In the long June days running up to the 2016 referendum on EU membership, Boris Johnson toured the country to promote the supposed benefits of Brexit. Wherever he went he drew large crowds. Leaving the European project, he told voters, would allow the UK to take back control of its money, its laws and its borders.
While the Vote Leave slogans cut through because they were simple (if often misleading), there were also high-minded constitutional themes, central to the great Johnson-led push for freedom. During a visit to Ipswich on 20 June 2016 he alluded to the most important, saying that staying in the EU would mean “the steady and miserable erosion of parliamentary democracy in this country”.
