Boris Johnson promises to make Britain great again

He attacked Labour’s position on the Union, accusing them of “flirting” with “those who would tear our country apart”.

In an unusual conference speech, delivered in a near-empty room with delegates watching online, the Prime Minister checked off a number of key Tory talking points, referencing recent culture war rows over the Black Lives Matter protests, the toppling of statues, blue Brexit passports and the singing of Rule Britannia at the Proms.

He also mounted a defence of the private sector, saying it was time for the state to “stand back” and let businesses “get on with it” as the country makes its way out of the coronavirus crisis. However, he also pledged to invest millions in wind power, electric vehicles and homebuilding.

The SNP’s Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, said the Tory chief had “offered absolutely nothing to the millions of people who stand to lose their jobs, and see their incomes slashed, as a result of Tory cuts to the furlough scheme and the reckless decision to impose an extreme Brexit in the middle of a pandemic.

“Boris Johnson has repeatedly shown himself to be arrogant, incompetent, untrustworthy and not up to the job of Prime Minister.

“This speech did nothing to change that perception,” he added.

Johnson also promised to “take forward one of the key proposals” of last year’s election manifesto, to create a long-term fixed rate mortgage of up to 95% of the value of the home for first-time buyers.

He said this would help by “vastly reducing the size of the deposit and giving the chance of home ownership – and all the joy and pride that goes with it – to millions that feel excluded.”

It was, he added, about changing “generation rent” into “generation buy” and creating two million more owner-occupancies, “the biggest expansion of home ownership since the 1980s”.

The Tory leader said that this policy was “the difference between us Conservatives and the Labour opposition”.

“They may have million pound homes in North London, but they deeply dislike home ownership for anyone else. We want to level up – they want to level down,” he said.

Johnson continued: “We are proud of this country’s culture and history and traditions. They literally want to pull statues down, to rewrite the history of our country, to edit our national CV to make it look more politically correct.

“We aren’t embarrassed to sing old songs about how Britannia rules the waves – in fact, we are even making sense of it with a concerted national ship-building strategy that will bring jobs to every part of the UK, especially in Scotland. And we believe passionately in our wonderful Union, our United Kingdom – while the Labour opposition have done frankly nothing to defend the Union, and continue to flirt with those who would tear our country apart.

“And I say frankly to those separatist Scottish nationalists who would like this country to be distracted and divided by yet more constitutional wrangling, now is the time to pull together and build back better in every part of the United Kingdom.”

The Prime Minister also promised a revolution in green power generation, performing a startling U-turn on his previous criticism of wind power. He said that every home in the UK could be powered by offshore wind energy within a decade.

Johnson said the move could create thousands of jobs and make the UK the “world leader in low-cost clean power generation – cheaper than coal and gas”. Downing Street said the initial investment would create about 2000 construction jobs and support up to 60,000 in total.

Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, said: “The British people needed to hear the Prime Minister set out how he and his government will get a grip of the crisis. Instead we got the usual bluster and no plan for the months ahead.

“We end this Conservative conference as we started it: with a shambolic testing system, millions of jobs at risk and an incompetent government that has lost control of this virus and is holding Britain back.”