"This sort of dross just floats to the top in Johnson’s Britain. It’s so bloody depressing!" wrote one exasperated Twitter user.

It comes after reports emerged that his mum had begged for him to receive urgent mental health treatment in the months before the massacre.

The dangers of crossing the Channel were again laid bare on Thursday when a man died after a boat with 36 people on board, including families, began sinking 13 miles off the coast of Dunkirk.

'Tory councillor wasting public money... why are we surprised?' wrote one person on Twitter.

Police were called and a stand-off between shooting parties and the saboteurs took place on several moors.

“They have a lot of time to make up for," said Benny Hunter, project co-ordinator at Da’aro Youth Project.

'How much would it cost to run a full page advert in The Express that just has a montage of all their old inaccurate stories?', wrote one Twitter user.

“It is a tacit – explicit really – admission of failure. Of a gross, a dismal failure of geostrategy and of statecraft," said Lord Richards, a former chief of defence staff.

Sarah Woolnough said the proposed takeover would see “a company that has profited from the devastation smoking causes to make even more money by providing treatments for the illnesses they have caused”.