Boris Johnson joked about sending critical Conservative MPs into space and recalled making a “fantastic loop” in an RAF typhoon as he reflected on his position as prime minister in a farewell speech.
While the race to replace him as prime minister was slowing down in Westminster, Johnson told attendees at the Farnborough air show that after “three happy years in the cabin and after doing some pretty tough feats, if not amazing “,” will deliver the controls “. no problem to anyone else, “but he added,” I don’t know who. “
In a typically Johnsonian discourse full of jokes, metaphors, and rogue historical references, he compared the pace of technological change to aviation to a struggle between a “tyrannosaurus rex and a killer whale.”
Describing the flight he took from RAF Coningsby to Lincolnshire last Thursday, he said: “Straight as a vertical firecracker, we slid the evil ties of the Earth, as the poet Magee says, and danced the skies with silver wings of laughter “.
The wing commander on board asked him if he wanted to do so, but Johnson checked to see if he was sure because the plane cost £ 75 million and there were only 148 in the RAF fleet. “Don’t worry, you can’t break it,” they told him.
“I thought, ‘Oh well, famous last words,'” the prime minister said, explaining how he maneuvered the shift lever to make “a roll of ailerons,” “a fantastic loop in the loop,” and then “something.” more complicated than being called a barrel roller “. .
He said, “We started throwing a few Gs, as they say, and when I came back to consciousness I could see the sea getting closer.” Johnson recalled the vision this gave him of wind farms and his fondness for “clean, green energy” that would help end “any dependence” on oil and gas imported from Russia.
“That dream must have lasted a while because my partner said,‘ Hey, now I’m regaining control, ’and we happily headed home,” Johnson said.
He asked how the Typhoon would go against the first RAF plane he flew, an F-15E Strike Eagle, 25 years ago in South Carolina and compared it to the question of “what would happen in a fight between a tyrannosaurus rex and a killer whale. ”
Johnson said, “They said it wouldn’t be a contest.”
In an ironic inquiry with his critics, including several Conservative leadership candidates, the prime minister spoke of his hope that the UK would launch its first satellite, adding: “And I leave it to you to imagine who , at this stage, I would like to send him into orbit. Maybe a volunteer could be found from the green benches of parliament. I leave it entirely to your speculations. “
Johnson had a serious message to deliver, stressing that given that temperatures in England are “higher than the Sahara,” there was a significant need to address what he called the “carbon-welcoming tea that is warming our planet to to destruction, “caused in part by aircraft emissions.
He said: “We know we have to fix it; we know time is running out. “