It's started, the same old Tory terrorist's friend smear that did for Corbyn... https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-refuses-apologise-keir-22617577 I'm sure that Starmer is a smooth enough operator to deal with it but it proves that Johnson is rattled ATM.
PMQs are a waste of time. No questions answered and Johnson resumed his usual position in the gutter, spouting incoherent nonsense, just looking for a sound bite for the news or right wing papers to quote him on. The comment about the IRA was desperate to say the least. Time for the format to be changed. If the PM fails to address the question, allow the opposition to voice their concerns, about how badly the PM/government is acting, without response. A bit like a Free Hit in cricket. Also, with Johnson banging on about schools and work places being safe, why didn’t Starmer tell him to look around and explain the empty benches.
Johnson’s refusal to withdraw the remark about the IRA was disgraceful, especially as the Speaker had more or less told him to do so. Lindsay Hoyle also told Johnson to answer one of Starmer’s questions at one point, something I’ve never seen before. He totally ignored the Speaker, of course, which technically is holding Parliament in contempt. The current PM is of course no stranger to that offence, but if he continues to ignore instructions from the Speaker, perhaps Hoyle could expel him from the chamber? The wider issue is that this government is doing its best to make our sovereign Parliament irrelevant, by governing by diktat rather than democratic consent. This is backed up by the overwhelming support of the press and media, with the threat against the BBC licence fee made again today as part of that hegemony. The irony is that those who voted to leave the EU because they mistakenly thought that Parliament wasn’t the sovereign legislature of the UK will probably not even notice that sovereignty being replaced by direct rule by the executive.
Just to cheer you up and to make you even angrier with those who promoted Brexit and the gullible who voted for it. I just hope you are stock piling food otherwise you are going to be very hungry.
Talking of governments lying to the people, I just watched “Official Secrets” again as it’s free on Prime. I saw it at the cinema when it first came out and second time around it’s even more powerful. If you don’t know the story, it’s about Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley) an analyst at GCHQ, who in the lead up to the Iraq War in 2003 discovers a memo from the US NSA asking for detailed surveillance of UN Security Council delegates in order to dig up dirt to blackmail them into supporting a resolution backing the invasion. Gun decides to leak the memo to an anti-war friend who gives it, eventually, to a journalist at the Observer. They manage to verify the authenticity of the memo and publish it. Investigations take place at GCHQ and Gun confesses, and is, after nearly a year, charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act. She enlists Liberty to defend her, and as the trial approaches they discover that at the time of the memo, James Goldsmith, Blair’s Attorney General, was on record as believing the war would be illegal, but later changed his mind after being persuaded by George W Bush’s legal team. When the trial begins the Crown reveal that they cannot present any evidence against Gun, which means that the charges are dropped. Gun’s QC, Ben Emmerson, points out that the evidence would prove that the Iraq War was illegal all along, which was later found to be the case, especially as of course no weapons of mass destruction, the only conceivable justification for the war, were ever found. If you can, please watch it.
Faulty algorithm has replaced “Not me guv”. https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/p...dium=cpc&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=tlb
A great piece by John Crace picking apart Johnson’s meltdown at PMQ’s on Wednesday. “It was also a day for those watching PMQs to ask themselves what they had done to deserve a leader who is visibly falling apart week on week. There was never anything very clever about Boris: now there isn’t even anything funny. Of all the coronavirus joints, in all the towns in the world, he walks into ours.” https://www.theguardian.com/politic...AgpmOYPuselHapLwu0nOQ1Lz6jjvPhLEjWsfmzuLZ5gwE
