Today Boris Johnson sidestepped calls from Labour to rule out tax rises for families and businesses in next week’s Budget. It comes as a senior diplomat labelled the PM a lair. Something he has lost employment over in the past.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer insisted “now is not the time” for tax increases given the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
But Prime Minister Mr Johnson took aim at previous Labour Party policy and Labour-run councils.
Speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions, Sir Keir told the Commons: “Turning to next week’s Budget, now I don’t expect the Prime Minister to pre-empt what’s in the Budget. If I want that, I can read it on the front page of The Times.
“But can the Prime Minister at least agree with me today that now is not the time for tax rises for families and for businesses?”
He couldn’t answer but was he lying?
‘Unrepentant and inveterate liar’
Boris Johnson is “an unrepentant and inveterate liar” who is not subject to the same rules as other claims Sylvie Bermann, the French ambassador to the UK during the Brexit vote, who was scathing in her assessment of the PM.
Johnson, she claims, comes from an Eton and Oxford University class that believes they are entitled to use language to provoke.
In her book Goodbye Britannia, Bermann described the psyche that led to the UK leaving the European Union. She describes “the partisans of Brexit as reciting a history in which the UK is never defeated, never invaded”.
Bermann suggests a country that considers it singlehandedly won the second world war, liberating the continent and deserving of gratitude.
She points out that around 22 million Russians died in the battle to defeat Germany in the second world war. She says “this does not disturb the discourse of the Brexiters who peddle the myth that the UK liberated Europe alone and needs no one”.
In the book, she also asks: “How this country whose influence had been decisive in Brussels, which insolently rolled out the red carpet for French entrepreneurs and which Xi Jinping had elected in October 2015 as the gateway to Europe, at the dawn of a golden period, how has it undertaken to scuttle itself?”
She predicted: “Boris Johnson’s temptation will be to hide the bill for Brexit under the Covid carpet, valued at more than £200bn for 2020, almost as much as the United Kingdom’s total contribution to the European Union since its accession in 1973, which was £215bn.”
She said it was inevitable that the UK will struggle now to find influence outside the EU, and has a Scottish independence referendum hanging over its head.
Related: PMQs 24th Feb – Starmer’s cautious but irreversible journey to the dark side