Andy Richardson: 'When MPs tire of Boris, a replacement is ready-made'
The Prime Minister was asked one question: when did he know about the exams crisis?
The reason for the question was simple: either he didn’t know when he should have done, or he did know and did nothing about it. Faced with a fair challenge, BoJo did what BoJo does best: bluster. Refusing to answer Sir Keir Starmer’s question, he ranted so unintelligibly that the Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, told him to tone it down.
It’s just as well that Boris got in when Labour had an awful leader and a toxic brand, for his contribution to his party’s cause this summer has been to whittle away a poll lead to zero. And perhaps that’s no surprise. The summer has been frittered away and it transpires that the exams crisis could have been averted had Gavin Williamson taken the advice of officials and permitted socially distanced exams. Then again, that would have been the sensible thing to do, so why would he have done that?
It’s been two years since the Windrush Scandal that highlighted the unfair treatment of those who’d spent lifetimes in the UK, helping to build the NHS and making a vast contribution through taxation. You’d have thought Priti Patel’s Home Office would have had plenty of time to sort things out. Yet the Home Office persists with an iniquitous and derided policy, with a number of experts and The Times newspaper taking her to task. We can expect a strong response: that’s a strong ‘nothing will change’ response.
Compare the bluster, rhetoric, obfuscation and U-turns of BoJo, Priti and Gav with the quiet, calm and meaningful demeanour of Chancellor Rishi Sunak. Honesty is the best policy for the man behind the furlough scheme, who has been spelling out the need for tax rises. Cool, authoritative and measured, Sunak is a believer that actions speak louder than words – he takes the Tube to work to encourage stay-away workers to get back to the office. When MPs tire of Boris’s bluster, a replacement is ready-made.
After a summer of U-turns and Tory anger towards Boris over his constant flip-flops, it seems that changing our mind is this season’s must-have accessory. Auntie Beeb has got in on the act, deciding we can sing Land Of Hope And Glory after all. The Beeb’s tub-thumping new boss means business. All together now: ‘God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet’.
