Is Boris really serious about Brexit?

As the partygate furore rages on, Boris Johnson is retreating towards familiar territory: Brexit. A policy blitz is underway this week and the issue that guided him to power in 2019 has come first, with the announcement of a new Brexit Freedoms Bill. It will be brought forward to mark the two-year anniversary since we parted ways with the European Union.

There are two flaws with Boris’s plan, however. First, recent polling found 46 per cent of Leave voters who backed the Tories in 2019 say he should resign, suggesting that Brexit doesn’t resonate in quite the same way as it did before the pandemic.

Second, governments of the past two decades have presided over a steady but significant shift towards a larger, more powerful state which has limited the room for manoeuvre for both individuals and businesses. And Johnson’s government is no different.