The Telegraph has described Rishi Sunak’s decision to axe Boris Johnson’s national flagship as “another blow for Brexit Britain”.
With Leave-backing newspapers waking up to the realities of life outside the European Union, promises made ahead of the referendum have been unraveling in front of our eyes.
A Tory pledge to scrub Britain’s statute book of unwanted EU laws suffered a major setback this week after ministers discovered 1,400 more pieces of legislation.
And the new prime minister, Sunak, has been forced to shelve other promises as he faces up to the mounting deficit.
Responding to news that a replacement for the Royal Yacht Britannia will not be built, Christopher Hope said it is “Twitter 1, the Silent Majority 0” as the social media “headwinds” eventually prevailed.
“In the end the new national flagship was scuppered by a lack of backbone among politicians and a failure to rise above the Twitter mob and see what is best for Britain”, he said.
“Commissioning a replacement for Britannia would have allowed post-Brexit Britain to project soft power around the world and demonstrate the best of British engineering on a global stage.”
Unfortunately for him, that’s another Brexit promise on the scrapheap, with a very real possibility of more to follow.
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