Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government will put Brexit at risk if it pursues a European-style big government of high taxes, Britain’s chief Brexit negotiator has warned.
In a speech delivered before the Centre for Policy Studies think tank on Monday, Brexit negotiator Lord David Frost called for an open debate on Boris Johnson’s increasingly left-wing agenda, particularly on the issue of taxes, which are set to rise to a seventy year high under the supposedly Conservative government.
“I can’t share the views of those who think we can treat the private sector as just a convenient way of keeping the public sector running,” Lord Frost said in comments reported by The Telegraph.
“It isn’t just a source of taxes. Nor is it a bunch of people who will inevitably do bad things unless the Government keeps a very close eye on them. We can’t carry on as we were before and if, after Brexit, all we do is import the European social model, we will not succeed.”
The comments came just hours after Mr Johnson gave a speech of his own to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) in which he used a quote from communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin to promote his Build Back Better green agenda to radically transform the British economy.
The speech from Lord Frost, who has been heading up Britain’s Brexit negotiations with the European Union, represented the latest signal of growing unease within the governing Tory Party about the effectiveness of the PM and the political ramifications of his lurch to the left on taxes and energy policy.
On Monday evening, eighteen member’s of Johnson’s party rebelled against the government in a vote on an amendment to the Health and Care Bill on social care payouts, which could see more people in England stuck with a higher tax bill.
This is on top of the government announcing last month a steep tax hike, largely to pay for the ever-struggling socialised healthcare system, the NHS.
The BBC’s political editor, Laura Kuenssberg claimed on Monday night to have spoken to a senior Downing Street source, who reportedly said that “there is a lot of concern inside the building about the PM… It’s just not working.
“Cabinet needs to wake up and demand serious changes otherwise it’ll keep getting worse. If they don’t insist, he just won’t do anything about it.”
On top of the political damage caused by increasing taxes — a direct breach of the 2019 Conservative Party election manifesto — Johnson’s Tories have also been damaged as of late by the government’s inability or unwillingness to put a halt to the growing illegal boat migrant crisis in the English Channel, with some 25,000 aliens landing on British shores this year, alone.
The migrant crisis has reached such a fevered pitch, that former Brexit Party (now Reform UK) leader Nigel Farage has threatened a return to retail politics after stepping aside following the UK’s official departure from the European Union at the beginning of the year.
The Conservative Party has also been forced to send high profile figures, such as government ministers, to campaign in the upcoming Old Bexley and Sidcup by-election. While traditionally a safe Tory seat, Nigel Farage’s successor as leader of Reform UK, Richard Tice has put on the pressure by running for the seat himself.
On the campaign trail earlier this month, Tice told Breitbart London that he intends to win the seat, characterising the election as a “two-horse race”. During a canvassing operation, the businessman-turned-politician told constituents to send a “message to Westminster” and vote the Tories out.
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