‘How well has that gone?’: Nick Ferrari challenges Transport Secretary’s support for Boris Johnson in 2019

13 December 2022, 12:26

Nick questions Transport Secretary Mark Harper's early support for Boris Johnson's premiership.

“The economy’s crashed, nurses are about to go on strike, there are no trains, and we’ve got the slowest growth in the whole of Europe”, Nick Ferrari pointed out.

Nick Ferrari at Breakfast on LBC put Transport Secretary Mark Harper on the spot about his early support for Boris Johnson when he became Prime Minister in 2019.

“Can I read you a tweet that you put out three years ago to the day?” Nick began.

“You wrote the following:

‘Delighted to be reelected as part of a (much larger!!) Conservative team heading back to Parliament to #getbrexitdone and unleash Britain's potential under Boris Johnson’s leadership.’

“Secretary of State, how well has that gone?” Nick asked.

“The economy’s crashed, nurses are about to go on strike, there are no trains, and we’ve got the slowest growth in the whole of Europe. That’s the potential under Boris Johnson is it?” he continued.

Mr Harper replied: “Two rather large things happened which you haven’t mentioned. We had a global COVID pandemic which meant that we had the biggest contraction of the economy…”

“As did Germany”, said Nick.

“...Of 300 years…”, the Secretary of State continued.

“As did France, as did the United States”, Nick cut in again.

“...And we’ve now got a war in Ukraine”, the Transport Secretary finished.

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Mr Harper added: “Both of those things were not in our manifesto in 2019 and they’re things we’ve had to deal with.

“I make no apology for the huge amount of support that Rishi Sunak put in place when he was Chancellor, which meant that we saved millions of jobs, we saved thousands of businesses.”

“Despite all the challenges that we undoubtedly face today from the inflation caused by Putin's war in Ukraine we actually have very low unemployment so huge challenges faced by the government, but I think huge challenges dealt with very successfully.

“Have we got a lot more to do? Yes we have.”