It was vital for Ukraine to prevail,Johnson said,to avoid not only “cruel and chauvinist tyranny” in that country,but to ward off “a new dark ages of geopolitics in which might is seen to be right,and the world’s autocrats believe they have the upper hand”.
“After decades of being pushed around,the world’s democracies will finally be sending a signal that we are willing to stand up for our values,” he said. “That signal will be heard wherever an autocrat is meditating an attack on a neighbouring democracy.”
To that end,Johnson said both the UK and Australia should give more to Ukraine,and despaired at US Republican efforts to block further American aid. He also called for a bigger second pillar of the AUKUS pact by which Australia,the UK and the US would share technology regarding artificial intelligence,quantum computing and semiconductors.
“We need AUKUS and we need more AUKUS because the threats,I’m afraid,are growing,” he said. “What we’re up against now,the Western liberal democracies,is the great global continuum of evil. It’s an arm wrestle,and we must prevail.”
‘I’m not sure I’m quite as enthusiastic about net zero as Boris is,but I won’t go into that.’
John Howard
Johnson delivered the annual John Howard Lecture for the Menzies Research Centre,a Liberal Party think tank,at Sydney’s Fullerton Hotel,where he was introduced by former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison as “someone who dearly loves Australia” and the leader who “returned sovereignty to Great Britain” by delivering Brexit.
In his speech,Johnson praised Howard as the greatest living centre-right leader in the world,and said Britain needed to deploy Howard’s well-known dictum on asylum seekers that “we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come”.