Stanley Johnson: I might vote Labour if it rebuilds bridges with EU
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Stanley Johnson has suggested he would consider voting for Labour as a result of its stance on the European Union.
Mr Johnson, the father of Boris Johnson, the former prime minister, said that he could support Sir Keir Starmer’s party if it pledged to bring Britain back into the European Environment Agency (EEA) – one of the organisations the UK left when it quit the bloc in 2020.
He cautioned that the Conservative Party would not be “saved by a move to the Right” and instead said that his next vote would be decided by stances on the environment and the EU.
Mr Johnson, a staunch Remainer who became a French national to keep a “link” with Europe post-Brexit, was asked whether Labour’s position on the EU could tempt him to vote for the party.
Asked if he would vote for Sir Keir’s party, he told GB News: “Nothing would tempt me to vote Labour.”
Coherent policy needed
But pushed further, he added: “What would tempt me is a coherent policy now to rebuild bridges with Europe.
“It seems to me absolutely absurd that we are setting ourselves up having come out to say, ‘Oh, well, now we must more and more separate ourselves out.’
“I think I would vote for any political party, which at this point said ‘I want to bring the UK back into the European Environment Agency’. We were always there.”
When pressed on whether that meant he would vote Labour if it did put forward such an offer, he said: “Well I might well. I tell you something I might.”
He added: “What is more important in the end, a political party or some absolutely massively important topic, which is the environment, which pins down what you can do for generations to come? I would say that’s more important.”
Labour has said that it would seek a closer relationship with the EU, which would include a veterinary agreement as well as a security and defence deal.
Brexit up for review
The party has said it would seek to rewrite the existing Brexit deal when it comes up for review in 2025, with Sir Keir saying last year that the date provided an opportunity to “get a much better deal for the UK”.
At a summit in Canada in September, he said: “Actually we don’t want to diverge, we don’t want to lower standards, we don’t want to rip up environmental standards, working standards for people at work, food standards and all the rest of it.”
The Labour leader however has insisted that the party would not seek to take the UK back into the EU if it were to win power at the next election.
The party has not yet said whether it would consider returning to the EEA, one of the bloc’s executive agencies which the UK left in 2020 as it exited the EU.
Mr Johnson was also asked about reports of his son’s return to British politics, amid suggestions that the ex-prime minister could be parachuted into a safe seat following a last-minute resignation of an MP or Tory candidate.
‘Don’t turn Right’
He told GB News: “If my oldest son were to say to me, ‘Look Dad, I’m thinking of starting again off in politics – would you support me?
“I’d say, ‘Look, I’m going to make a pretty tough bargain here, Boris. In terms of my support, I’m only going to support you coming back into the political fray if you start really pushing again on the environmental stuff, which you pushed very hard on, and if you really say ‘Look, I may have been responsible for Brexit, but now my job is to rebuild that bridge’.
“So those are two pretty, pretty firm points I’d make before I voted again.”
He added: “I don’t think the Tory party is going to be saved by a move to the right. The Tory party is going to be saved by someone who says, ‘Look, we were going well. It was steady as you go’.”
