PANTS! Pants to coronavirus, pants to Keir Starmer, and pants to bereaved relatives! Wait, what? Did Boris Johnson make a joke about underwear when asked if he had a message for those whose loved ones had died from Covid-19?
Yes, yes he did.
The PM chose this moment to tell the leader of the opposition that he needed to get his position straight, because currently “he has more briefs than Calvin Klein”. I’m sure that’s exactly the sort of thing those bereaved relatives were hoping to hear. They were doubtlessly needing a laugh.
Delivering this kind of cutting-edge stand-up must require plenty of rehearsal, which would explain why Johnson hasn’t got around to scrutinising the latest Academy of Medical Sciences report.
This was a report the Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor asked them to produce, setting out a worst-case scenario for autumn/winter Covid spikes and making recommendations about how best the UK can prepare.
When he declined to comment on whether he would be accepting the recommendations in full, Starmer pressed him on whether he had actually read it. “I’m of course aware of the report,” came the shameless reply, met with howls of derision from the benches but – oddly – barely a shrug from his opponent.
It’s almost as though the Labour leader just accepts this is par for the course for the PM, and feels it would somehow be bad form to make political capital about him not bothering to read a few dozen pages warning about 120,000 potential deaths.
Starmer had got off to a weak start by condemning the lack of government support for the aviation sector – a poorly timed question given Virgin Atlantic has just announced a privately funded rescue deal – before challenging Johnson to condemn
the treatment of British Airways workers by, erm, quoting an email Johnson had written to BA staff in which he agreed with what Starmer was now saying.
After being scolded by the Speaker for shouting in Starmer’s face, Johnson chortled to himself and gazed up at the (presumably empty) public
gallery during Ian Blackford’s question about the Brexit power grab, as he geared up for a bit of finger-pointing and flapping.
While Blackford issued a typically passionate defence of devolution, in doing so he set up a mile-wide open goal into which Johnson easily could shoot his favourite soundbites about respecting referendum results and rejecting the rule of unelected bureaucrats.
Might the SNP’s Westminster leader not achieve more by asking non-rhetorical questions?
Everyone knows that Johnson is a “bumbling shambles” of a leader, but it would be worth spelling out the specific threat to devolution in Scotland and grilling him on it, rather than just reminding everyone that Scotland doesn’t want Brexit at all.
Perhaps the PM could have been asked if removing £3 billion from the Scottish economy in two years was a price worth paying for “getting Brexit done” by the end of this year.
Given he had spent much of the session fiddling with his pocket, bumping his folder off the dispatch box and mumbling to himself, that might have put his gas at a peep.
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