He just couldn’t resist a nationalist flourish boasting about how the UK is best placed in the world to identify new viruses. He simply can’t abandon the jingoism for a moment
Does anyone know the lyrics to ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’
.@bbclaurak asks how Johnson could have declared cancelling Christmas ‘inhuman’ three days ago when he’s just cancelled it now
Could it possibly be that Johnson simply doesn’t know what he’s doing and that, consequently, the British public can have no faith or confidence at all in what he tells them?
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The Christmas row highlights a key problem that we have never really discussed: what should be firm guidance and what should be law.
The government relaxed the rules around Christmas because it knew people would break them and it didn’t want to criminalise vast swathes of the population - partly because (you presume) it would embolden people to break more rules, more often, afterwards.
But this is exactly what it’s been doing since the start of the pandemic: criminalising people for gathering in gardens, criminalising them for having sex, criminalising them for chatting to another group in a park.
Very few people in Britain know about Western Sahara but its refugee camps are the second-longest operating in the world (after the Palestinian ones) and the frozen conflict is always at risk of unfreezing. This is a major provocation and completely unacceptable.
No country in the world has formally accepted Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara. The UN lists it as a non-self-governing territory and has been waiting to implement a referendum there since 1988. This decision cannot, must not, stand.
#PMQs. Surely, surely, Starmer will have to ask *something* about Brexit. Will revert.
Johnson outright lying about EU’s demands on LPF and claiming Britain is the only country in the world to be denied full sovereignty over its waters. He knows UK is in fact bound by UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and it’s not about sovereignty but access, but doesn’t care
Johnson making some bullshit joke about Starmer beaming in from his ‘spiritual home’ of Islington. That’s actually where Johnson himself lived until recently. Starmer lives in Camden.
Starmer begins #PMQs by listing the five promises Johnson made in his foreword to the ministerial code, and asks how many have been kept. Turns out, none of them. Johnson blathers some bullshit.
Extraordinary really. Johnson says he makes no apology for standing by the woman just found guilty of bullying. Outrageously suggests Labour is attacking her because she’s been doing her job so well. In other words, bullying gets a free pass. #PMQs
Laugh out loud moment as the Speaker says he’ll decide what a reasonable remark is, not Johnson - and threatens to mute him. No love lost there.
Oh great. It’s #PMQs. Labour MP begins by asking PM to confirm he won’t cut the aid budget, as has been reported. Johnson responds by mentioning how ‘world-leading’ we are on solving the world’s problems, and refuses to rule out any such cut at all.
Starmer and Johnson trade barbs on devolution. ‘Greatest threat to the Union is the PM himself,’ says Starmer. ‘Taking back control has meant taking it from the Scottish people.’ Never a truer word spoken. #PMQs
Johnson bizarrely claims that Tony Blair never foresaw the ‘separatist’ threat. Would someone like to tell him that the SNP was in fact winning seats for decades before Blair became PM? #PMQs
Extraordinary moment at the start of #PMQs: Johnson refuses to support Starmer’s assertion that it’s not election candidates who decide which ballots must count. His moral and political cowardice knows no bounds.
Meanwhile he blathers some bullshit about not being responsible for the delay in acting or the lives that will be lost as a result. He’ll never change and we’ll all pay the price. #PMQs
Unbelievable. Johnson paves the way for extending lockdown by saying it’s the Commons which will decide - as though his thoughts and policies are a mere irrelevance. A naked and extravagant attempt to deflect responsibility even for him. #PMQs