Boris Johnson has predicted a baby boom if Britain “gets Brexit done” by voting the Tories this week.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, the prime minister claimed that “Cupid’s darts will fly” and “romance will bloom across the whole nation” when the process gets underway.
It is not the first time he has made such a claim.
While Mayor of London he said that the “euphoria” following Team GB’s success in the 2012 Olympics had led to a rise in births.
He told the newspaper: “There was one after the Olympics, as I correctly prophesied in a speech in 2012, it was quite amazing. There was a big baby boom.”
In London, the figures also show a small drop in births – from 134,186 recorded for 2012 to 128,332 for 2013.
While there were 729,674 live births in England and Wales in 2012, the most in over four decades, according to the Office for National Statistics, the Olympics happened too late to affect any 2012 births.
The baby boom in 2012 was linked to a number of factors, including migration, greater fertility among older women and shifting social attitudes about parenthood, as well as to grandchildren of those born in the post-World War II baby boom reaching childbearing age.
Johnson remained elusive when asked whether he will contribute to the surge in babies.
The father of five, who is in a relationship with Carrie Symonds, 31, kept schtum on his own post-Brexit offspring.
“I am not going to make any demographic projections”, he said.
“I don’t comment about that sort of thing.”
