The speech Boris Johnson should have given on Ukraine and Brexit

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The Prime Minister made a speech to his party’s activists at the Tory party’s spring conference in Blackpool on Saturday. He has faced considerable criticism for his decision to link, in his remarks, Brexit and the struggle of the Ukrainian people to defend their freedom against President Putin’s barbaric assault. It was one remark in a long speech. Nonetheless, it was condemned as crass, unwise and diplomatically damaging at a time when the emphasis should be on unity and avoiding misunderstanding between allies. Here’s what I think he would have been better saying instead:

My friends, it is terrific to see so many of you here on this beautiful Blackpool morning.

I thank you for your hard work and commitment to your party ahead of the  elections this Spring. These elections will be tough. They usually are when a government is mid-term and half way through its programme. And when grave global events combine to make life tougher for millions of our poorest fellow citizens. 

There will be a time to talk in more detail about this. We are working on an energy security plan, to ensure the country has what it needs. To bridge the transition from carbon to renewables and nuclear and provide a guaranteed flow of affordable greener energy. To conserve energy, power British industry and protect the British people.

There will also have to be increased defence spending in the years ahead. We have all just been reminded of the vital importance of the principle of deterrence. We must be equipped properly to resist tyranny.

On the cost of living and helping the vulnerable, the Chancellor will lay out a programme in the House of Commons this coming week. And I will make the case that your party is best placed to get the country through what will be a challenging time. Confident, confident my friends, that after a remorseless pandemic and the perils of today’s international situation, grey clouds will part and the sun will come shining through. Even better times lie ahead for this country. 

(The sun will come out tomorrow, as someone once sang. Who was it? Was it carrot-topped little Annie? It was. The party chairman is nodding. He always nods. It was Annie. BJ to check this on delivery, recommend omitting this joke completely.)

Partisan campaigning and jokes can wait for another occasion. There are times to rally the troops. There are times to bang the drum for the party. To electioneer. Today is not that time.

For more than three weeks now Putin has waged his wicked war against the brave people of Ukraine.

In Kyiv and Kharkiv the bombs are falling.

The city of Mariupol is being flattened by a remorseless barrage. Citizens shelter in basements and makeshift bomb shelters. Perhaps as many as 300,000 souls are under siege by the Russians, trapped without electricity and water supplies

It is medieval. The ancient tactics of the siege are being used by the invader. The tyrant so gripped by hubris is now failing in his war aims. All he has left is to inflict indiscriminate death and destruction on the civilian population in the hope they will one day surrender. All he has left is his inhumanity.

Yet Ukrainian resolve is growing with every day the onslaught continues. Across Ukraine that country’s people are undaunted because they know they fight for the greatest of causes – they fight for freedom. Their armed forces and tens, hundreds of thousands of volunteers, a citizen’s army, are inflicting extraordinary losses on the Russian war machine.

What is it that these valiant Ukrainian people want? All they seek is the right to live in peace. To be with their families and friends, to live a decent life with the realistic prospect of contentment, improvement, fulfilment.

We catch a glimpse of what they have lost in the images beamed in nightly by journalists risking their lives to report the truth.

We have all seen on the news those apartment blocks blasted by  Russian artillery. An external wall of a tall building has been stripped away and we see inside, a cross-section of the building is revealed, as if some architect’s drawing has been brought to life, furniture and belongings spilling out. 

Just a month ago, these apartments were homes. Where families met, children played and studied. A normal life, of mealtimes shared, pets, laughter, music, kindness, perhaps the occasional argument, and love.

Now reduced to rubble by the dictator. Millions are scattered, having become what they could never have imagined – refugees in the heart of Europe in the 21st century.

This crime against humanity must not be allowed to stand. It will not stand.

I will not rest, the leaders of the West will not stop, until Putin fails and all the Ukrainian people can return to join their compatriots to restore their country, with our help. To rebuild. To live in freedom, under an iron cloak of Western protection, armed and supported so that no future dictator can ever again invade their democratic country. To live secure like the citizens of any other democratic European country.

We know why Putin hates democracy. He hates what he cannot control and he despises the freedoms we enjoy in this country and across Europe.

I began by paying tribute to all of you here at this party conference, praising your dedication to your cause, battling for your beliefs. Let me, if I may, also pay tribute to your counterparts in other political parties in Britain and elsewhere in Europe. Each of us in our own way makes our case, debates the rival claims, lays out the arguments. And then the voters decide. Goodness, one day they may decide they have had enough of me…

(Pauses theatrically for shouts of “no” and “never.” )

This is the pattern across free civic Europe. In democratic societies we resolve our disputes by voting, agreeing to disagree, accepting that our own argument cannot always prevail. Finding peace in pluralism, kicking out senior office holders when they have overstayed their welcome.

(Glares at Rishi Sunak)

This is freedom within the rule of law with healthy, free institutions. Imperfect. Noisy. Sometimes fractious. Often disputatious. But it is freedom.

President Putin rejects all that. He is a man stuck in a fantasy world, a weird world of his own wicked imagination, where everyone must agree with him or risk being sent to prison.

The contrast with President Zelensky is stark and humbling. In his unflinching bravery he embodies his country’s struggle against tyranny. What an inspiration he has become. Across Britain people of all political allegiances and none are flying the Ukrainian flag in solidarity.

The British government has done what we can to assist President Zelensky and his forces in this fight. And we will continue to help in every way we can.

Last year the defence secretary Ben Wallace pressed for military aid and more training for our friends in Ukraine. There were those who questioned the wisdom of that policy. Shouldn’t we avoid doing anything that risked annoying the Russian bear?

I hear that superficially appealing realpolitik phrase – don’t poke the Russian bear with a stick – and my friends I must tell you it is a delusion. As though playing nicely with Putin today will spare the Ukrainians or the rest of us at risk from a tyrant who demonstrated in Salisbury he is prepared to use nerve agents on the streets of Europe.

The lesson of the attempts to placate Putin and the Russian bear are clear. The efforts at accommodation and appeasement failed.

The bear is hungry, for territory, for war.

So collectively we must all get a bigger stick and be prepared to wield it against Putin, or his successor if Russia refuses to respect territorial sovereignty and international norms. To deter the bear from further aggression the world’s free nations must stand together.

Which brings me to our friends and allies in Europe.

It is no secret that there have been difficulties between Britain and the European Union. You may have heard something about this in recent years.

There will be those on both sides tempted to say that this catastrophe in Europe reveals the wisdom of their personal position, whatever it is, and the foolishness of their opponents.

I caution against imposing the rubric of our domestic squabbles on the war in Ukraine.

What has happened to Ukraine is bigger than any of that, my friends. The challenge to European collective security – to all Europeans, from Amsterdam to Athens, Berlin to Bern, from Finland to Folkstone, Dubrovnik to Dublin, Warsaw to Walsall – is the most serious threat we have faced together since the Cold War that ended so joyously with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today, our German friends see clearly the need for deterrence and investment in defence. This is a hugely welcome development in the community of free nations.  

Of course the security situation in Europe is complicated by history. Our alliances and structures overlap. Not all of us are in NATO, our close allies the Swedes and the Finns are not. We are not members of the European Union. Day in day out France and Britain work together seamlessly on military matters through our treaties and operational understandings.

Regardless of any differences that might otherwise arise, we are all Europeans, on the European continent. It is a fact of life, geography, culture and the European civilisation that is our shared inheritance south to north, east to west.

With that at the forefront of our minds we are all working together across boundaries to support Ukraine, to ensure Putin fails and after victory to construct a strong defence of Europe, so that what Putin has done can never be repeated in Europe.

I am in regular contact with my fellow leaders. They know that Britain with its armed forces, key role in NATO and leading intelligence capability is a partner, a proud guarantor of European security.

Putin is not the first dictator to underestimate the determination of free peoples and to think that Western civilisation is so decadent it can be brushed aside. Others before him tried to bully their way to the domination of Europe. They lost.

My friends. Once again, the dictator will fail. Freedom will win.

What I’m reading

Professor Lucy Easthope’s new book. She is Britain’s leading expert on disaster recovery – she’s had a busy few years. After a break of a couple of weeks I’m back doing the Authors in Conversation series we put on the Reaction channel on YouTube each week. I’m interviewing Lucy Easthope about her book – When the Dust Settles: Stories of Love, Loss and Hope from an Expert in Disaster – on Monday and I’ll send subscribers details when it’s published.