Prime Minister Boris Johnson: two years of Brexit lies, contempt and power grabs

by the SNP
Posted on
3 years ago
5 min read

It’s been two years since Boris Johnson entered Downing Street.

Every day through his actions, he demonstrates why he is unfit for any public office, never mind the office of Prime Minister – and why it’s high time Scotland’s future was in Scotland’s hands, not Boris Johnson’s.

Here are just some of the many reasons.

He illegally shut down the UK Parliament

Struggling to force through Brexit, Boris Johnson suspended parliamentary democracy to deprive MPs of the opportunity to hold the UK government to account.

By attempting to bypass Parliament, Boris Johnson acted like a tin-pot dictator and showed utter contempt for democracy.

Thanks to pressure from SNP MPs, his moves to shut down Parliament were ruled unlawful and unconstitutional by Scotland’s highest court, and then by the UK Supreme Court.

The man who repeatedly lied to MPs, misled the Queen, and used dirty tricks in an attempt to force through an extreme Brexit through the backdoor, is simply unfit for office.

His government used an emergency Covid contract to sanction corrupt campaigning

In the height of the pandemic, Boris Johnson’s ministers secretly directed funds from an emergency Covid contract – supposed to be used for things like PPE for our brave NHS workers – to carry out secretive polling on the Union.

It comes after a series of revelations of Tory cronyism – with hundreds of thousands of pounds in public money being handed to Tory friends and donors, with little to no scrutiny and transparency.

When challenged about this gross misuse of public funds by Ian Blackford, Boris Johnson said he “could not think of a better use of public funds.”

He’s launched an all-out Westminster power grab on Scotland’s democracy

In 2014, the Better Together parties promised that Scotland’s powers would never be altered without the express consent of Holyrood.

Now, through the Internal Market Bill that fundamentally undermines devolution, Boris Johnson is shattering these promises.

The Bill, which broke international law, allows an unelected and unaccountable Westminster body to overrule the Scottish Parliament’s decisions. With a stroke of a pen, Westminster can challenge policies made in Scotland – and it’s already doing so by taking the Scottish Government to court for passing a Bill to strengthen children’s rights.

His Brexit deal is full of broken promises

Boris Johnson’s Brexit Deal has hit jobs and living standards hard at the worst possible time.

From a sell-out of fishing communities, to the betrayal of Scotland’s farmers and the removal of opportunities for young people, Scotland is paying the price of Boris Johnson’s Brexit.

Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal, with all the red tape and chaos it caused, lead to fishing boats being forced to sit in the docks for weeks – depriving fisherpeople and their families an income to live on. And that’s not the only sector Boris Johnson has sold out.

Boris Johnson was promising to stand up for Scottish farmers and crofters. Yet, in a desperate attempt to get a trade deal with anyone, he sold the farm from under their feet.

The Australian Deputy Prime Minister said, “The big winners, in the UK-Australian trade deal, are Australian producers, Australian farmers, indeed Australia full stop… I’m not worried about the Welsh, Scottish & NI beef producers.”

The Tories have treated Scottish fishing as “expendable” – and now they’re doing the same to Scottish farmers. The UK government’s own analysis said a deal with Australia would only be worth an 0.02% increase in GDP over 15 years, and that’s under an optimistic scenario.

It won’t even cover 1% of the lost opportunities from Europe’s markets due to Brexit, all while negatively impacting Scotland’s agricultural sector.

The heavy price of Brexit is already clear for all to see. Analysis from the Food and Drink Federation last month revealed EU sales dropped by 47% in the first three months of 2021 to a ten-year low – hitting the UK economy with a £2billion loss.

He’s willing to strip people of their rights and leave vulnerable people at risk

In 2016, as part of the Vote Leave campaign, Boris Johnson and Priti Patel issued a commitment that:

“There will be no change for EU citizens already lawfully resident in the UK. These EU citizens will automatically be granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK and will be treated no less favourably than they are at present.”

Scottish Government repeatedly urged to grant EU citizens an automatic right to remain, but Boris Johnson and Priti Patel decided to force EU citizens to apply to stay in their own homes.

Worse still, they have threatened the rights of thousands of vulnerable EU citizens with an arbitrary hard deadline – with reports showing that many people who have legally lived and worked in the UK for years could now be criminalised and deprived of basic rights, such as the right to work, rent, or access the NHS.

The only way to protect Scotland’s values and interests is to become an independent country

The SNP will use what powers we have to limit the impact of Boris Johnson’s right-wing policies and the damage they’ll cause to Scotland.

But the only way to guarantee getting rid of a Prime Minister who breaks the law, strips citizens of their rights, denies democracy and imposes an extreme Brexit against our will, is taking our future into our own hands with independence.

Independence means that Scotland can decide the kind of country we want to be – free from the damaging decisions of Tory governments we haven’t voted for in over 60 years.

It means having all the powers to create a more welcoming, more equal and fairer society – just like other European countries of similar size to Scotland, such as Denmark or Ireland.

Once the pandemic is over, people in Scotland must have the choice to put Scotland’s future firmly in Scotland’s hands – not those of Boris Johnson and his right-wing ilk.