ON Sunday, Boris Johnson bravely came on The Andrew Marr Show to bravely tell us how he was bravely standing up to terrorists, even though he’s too feart to stand up to Andrew Neil. And what did we learn from this act of valour?
We learned that our lion-hearted Prime Minister is fearless when it comes to dealing with probing, insightful, and incisive interviewing, that he is valiant and courageous in his determination not to shirk from the responsibility of giving full and truthful answers to the questions that the whole UK is desperate to ask him. Well, up to a point.
The Prime Minister is fearless and brave in his resolution to give full answers to questions as long as they are questions such as: “Who’s your favourite Doctor Who?”, “Where are you going for your holidays?” or, “Scones – jam or cream first?” And they are not questions like, “How many children do you have?” or “Why won’t you release the report into Russian meddling in UK politics?” or “Just how much have the Conservatives received in donations from Russian oligarchs?”
These types of questions will be met with a fnaugh-waugh-fnaugh-get-Brexit-done, several ums, a few ahs, quite a bit of stuttering, and then an attack on Jeremy Corbyn.
READ MORE: 'Democratic outrage': SNP hit out at Johnson's BBC appearance
We also learned why Johnson was happy to be interviewed by Marr but not by Neil, although to be fair most of us had already worked that out well in advance.
It would be because Johnson was able to speak over the top of Andrew Marr without being deflected too badly from his serial fnaugh-fnaughing and without being put on the spot for his non-answers to Marr’s questions. The only question that we got a clear answer to during this interview was the one that was never asked, that would be the question about why Johnson has been so desperate to avoid any serious scrutiny during this election campaign.
Most of the questioning went along these lines: “Why have have the Tories closed 500 libraries?” asked Marr. “I love libraries,” replied the mendaciously tousled one. Then he went on to say, “We can only invest in libraries when we get the economy really motoring.”
Which is rather like saying that you can only have an education when your parents can afford it, or you can only have an operation when you can pay for it. Although come to think of it the first of those is already the case thanks to the Conservatives introducing tuition fees, and the second will most likely be the case after Johnson does a post-Brexit trade deal with Trump.
Some of Johnson’s more egregious lies went unchallenged by Marr, such as when Johnson claimed that Corbyn (below) wanted to abolish MI5. This is not now and never has been Labour policy, but Marr let Johnson get away with stating it as though it was a fact. Johnson lied disgracefully when he tried to blame the Labour Party for the recent terrorist attack in London, shamelessly using the incident in order to gain political advantage. That all by itself proves that he’s unfit for high office.
In 2016 Johnson was personally warned by the former chief prosecutor for North West England, Nazir Afzal, that radicalised prisoners who had been convicted of terrorist offences were due to be released, and that money was needed in the justice system in order to ensure that prisoners could be properly rehabilitated and adequately supervised once they were released. According to Afzal, Johnson wasn’t interested.
You know when Johnson is lying. He has a tell. That tell is when words are coming out of his mouth. Johnson lied when he stated that child poverty has been reduced in the UK. In fact it has gone up every year since 2010, the year that the Conservatives got back into power thanks to their cosy wee deal with the LibDems. For a government to allow this to happen is disgusting, an abdication of basic moral responsibility. For a BBC interviewer to allow the Prime Minister to get away with lying about it is inexcusable.
According to charity and campaigning organisation The Children’s Society, over four million children in the UK now live in poverty, one of the worst rates of child poverty in the industrialised world. In some parts of the UK, over half of local children live in poverty.
In the London constituency of Bethnal Green and Bow, very close to where I used to live, the End Poverty Coalition estimates that 53.4% of children live in poverty, meaning that their parents struggle to provide the basics of life, to provide electricity or gas for their homes, to feed and clothe their children. In Glasgow Central, more than 45% of children now live in poverty. Child poverty in the UK is projected to get even worse.
This is the glorious British future that we have in store for us.
READ MORE: Child poverty to ‘keep rising’ under Tory manifesto plans
Nothing is Johnson’s fault because he’s only been Prime Minister for a few months. He’d rather we forget that the Conservatives have been in power for almost 10 years, and that he’s had senior positions in that Tory government for most of that time.
It’s the Conservatives who have slashed and destroyed the probation service making proper supervision of released convicts even more difficult leading to one of the highest re-offending rate in Europe.
It’s the Conservatives who have run the NHS in England into the ground while their colleagues in Scotland complain with false concern about the NHS in Scotland. It’s the Conservatives who have presided over the mushrooming of food banks and homeless people begging on the streets of our towns and cities.
What Johnson said years ago about single mothers, gay people, or black people doesn’t count, because it was years ago. What everyone else said years ago can be used by Johnson against them, because reasons.
Johnson carefully cultivates the dishevelled clown act, but those clown feet will crush your children, crush your dreams, crush your future. The only thing this mendacious liar cares about his is own privilege, his own entitlement, and his own career.
He would say or do anything at all for just a few atoms of gas to further inflate his already bloated ego. Everything that he does, he does for Boris the Clown Act. He cares nothing for you, nothing for the UK, nothing for truth. He has no dignity, no honour, and no honesty. Yet this vile creature is quite likely to win this General Election because Get Brexit done! Jeremy Corbyn’s a bad man! Fnaugh-fnaugh!
The UK is doomed. This election is taking place in December, the Scottish Gaelic name for this month is An Dubhlachd, which means literally “the darkness, the gloominess”.
If Johnson is elected with a majority the darkness of this December election will last all year round, for years to come. There’s only one way to bring about the dawn of a better Scotland.
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Callum Baird, Editor of The National
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