Boris compares being PM to typhoon fighter flight as he gives thumbs up in cockpit

18 July 2022, 13:10

Boris Johnson flies Typhoon fighter jet

Boris Johnson gave a thumbs up as he ignored the Tory leadership race and compared his premiership to a Typhoon fighter jet flight.

Last week, the Prime Minister was given a demonstration of the Typhoon fighter jet at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire which he compared to his time in Number 10 during a speech to business leaders this morning.

A video shows the PM soaring above the clouds as he gives a thumbs up to the camera.

In a speech at the Farnborough Air Show, the Prime Minister described having taken off like a "vertical firecracker". "After a while the wing commander said to me, 'Do you want to have a go?' And I said, 'Are you sure, it seems very expensive to me?' We only have 148 of them and they cost £75 million a pop. And he said, 'Don't worry you can't break it.' And I thought, 'oh well famous last words'.

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"So I pushed the joystick right over to the right and we did an Aileron roll and I pulled the joystick right back and we did a fantastic loop the loop and then I did a more complicated thing called a barrel roll and I pushed the stick up and right a bit.

"Then we started to pull a few Gs, as they say, quite a few Gs. When I came back to consciousness I could see the sea getting closer and closer and I started to dream about this incredible forest of windfarms I could see, all over the North Sea and I thought about the way this Government in the past few years have been reclaiming Doggerland, harvesting the drained prairies of the North Sea.

"This reverie must have gone on for quite a while because then my colleague said, 'I'm taking back control now', and we headed happily home."

continuing: "I want you to know that after three happy years in the cockpit, and after performing some pretty difficult if not astonishing feats, getting Brexit done, restoring this country's ability to make its own laws in Parliament.

"Have I told you this before? Never mind."

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After listing further achievements, including coronavirus vaccinations and support for Ukraine, the Prime Minister added: "I am now going to hand over the controls seamlessly to someone else.

"I don't know who, but whoever it is, I can tell you this, I can reassure you of this, that the great Rolls-Royce twin engines of this Conservative Government will roar on.

"Fantastic public services. A dynamic free market economy. Each boosting the other and developing, what's the word I want, millions of tons of trust.

"And there could be no better example of that relationship and that symbiosis between government and the private sector, than the aviation industry."

Later adding: ""I leave it to you to imagine who at this stage I would like to send into orbit.

"Perhaps a volunteer can be found from the green benches of Parliament.

"I leave that entirely to you, into your speculation."

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Labour has criticised the PM after he missed two COBRA meetings on the heatwave and called for him to "turn up for work" as he is set to be absent from a third briefing today.

But Kit Malthouse, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, said it was a "very unfair criticism" telling LBC: "It’s literally my job to chair Cobra.

"The Civil Contingencies Secretariat sits in my department."