Boris Johnson’s Brexit speech verdict: The carrot – and the dick

Last Updated: February 14, 2018By

Boris Johnson: The eyes are open, the mouth moves, but there’s no sign of intelligent life at all.

It’s going to be known as the ‘Carrot and the dick’ speech forever, because our excuse for a UK foreign secretary – Boris ‘the Piffle’ Johnson – misheard a question and tried to make good on his mistake.

He failed.

Asked, “Foreign Secretary, what do you say to those people who say, yet another speech on Brexit… but where is the clarity?” Mr Johnson replied: “The carrot?”

“The clarity.”

“’Clarity.’ OK – God, carrot. Carrot…

“Well, as I say, I think you have an abundance of clarity in the Prime Minister’s Lancaster House speech [from January 2017]… What I’m trying to address is a feeling that I pick up talking to people that they’re not getting the message, the positive agenda. I think there is a great positive agenda and we need to get out there and explain it.”

Then he went adrift: “And it can be good for carrots too, by the way! All right. You didn’t actually mention carrots, but…

“We can take back control of our agricultural policies, and it may be that we can do wonderful things with, you know, our own regulations to… you know… Promote organic carrots.”

Promote organic carrots? That‘s what Brexit is about?

https://twitter.com/pauljholden/status/963772416890720258

Ye gods and little fishes… Actually, we’d better not give him a chance to get started on them as well.

Labour’s verdict on Mr Johnson’s Policy Exchange Brexit speech was delivered by Keir Starmer:

“This speech underlined the Government’s real intentions; a Brexit of deregulation, where rights and protections are casually cast aside and where the benefits of the Single Market and the Customs Union are ignored.

“Nobody will be fooled or reassured by the Foreign Secretary’s empty rhetoric. His insistence on deregulating our economy is the opposite of what businesses and trade unions want to hear.

“Instead of building the consensus we need, the Government’s approach will only further divide the country and put jobs, rights and living standards at risk.”

But the best responses came from the public:

https://twitter.com/WeNeedEU/status/963661277217394688

https://twitter.com/DghSpanishWelsh/status/963733049623138304

https://twitter.com/xugla/status/963762541670424577


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3 Comments

  1. NMac February 15, 2018 at 9:18 am - Reply

    Johnson thinks and plans only for his own selfish, self-centred ends. The obnoxious loud-mouthed, incompetent Tory slob is making another bid for the poisoned Tory leadership.

  2. Pat Sheehan February 15, 2018 at 5:28 pm - Reply

    This is the crunch! Now we are getting to the root of the problem! We need more carrots. We need a new DWP slogan for the sick and disabled. “Go to work on a carrot”!!! Because that’s all you’re going to get! The Benefits Fund is to be used wholly to prevent you getting any benefits!

  3. aunty1960 February 15, 2018 at 5:38 pm - Reply

    Hopeless. The Man is Hopeless.

    Boris will go down in history as some Blonde John Bull or the 21st Century Colonel Blimp.

    By the way Colonel Blimp cartoons are very relevant today one could say politics and politicians stay the same.

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