Brexit must not mean isolation: UK foreign secretary

By Ahmet Gurhan Kartal

LONDON

The number of immigrants coming into the U.K. must be reduced but skilled immigrants’ desire to come to Britain is a “compliment” to the nation, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said Sunday.

Speaking on the BBC, Johnson argued that Brexit would give the U.K. a chance to take back control of borders and large sums of money, not to be run by the EU law, and to be able to do free trade deals.

“Brexit must not mean Britain becoming closed in on itself,” he told journalist Andrew Marr.

“We are a dynamic global economy … We now have the chance to become [the] world’s leading campaigners and agitators for free trade.”

Reiterating one of the themes of the Brexit campaign, he added: “The crucial thing to understand is that very large sums of money will be coming back to this country, which will be capable of being spent on priorities … That would be one of the outcomes of the Brexit.”

Underlining that the 330,000 net immigrants who came to the U.K. last year was a very high number, Johnson said he favored lowering this number but also that the public should understand the sense in accepting skilled workers as immigrants.

“There is a sense in which the sheer desire of the world to come to this country, high-skilled workers, is a massive compliment and tribute to the U.K. economy.”

On Syria, Johnson reiterated that millions of people would never accept the rule of regime leader Bashar al-Assad.

Johnson previously said al-Assad was responsible for the “overwhelming majority” of 400,000 deaths during the five-year “slaughter” in Syria.

During a Friday speech at the Chatham House think-tank in London, Johnson said a new way of moving away from the Syrian president should be found, underlining that Syria should mean a united country and he could not “see that happening under Assad.”

Syria has been locked in a devastating civil war since early 2011, when the regime of President Bashar al-Assad cracked down on pro-democracy protests – which erupted as part of the "Arab Spring" uprisings – with unexpected ferocity.

Since then, hundreds of thousands of people are believed to have been killed and millions more displaced by the conflict.