buyers.

The Prime Minister, who has recovered from coronavirus, told the party: “I was superficially in the pink of health when I caught it, I had a very common underlying condition. My friends, I was too fat.’’ He added: “And I have since lost 26lbs (11.7kg), and you can imagine that in bags of sugar and I am going to continue that diet, because you’ve got to search for the hero inside yourself in the hope that that individual is considerably slimmer.”

He empathised with the rest of the nation having had more than enough of coronavirus – as the country battles another rise in infections, amid currently low deaths and hospitalisations. He said there was no reasonable alternative to lockdowns to try and control the spread of the virus.

“This government has been forced by the pandemic into erosions of liberty that we deeply regret and to an expansion in the role of the state from lockdown enforcement to the many bailouts and subsidies that go against our instincts,’’ he said.

“I have had more than enough of this disease that attacks not only human beings but so many of the greatest things about our country: our pubs, our clubs, our football, our theatre and all the gossipy gregariousness and love of human contact that drives the creativity of our economy.”

But Mr Johnson vowed to repel it “just as this country has seen off every alien invader for the last 1,000 years”.

He said before the crisis the country had chronic underlying problems including a skills deficit, inadequate transport infrastructure and a housing shortage.

”Far too many people across the whole country felt ignored and left out” he said.

‘’We can’t now define the mission of this country as merely to restore normality – that isn’t good enough.

“In the depths of the Second World War, when just about everything had gone wrong, the government sketched out a vision of the post-war New Jerusalem that they wanted to build, and that is what we’re doing now, in the teeth of this pandemic.

“We are resolving not to go back to 2019, but to do better: to reform our system of government, to renew our infrastructure, to spread opportunity more widely and fairly and to create the conditions for a dynamic recovery that is led not by the state but by free enterprise.”

Mr Johnson promoted a different private industry-led vision than that promoted by his chancellor Rishi Sunak, who has foreshadowed hefty tax rises to pay for coronavirus emergency measures.

Mr Johnson called for “competitive” tax rates, growth and productivity to deal with ‘’whatever the next cosmic spanner is that may be hurtling towards us in the dark”.

He 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”.

He also referenced the opposition Labour Party with “a simple message for those on the left who think everything can be funded by Uncle Sugar the taxpayer”.

“It isn’t the state that produces the new drugs and therapies we are using. It isn’t the state that will hold the intellectual property of the vaccine, if and when we get one. It wasn’t the state that made the gloves and masks and ventilators that we needed at such speed,” Mr Johnson said. “It was the private sector, with its rational interest in innovation and competition and market share and, yes, sales.” He said Labour had sniped from the sidelines and was trying to overturn Brexit, describing the opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer as “Captain Hindsight and his regiment of pot-shot, snipeshot fusiliers”.

Mr Johnson added: “We are proud of this country’s culture and history and traditions; they literally want to pull statues down, to rewrite the history of our country, to edit our national CV to make it look more politically correct. We aren’t embarrassed to sing old songs about how Britannia rules the waves.”