Today, the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave a funny, but thin speech at the Conservatives conference in Manchester. He did not offer a substantial Brexit plan.
Boris Johnson praised several sectors were the UK was leading or co-leading, including electric cars, batteries and fusion energy. However, the last exemple lauded by the PM could not withstand the scrutiny of British media. They were quick to reveal that the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Oxfordshire has as its core technology a reactor named the Joint European Torus (JET). 88% of the JET running costs are paid for by the European Commission. The JET chief executive, Professor Ian Chapman said about it, when its contract was extended until the end of 2020, the date the Brexit transition period is supposed to end: “JET has been a shining example of scientific co-operation between EU members…”
Boris Johnson said in his Tory conference speech: “Thanks to British technology there is a place in Oxfordshire that could soon be the hottest place in the solar system: the tokamak fusion reactor in Culham. And if you go there you will learn that this country has a global lead in fusion research, and that they are on the verge of creating commercially viable miniature fusion reactors for sale around the world, delivering virtually unlimited zero-carbon power. Now I know they have been on the verge for some time – it is a pretty spacious kind of verge – but remember it was only a few years ago when people were saying that solar power would never work in cloudy old Britain and that wind turbines would not pull the skin off a rice pudding.”
Not only the claim of a British fusion technology is wrong, also the claim of being “on the verge of creating commercially viable miniature fusion reactors for sale around the world” is far from the truth. In Culham, the scientists say that electricity produced by nuclear fusion is still some 30 to 40 years away.
In his Manchester Tory conference speech, Boris Johnson made some funny remarks about the speaker of the Lower House eating kangaroo testicles, about his mother (Johnson’s mom) voting Leave as well as Jeremy Corbyn and Venezuela. Only the last point is relevant. The Labour leader Corbyn is indeed a fringe politician who admired the Soviet Union as well as Chavez and Maduro in Venezuela. Recently, knowing that all of this is toxic, Corbyn refers more to the “Swedish model”, forgetting to mention that it dates back to the 1960s and went wrong to the point that even the Swedish Social-Democrats have abandoned it. Furtermore, at the September 2019 Labour conference in Brighton, Corbyn and his fellow Socialists adopted a radical left-wing agenda including a 32-hour working week and other crazy projects.
No wonder LibDem leader Jo Swinson is opposed to Jeremy Corbyn leading a government of national unity formed by the opposition and Tory rebels. She proposed the pro-European ex-chancellor Ken Clarke as one possible candidate to lead a temporary unity cabinet. So far, the opposition talks have ended in a deadlock. The Labour Shadow Chancellor and Corbyn’s right-hand, John McDonnell, insists that Corbyn should lead a transition government once the unfit-to-lead Boris Johnson ousted.
Beauty items at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
Boris Johnson (official photo as Foreign Secretary). Photo credit: www.gov.uk
Article added on October 2, 2019 at 16:55 Berlin time.
