Thread by @PaulbernalUK

A short thread about Boris Johnson, the media, and Jeremy Corbyn. Boris Johnson won the election. Lots of reasons why - but one that keeps getting suggested is that it was a choice between Johnson and Corbyn, and wasn’t Corbyn terrible... 1/n

This is the reason generally given by people who supported Boris Johnson and are now beginning to realise it was a catastrophic error, and by people in the media who now spend their time attacking Johnson, and have forgotten what they did in the election. 2/n

The thing is, it’s a false argument from the outset. The choice was never between Johnson and Corbyn in any real sense. The choice was qualitatively different. It was between giving Johnson a stonking majority and electing a minority Corbyn coalition government. 3/n

Corbyn was never going to get a majority. Under no circumstances was that ever going to be a possibility - so yes, he could have been in Number 10, but only with the help of the SNP, the Lib Dems and the Greens and PC. That’s a different story. 4/n

So whatever you thought about Corbyn - and I’m not going to get into that here - you weren’t ever going to give him the power to do his worst. The way you *did* give Johnson the power to do *his* worst. And by God is he doing his worst. 5/n

The ‘it’s Johnson or Corbyn’ narrative which was all over the media, and all over the campaigns of both the Tories and the Lib Dems, was a false one to start with. And we see the consequences now. This is what that narrative did. 6/n

And if anyone seriously thinks that a Corbyn government dependent on Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP would have been anywhere near as catastrophic at dealing with either COVID or Brexit as Boris Johnson has been, they need to take a long hard look at themselves. 7/n

So no, voting for Boris Johnson wasn’t a lesser of two evils choice, even if you detested Corbyn. It was something quite different. Personally I think the media is the biggest culprit in all of this, but that’s just an opinion. We all have them. /ends