PM press conference at EU Council: 17 October 2019
Prime Minister Boris Johnson held a press conference following the announcement of a new Brexit deal in Brussels.
I particularly thank Michel Barnier and his team. I thank Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the Commission, for all the personal effort that he has put in to getting this deal done. And I want to stress that this is a great deal for our country, for the UK.
I also believe it is a very good deal for our friends in the EU. And what it means is that we in the UK can come out of the EU as one United Kingdom - England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, together, and it means we can decide our future together, we can take back control, as the phrase goes, of our money, our borders, our laws, together.
And we will be able to do free trade agreements around the world. We can also build now, after three and a half years, we can build now on our relations with our friends and partners in the EU.
And it’ll be a very exciting period now, as it were, to get to the positive side of that project - the extraction having been done, the building now begins.
And I’m very confident that when my colleagues in Parliament study this agreement, that they will want to vote for it on Saturday, and then in succeeding days.
This is our chance in the UK as democrats to get Brexit done, and come out on October the 31st. This is our chance to focus on our priorities, the people’s priorities, the NHS, putting 20,000 police on the streets, lifting up funding of education across the country, the biggest expansion of the living wage.
Those are the things I think the people of our country want us to be focusing on in addition to Brexit. We have been at this now, as I say, for three and a half years.
It hasn’t always been an easy experience for the UK. It has been long, it has been painful, it has been divisive, and now is the moment for us as a country to come together.
Now this is the moment for our parliamentarians to come together and get this thing done, and, as I say, to begin building a new and progressive partnership with our EU friends, with whom, of course, we share so many priorities.