Boris Johnson’s first campaign appearance: fact checked

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson made his first appearance [12:35] in the 2024 general election campaign last night with a little over a day to go before polling opens on Thursday. Here, we’ve fact checked some of his key claims on Brexit, a so-called “supermajority” and defence spending.

Speaking about Brexit Mr Johnson claimed “that national independence was vital when it came to approving Covid vaccines faster than any EU country”. This is a familiar claim dating back to 2020 which we have written about a number of times. This isn’t correct in terms of regulatory approval. Under European law, the UK was permitted to act independently to approve the vaccine in an emergency.

Discussing the polls ahead of the election Mr Johnson said “we are about to give Labour a supermajority.” As we’ve said a number of times, the term “supermajority” has no specific meaning in the UK parliamentary system. The Institute for Government says that in parliamentary terms the difference between an 80-seat majority (which the Conservative party won in the 2019 election) and a 200-seat majority is “not material”.

Talking about the government’s Rwanda policy, which Labour has said it would not continue, Mr Johnson said this would happen “just as it is being imitated by governments around the world”. This isn’t quite right. While other European countries have expressed an interest in processing asylum seekers in a third country, based on reports we have seen this is not the same as the UK’s Rwanda scheme.

Discussing what a Labour government might look like, Mr Johnson said they will be “whacking up taxes on pensions”. This seems to refer to a Conservative claim we’ve seen a lot over the election campaign, that retirement tax would be introduced under Labour. But this is based on forecasts showing that under current government policy, which Labour has said it would maintain, the state pension is set to rise above the personal allowance for the first time. The Conservatives have said they would re-establish a higher personal allowance for pensioners, so the state pension does not exceed the income tax threshold, a policy they’ve called the ‘Triple Lock Plus’.

Mr Johnson concluded by claiming that Labour refuses to commit to “spending 2.5% of our GDP on defence”. This isn’t quite true. The Labour party has said it is committed to increasing defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, but it has not set out a specific timescale to meet this target, unlike the Conservative government which has said it would do so by 2030.