Former PM of Australia comes out punching...for Britain!

PLENTY of politicians are described as "pugnacious" but former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott knows what it is like to take a punch in the boxing ring.

- David Williamson

A prospective Catholic priest talked the exuberant future leader into taking up boxing when they were students at Oxford.

In front of a frenzied audience in the town hall in March 1982, he won his debut bout within 45 seconds and clinched his university's victory over Cambridge.

That willingness to jump into a scrap has defined his political career. He now wants the people of the UK to wrestle their country free from a political elite which he says has let them down badly.

Mr Abbott, a 67-year-old father of three daughters, talks of his love for Britain with a passion rarely matched by Westminster's politicians.

"No country on Earth has had more impact on the modern world than Britain," he enthuses. "Britain has provided the world's common language, the mother of parliaments, the industrial revolution, the emancipation of minorities, most of the world's sports-no country on Earth is more capable of standing on its own two feet." But the London-born Aussie argues the nation has been failed by its leaders and it is now up to ordinary Britons to rescue their country decline.

He does not hesitate to take a swing at the "declinist defeatist Europeand obsessed British establishment".

Setting out the he problems, says: "The economy has been stagnant, standards of living have started to decline, productivity has been falling, immigra tion has been out of control, tax and regulation has been increasing government has become weaker because the elected and accountable politicians have handed over too much power to unelected and unaccountable judges and bureaucrats.