The linchpin of the Brexit campaign during the EU referendum in 2016 was the promise that £350 million would be saved each week. Instead of paying for the European Union bureaucracy, these funds were to be diverted to a cash-strapped National Health Service.
Remember the bus patrolling London with this message written all over it?
The promise was finally exposed as hollow on Wednesday night when MPs voted down a motion to divert this amount to the NHS. Even foreign secretary Boris Johnson voted against it, although he was at the forefront of the Leave campaign which touted this figure.
Last week’s vote was prompted by Labour MP for Streatham, Chuka Umunna, chair of the Vote Leave Watch group, which monitors the outcome of the campaign promises made by Vote Leave. He called it “an absolute disgrace Leave MPs refused to put their money where their mouth is.”
It was a busy 24 hours for the foreign secretary. On top of this vote he also gave up his US citizenship after a row with the Internal Revenue Service over tax relating to the sale of a property he owned in 2015.
What will Mr Johnson renounce next – his plum job as secretary of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs? Perhaps not.
“Latvijas un Apvienotās Karalistes ārlietu ministri: mūsu valstu sadarbība un attiecības kļūst vēl ciešākas” by Latvian Foreign Ministry is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND
