BORIS BACKERS NEED TO STOP BRIEFING THE MEDIA, SAYS SHADOW JUSTICE MINISTER

SHADOW Justice Minister Kieran Mullan has appealed to supporters of Boris Johnson to stop briefing the media about a potential comeback.

Asked if Johnson could revive the fortunes of the Conservative Party, he told GB News: “ I don’t think that’s a conversation I’ve been having with any of my colleagues.

“I think what we’re focused on is what the public wants us to be focused on, which is providing a critical opposition to Labour and all the damage that they’re doing to our economy and our country and putting forward our own policies and alternative positions.

“I think one of the messages I got from the last election was that the public wanted us to be focused on doing our jobs and not briefing and leaking and all that sort of stuff. I think anything like that is just not a helpful contribution to make.

“I’d urge any colleagues who are talking to the press about those sorts of things, as much as I know you guys want to talk to us about that sort of thing, it’s not helpful. I’m focused on getting the job done.”

Asked what the Tories would do differently to Labour in government, he said: “We wouldn’t have brought in this jobs tax, which is destroying growth in our economy. You’ll remember that Labour had inherited the fastest growing economy in the G7 from us with inflation below target, and what they’ve ended up doing is driving growth into the wall and now it’s creaking,

“The long-term projections are that it’s lower than it would have been under us. And the jobs tax is a perfect example if you’re an employer right now, not only are you having to think about who you can retain, you’re certainly not in a position to bring on new people.

“At the same time, you’ve got the threat down the line of Labour’s plans to make it even harder to run a small business when it comes to employment rights, employment law,. We want fair and reasonable employment law, but employers that I speak to already find that quite burdensome, and Labour threaten to take that even further.

“I don’t think there’s a single major business that supports those ideas. These are the kind of things that drive down growth, that means we have less taxes to pay for our public services. It’s disastrous for us all as public service users.”

On reports that the government has asked Kosovo to take small boat migrants and failed asylum seekers, he said: “I know people were very frustrated that we didn’t get the Rwanda plan operational as quickly as we would have liked, as I would have liked, but we did have in place a plan with a third country to take migrants as a deterrent, which even the National Crime Agency has said is vitally important.

“So, whilst I welcome any efforts to create an alternative deterrent, which Labour still have not done, what they should have done is make an attempt to operationalise and use that Rwanda policy that we had in place, a key difference between what Labour have talked about doing or what we plan to do.`”