Freshly Elected as UK's Next PM, Boris Johnson Pledges Full Fiber Broadband Bonanza

The UK will shortly have a new prime minister after the Conservative Party membership overwhelmingly voted to elect Boris Johnson as their new party leader, passing over his sole rival for the post, Jeremy Hunt. From a report: Johnson received 92,135 votes, a full 45,497 more than Hunt. He replaces Theresa May who announced she would step down in May after failing to achieve backing from parliament for her EU withdrawal deal -- the second PM to be topped by Brexit in just under three years. Whether Johnson can outlast even May's brief tenure very much remains to be seen. [...]

Giving his Conservative leadership acceptance speech this afternoon there was little of policy substance on show from Johnson. In his usual showman style, he preferred to stroke sitting Tory egos with a confection of positive projections and feel-good sentiments -- principally about 'getting brexit done' (though nothing on how he will actually get it done). He also dropped a few enthusiastic words vis-a-vis infrastructure, education and broadband -- going longest on the latter by claiming that "fantastic full fiber broadband" would be "sprouting in every household," before falling back on the safe and fuzzy ground of non-specific cheerleading of party and country. On the surface the fiber broadband pledge looks like a rinse and repeat of an existing government policy -- announced in last year's digital strategy -- to put all UK households in reach of fibre to the premise (FTTP) by 2033.