LONDON - British Prime Minister Boris
Johnson said he was nervous about his narrowing lead in opinion
polls ahead of Thursday's election but pledged to deliver a
"transformative" Brexit on Jan. 31 that would allow lower
immigration.
The Dec. 12 election will decide the fate of Brexit and the
world's fifth largest economy with a stark choice between
Johnson's pro-market Conservatives and the socialist-led
opposition Labour Party.
"Brexit is the most radical and profound change to the
management of this country," Johnson told Sky, adding that he
would lead the United Kingdom out of the EU on Jan. 31 if he won
a majority in the 650-seat parliament.
"Brexit is indispensable - you can't move forward without
Brexit," said Johnson, the face of the 'out' campaign in the
2016 referendum who won the top job in July after Prime Minister
Theresa May failed to deliver Brexit on time.
Voting begins at 0700 GMT on Thursday and polls close at
2200, when an exit poll will give the first indication of who
has won. Johnson will likely need more than 320 seats to ensure
he can stay prime minister and ratify the Brexit deal he struck
in October.
Opinion polls, which largely failed to predict the 2016
referendum result or May's loss of her majority in the 2017 snap
election, show Johnson leads Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn,
though the lead has narrowed in recent weeks.
Asked if he was nervous about narrowing polls, Johnson said:
"Of course, we are fighting for every vote. I think that this is
a critical moment for this country."
Four opinion polls published on Saturday put the lead of
Johnson's Conservative Party over the Labour Party at between
eight and 15 points.
No major poll shows Corbyn, a committed socialist who wants
to bring swathes of the British economy into state ownership and
raise taxes on the financiers of London, will win.
But Labour could still lead a minority government if it
deprives Johnson of a majority as few other parties are willing
to prop up a Johnson government. Labour proposes negotiating a
new deal and then holding another EU referendum.
Johnson dodged a question on if he would resign if he failed
to win a majority and dismissed questions suggesting that after
nearly a decade of Conservative-led rule, he was offering little
to voters beyond Brexit.
"Trust in politics has been undermined," he said. "It's been
undermined by people who for three and a half years... promised
to deliver Brexit and then didn't."
Echoing the Leave campaign pledges of the 2016 referendum,
Johnson promised lower immigration with a points-based
Australian-style system.
"Numbers will come down because we'll be able to control the
system in that way," Johnson said, adding that his focus would
be cutting down on unskilled migration, but that there would be
scope for high skilled and other workers to come to Britain.
When asked by Sky what the naughtiest thing he was ready to
admit to was, Johnson initially asked advisers for suggestions
before saying:
"I think, I, you know, I may sometimes, when I was riding a
bicycle every day, which I used to do, I may sometimes have not
always have obeyed the law about cycling on the pavement."