Boris Johnson pledges to prioritise NHS after election victory

Boris Johnson has said he wants to “let the healing begin” over Brexit, pitching himself as the prime minister of a one-nation government after winning the largest Conservative majority since Margaret Thatcher.

Speaking outside Downing Street, Johnson said the NHS would be his top priority in government, and that the country needed “a permanent break” from the issue of Brexit after three-and-a-half years of wrangling.

The prime minister gave his speech a few hours after visiting the Queen to inform her he had the support to lead a government, after the Conservatives won an 80-seat majority on previously Labour-held seats across the north of England, the Midlands and Wales.

default

After a disastrous night for Labour, Jeremy Corbyn said he was “very sad” about the result and signalled he would step down in the early part of next year, although he stopped short of apologising.

Johnson acknowledged that the Tory victory, which is the largest since 1987, had been won with the votes of some traditional Labour supporters who may have been anxious about their choice.

In a direct message to those people, he said: “To all those who voted for us for the first time, all those whose pencils may have wavered over the ballot and who heard the voices of their parents and their grandparents whispering anxiously in their ears, I say thank you for the trust you have placed in us and in me.”

Earlier, Johnson had sounded a triumphalist tone about Brexit, saying the case for a second referendum was now over and those with pro-EU megaphones should “put a sock in it”.

However, he changed tone in his mid-afternoon address, saying he wanted remainers to know that “we in this one-nation Conservative government will never ignore your good and positive feelings – of warmth and sympathy towards the other nations of Europe”.

And despite his main message of the election having been about “getting Brexit done”, Johnson insisted his main priority would now be the NHS – an institution that voters have traditionally trusted Labour more to protect.

“I frankly urge everyone on either side of what was, after three-and-a-half years, after all an increasingly arid argument, to find closure and to let the healing begin,” Johnson said. “Because I believe, in fact I know, because I have heard it loud and clear from every corner of the country, that the overwhelming priority of the British people now is that we should focus above all on the NHS.”

Johnson will turn his attention to a cabinet reshuffle early next week, a Queen’s speech on Thursday and attempting to pass part of his Brexit bill by Christmas.

He will have little trouble getting parliamentary support for the deal, as his gamble of triggering a snap poll in the hope of winning leave-supporting seats paid off, with a net gain of 47 Tory MPs compared with 2017.

The former mining constituency of Blyth Valley, in Northumberland, was an early Conservative gain, bearing out the exit poll’s prediction of a large Tory majority. It had been held by Labour since its creation and was No 116 on the Tory target list.

Scores of other long-held Labour seats, including Workington, Wrexham, Great Grimsby and Bishop Auckland, turned blue as the night went on, and the Conservatives secured a majority just after 5am on Friday.

The Tories ended up with 43.6% of the vote, up slightly on 2017, while Labour was on 32.2% – a fall of 7 percentage points since two years ago.

The Liberal Democrats also had a disastrous night as they failed to make headway and lost their leader, Jo Swinson.