Boris on campaign for swift resolution on Brexit

From Sardar Shahab
LONDON: Prime Minister Boris Johnson will promise on Wednesday to end the delays over Britain’s departure from the European Union if he wins next month’s election and he will describe the opposition Labour Party’s plans as political “onanism”.
Johnson was scheduled to make a campaign speech at a factory in the West Midlands where, according to prepared remarks, he will say that the rest of the world cannot understand why so much time has been spent agonising over Brexit.
Britons will vote on Dec. 12 in an election called to end three years of deep disagreement over Brexit that has sapped investors’ faith in the stability of the world’s fifth largest economy and damaged Britain’s standing in the world.
Voters, he will say, face a historic choice between the Conservatives and a Labour Party that threatens more political self-obsession and onanism – an old fashioned word for masturbation – due to its support for a second referendum.
“The UK is admired and respected around the world but people are baffled by our debate on Brexit and they cannot understand how this great country can squander so much time and energy on this question and how we can be so hesitant about our future,” Johnson will say.
“If we can get a working majority we can get parliament working for you, we can get out of the rut. We can end the groundhoggery of Brexit,” Johnson said in an apparent reference to the 1993 movie Groundhog Day in which a TV weatherman finds himself reliving the same day over and over again. His day got off to a tricky start however. As he observed relief efforts in a flood-hit district of northern England, several days after the worst of the flooding, two onlookers heckled him.
“You took your time, Boris,” one person told Johnson as he walked through the area accompanied by local officials, while another asked him: “Where’ve you been?”.
Opposition parties have criticised Johnson and his government for a slow response to the flooding, which claimed one life last week.
Johnson, 55, hopes to win a majority to push through the last-minute Brexit deal he struck with the European Union last month after the bloc granted a third delay to the divorce that was originally supposed to take place on March 29.
Voters who took part in a June 2016 referendum voted 52-48% in favour of Britain leaving the EU.
Johnson will argue in his speech that a vote for Labour will raise the prospect of two more referendums, one on Britain’s membership of the EU, and another on Scottish independence, which risks ripping apart the United Kingdom.