It came as quite a shock when The Telegraph reported that Boris was now taking control of the Coronavirus crisis.
What he’d been doing up until now is beyond me. Maybe he thinks this absolves him for the litany of failures so far? It doesn’t.
If his organisation of correspondence is anything to go by then maybe let’s just leave Dom in charge, better the devil you know. During today’s PMQs three separate MPs said they had sent a letter to the PM of which none had been answered. Johnson couldn’t even track and trace a parcel from DHL, let alone a global pandemic.
Sir Keir, who was one of those scribes, said it was a private letter, and then proceeded to hold it up to the chamber. Since the PM didn’t bother to reply he is going to lob it on the internet now, in a political version of revenge porn, but not the kind the PM is used to.
Saboteurs
Today, once again, Starmer put Boris on the spot. Again, Johnson tried to dump Starmer in with the saboteurs.
It was the Labour leader having a go at the people who are trying to solve this crisis, which was the problem. The public don’t want to hear this negativity. The Coronavirus recovery, like Brexit, was being strangled by the opposition. Starmer told the PM he was confusing scrutiny for attacks.
Johnson was trying to take back control of Coronavirus and Brexit in one go. ‘With good British common sense we will defeat this virus’, he announced. Was he referring to Covid-19 or dissenting political voices?
When the PM was put on the spot, on the subject of testing, it felt like he pulled the announcement out of thin air. All tests will be returned in 24 hours, apart from postal tests (a significant proportion) and other ‘insuperable issues’, so basically anything that delays it.
Regardless of the caveats by setting the 24 hour turnaround you could almost feel collective breakdown of the last remaining staff in the Health Department who have held on to their sanity during the pandemic.
Violent strain
Staying with a crisis that is spreading across the globe uncontrollably, the PM was asked numerous times to slam Donald Trump, but that was never going to happen. Even if Trump would admit that this violent strain came from a policeman’s knee on George Floyd.
Johnson said you have to protest legally but didn’t speak about the heavy-handed police response. Well if you’re the man who spent £300,000 on water canons to be used on protestors, which ended up being sold for scrap, you probably wouldn’t would you?
You have to wonder if the PM would prefer to take a knee with the Black Lives Matter protestors or prostrate himself at the feet of Donald Trump? Answers on the back of a post card, that he will, of course, never read.
Through the MP hole
Well that is all over now, Ress-Mogg has forced people back to Parliament to conduct their work. Starmer pointed out that if any other employer did this it would seen as discrimination under the Equalities Act.
Part of Ress-Mogg’s argument to bring MPs back to the Commons regardless of illness, age or distance to travel, was a convention that was set in 1340. In 1340 a law was drawn up by the Teutonic Knights for their long settled Prussian district of Pomesania, I can’t imagine that has been mentioned in any parliament anywhere…since probably spring 1341 at the latest.
Rees-Mogg got his way and has dragged Parliamentarians back to where he wants them to be, namely the Middle Ages.
Related – PM’s wrap to Committee – *I got under 21 mins before Dom has got to go*
Related – PMQs – Johnson feigns ignorance as he lumps Starmer in with “experts”
Related – PMQs – Johnson’s court wishing he had stayed at home…or alert
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