By Quentin Letts for the Daily Mail
Published: 22:03 GMT, 18 January 2019 | Updated: 00:12 GMT, 19 January 2019
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After a week when Remainers have keened like the chorus in an Aeschylus tragedy, Boris Johnson injected some can-do Brexit brio yesterday morning. Let’s grapple with the obstructionists in Brussels rather than with one another, said the former Foreign Secretary. Tell Juncker and Co to ditch their blasted backstop or we’ll sail off without a deal.
Obvious? To millions of us, yes. The only amazing thing is that neither the Government nor Opposition has been saying it. And so it was left to Boris the Bold.
Brrrrr. Frigid is not an adjective one automatically associates with Boris but the JCB plant near Uttoxeter was as cold as a game larder. Even in sports jacket and plump little woolly, I was shivering.
Boris Johnson (pictured today speaking at JCB in Staffordshire) condemned Theresa May for failing to even try and remove the Irish border backstop today as he made a pitch for the Tory crown
Behind me sat a worker in a short-sleeved blouse, quite unmoved. Staffordshire women are a tough breed – much tougher than the pant-wetters of the London elite who have been jibbering about further cave-ins to the European Commission. You do sometimes wonder how veggie Hilary Benn has enough fight in him to spear his Quorn rissoles of a morning.
A gleaming yellow JCB had been parked behind the small dais from which Boris made his half-hour speech. He was quick to capitalise on the image. After enthusing about JCB’s global success and letting slip some market-sensitive information about the firm’s sales (up 20 per cent), he enthused about how ‘these custard colossi can move almost any obstacle out of their path’. This other custard-topped colossus added that if you engage the wrong gear in a JCB you can accidentally end up with ‘a new entrance in the back of your house’.
