Ian Birrell
@ianbirrell
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Foreign correspondent, columnist, campaigner, co-founder @africaexpress , citizen of the world and a bit more besides...
London (Sometimes)
Joined May 2010
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So far today Downing Street has undermined the lockdown; the health secretary has undermined public health efforts; the attorney general has undermined respect for the law. All to protect one powerful aide.
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Since becoming PM Theresa May has:
Lost the Tory majority
Lost 35 ministers
Lost 39 HoC votes
Lost 2 Brexit deal votes
Lost all authority
Lost control of cabinet
Lost control of parliament
Lost control of party
Lost respect for the UK
But she has not lost her job.
Amazing
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There are 3.6m Syrians in Turkey. More than 1m refugees in Uganda. About 14,000 migrants arrived in one day in Munich alone. Britain calls 33 people arriving by boats in 3 days a ‘crisis’. This is risible & politically irresponsible
This is what politicians and the media are calling "Britain's migrant crisis."
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'My son, Jack, killed in this attack, would not wish his death to be used as the pretext for more draconian sentences or for detaining people unnecessarily.'
Beautiful words from a grieving father.
But
@BorisJohnson
instantly does what David Merritt begged politicians to avoid
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Gove's cocaine confession underlines again the prevalence of drugs. Johnson admitted to coke & cannabis, Rory Stewart to opium. Yet they shrug it off, joke or apologise, then continue to back policies that send less fortunate folk to prison for the same
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What ministers said about prorogation before they put their own careers before the interests of the country
1)
@NickyMorgan01
, culture sec: 'It would lead to a constitutional crisis.'
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Spot on letter in
@thetimes
- hero who gave his life to save another ignored by honours system (while politicians and party donors get gongs)
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MPs who abstain or dodge voting to condemn Johnson's lies deserve utter contempt since this is a fight for the soul of our democracy - my
@theipaper
column
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This is also an extraordinary quote today from Lord Kerslake, former head of the civil service: “We are reaching the point where the civil service must consider putting its stewardship of the country ahead of service to the government of the day.'
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So far he has broken three lockdown rules: returning to work when his wife was ill; driving to his parents' home in Durham; taking a day trip to Barnard Castle.
Many other families faced similar dreadful dilemmas but obeyed the lockdown.
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The great chef Michel Roux on the damage caused by Brexit (from this interview with
@jayrayner1
)
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Harriet Harman tells the Commons a second report is being prepared into MPs who tried to intimidate the Privileges Committee and undermine its report, which she says means they may also be in contempt of the House of Commons.
So will it be farewell to Jacob Rees-Mogg too?
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A Ukrainian friend and her sister, both desperate to escape the war, have been accepted for UK visas - but not their children, a boy aged five and a girl of four months. Is this sort of thing deliberate by the government to look like it is helping or sheer incompetence?
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Yesterday Johnson claimed post-Brexit UK would lure world’s best brains. He highlighted discovery of graphene by Nobel-winning physicist Sir Andre Geim.
Today we have Geim’s response: ‘don’t take us for fools - we can see the turmoil you are unleashing‘
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Britain's richest man is moving abroad to avoid tax. Needless to say, he was a prominent Brexiteer - like too many others, displaying gross hypocrisy and contempt for his fellow citizens
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Expose on Farage's fortune in Mail reveals 'skint' man of people:
- has earned £1.5m as MEP
- will get £300k payoff & £63k-a-year pension
- had pay docked for expenses abuse
- earned at least £509k in 4 yrs from broadcasting
- lives in £4m house
- has chauffeur-driven Range Rover
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I’ve reported on politics for almost three decades & never encountered a senior British politician who lies, cheats & fabricates as habitually or systematically as Boris Johnson. Or gets away with deceit with such ease.’
@OborneTweets
on fiery form
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Spare a thought for poor Nigel. This sad man is stuck in his multimillion pound townhouse after 18 years trapped on a Brussels gravy train he hates with just a £73,000 EU pension to keep him from penury in the future
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Incredible:
@BorisJohnson
just told off
@bbcnickrobinson
for 'trying to associate Brexit with our NHS plans' after touring Britain in a bus to drive home this link to voters with a fraudulent claim
#r4today
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So this stinks....
Ministers spent £150m+ buying masks from family-run investment firm.
The masks could not be used by NHS staff.
Deal was brokered by government adviser who also advises the profiting firm.
And the firm is registered in a tax haven
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So far Russell Brand - accused of rape and grooming a 16-year-old - has been defended by his fellow conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, his fellow alleged rapist Andrew Tate, Laurence Fox, two presenters on GB News and Elon Musk…
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A few choice quotes to recall from the Brexiteer leaders:
1) Coming to a free trade agreement with the EU should be "one of the easiest in human history.' Liam Fox, July 2017
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There should be resignations over the Windrush scandal. But the Tory party needs to search its soul and ask how it has ended up in such a dark place, deporting citizens and menacing immigrants to satisfy the hard, nationalist right.
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Minor league backbencher sneers at supposed failure of boy from Brixton who became chancellor, foreign secretary and then PM who won an election against the odds to spend seven years in Downing Street (despite best efforts of Eurosceptics)
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The lack of self-awareness from MPs tweeting nonsense like this after a car-crash interview is stunning. Alternatively, they just contemptuously take voters for fools
In the interview with
@afneil
tonight
@BorisJohnson
showed that he is the only candidate who will deliver Brexit by October 31st, with or without a deal, unite the country and keep Corbyn, propped up by the SNP, out of Downing Street.
@BackBoris
#BBCOurNextPM
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Oxfam gives its US boss a pay package worth more than half a million dollars.
At least 13 more senior staffers in US alone are on hefty six figure salaries.
Then these hypocrites raise more cash & profile by campaigning about inequality.
Welcome to the poverty industry
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Here is Tory loyalist Dido Harding holding wooden spoon award for running firm with worst customer service. She won two years in a row. So the government put her in charge of track & trace, which flopped. Now they’re promoting her to oversee public health
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For all those 'realists' suggesting that Ukraine should accept a peace deal that means losing terrain, this shows the size of land area that has been grabbed by Putin's forces placed over a map of the UK.
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This tweet has been deleted but how depressing to see
@JuliaHB1
being so offensive. Is it any wonder that it is so hard to win decent funding and support for autistic people when there are such attitudes among thought leaders?
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Don't ignore the backdrop to the tragedies in care homes: the government starving local authorities of funds, then profiteering firms paying fat cat bosses a fortune while often avoiding paying taxes. Meanwhile frontline staff - often now performing heroics - are paid peanuts...
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How can anyone look at
@BorisJohnson
- dodging questions about his private life & blustering about Brexit - and think this buffoon is the man to lead Britain at a time of such delicacy and division?
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A reminder: 39% of Conservatives voted Remain in the Brexit referendum. Remarkable to see how casually the Conservative Party is rejecting its own voters
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Fascinating nugget in
@thesundaytimes
read on Cummings-Johnson war: the PM met Ed Woodward, chief exec of Manchester United, 3 days before the Super League announcement and gave backing for the move.
So his angry reaction after its announcement was another deception of voters?
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Spot-on by
@piersmorgan
. If you see a Tory MP clapping carers tomorrow night, ask them why they are being such disgusting hypocrites when imposing & raising a health surcharge on people risking lives on the frontline?
Come on Britain,
We've shamed
@BorisJohnson
into a U-turn on all bereaved relatives of health/care workers staying here indefinitely.
Now let's shame him into scrapping the NHS surcharge on migrant health/care workers.
My column on why it's an outrage:
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Billy Caldwell went 300 days without epileptic seizures. Since his cannabis oil was seized at customs he has had 5 this week.
Now he has been rushed to hospital with mum Charlotte. This is down to home office cruelty, who are sitting on his prescribed life-saving meds. Shameful
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Woman attacked in a pub for speaking 'too loud' in Polish, told 'You are in England now.'
The victim works in an NHS care home.
The pub was a Wetherspoon.
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Delaying the Brexit deal vote shows the UK does not have a functioning government, says
@jeremycorbyn
. He’s right. Unfortunately we don’t have a functioning oppposition either
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UKIP have lost their single MP and are losing all their council seats. So could the BBC, Sky & ITV stop putting them on TV & radio so often?
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If you are listening to Gavin Williamson stumbling on discussions about A levels, waffling about universities and claiming to have ‘forgotten’ his own grades, bear in mind that Boris Johnson thinks he is the best person in parliament to oversee education.
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The Russia report confirms what I have long argued: Britain lectures the planet on corruption while the country is stained by parts of its legal, property and financial professions making fortunes by washing the world’s dirty money
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Very significant: former chief scientific officer reveals
@BorisJohnson
cut climate officials while at FCO, feigned ignorance & then begged him to keep the news secret
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Some quotes from self-declared superforecaster Dominic Cummings that are interesting in light of the PM's refusal to hire anyone that challenges him and this government's shambolic incompetence on everything from protecting people in pandemic to the exam fiasco
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Isn’t it strange how people such as Iain Duncan Smith spent years demanding the British people take back control from Brussels but now fulminate against parliament or the electorate playing a role in shaping the future? He & his ERG pals are such self-serving hypocrites
#r4today
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Imagine trying this defence in court:
- I broke the law unknowingly (although I made the laws & told everyone repeatedly to follow them)
- I only broke the rules for a few minutes
- It’s all in the past.
- I’m too important in my job.
- There’s a war in another country.
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Good news: Kristina Tsimanouskaya's husband and child are reported by local journalists to have escaped to Ukraine from Belarus. 🤞
C'mon
@DominicRaab
, offer her sanctuary...the Belarus dictatorship is trying to kidnap an athlete after she criticised her country's sports officials
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Never a good look when an interviewee is trying desperately to dictate the questions.
@afneil
making mincemeat of
@jeremycorbyn
, exposing in starkest terms why he is so unfit to become PM
#andrewneilinterviews
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Wow!
@BBCr4today
, our most influential radio news show, just interviewed care minister
@Helen_Whately
for 10 minutes and did not ask one question directly on social care. Previously did same in a 13-minute interview with her. Shameful dereliction of duty by the state broadcaster
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‘My sole ambition apart from being an MP is to ensure that Brexit happens,’ says Rees-Mogg. This underlines the fanaticism of the ultra-nationalists that care only about wrecking Britain. No ambition for everyday concerns such as health, education, the economy, housing...
#marr
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The view of Boris Johnson from a former spokesman for Barack Obama. Others may be more diplomatic, but this unvarnished tweet shows how many in the Biden team view the 'shapeshifting creep' in Downing Street.
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2)
@MattHancock
, health sec: 'There is this idea from some people that to deliver Brexit we should suspend our parliamentary democracy, we should prorogue parliament. That goes against everything those men who waded onto those beaches fought & died for - and I will not have it'
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There is something very sleazy about a foreign defence contractor paying a former cabinet minister & serving MP £1000 an HOUR for advice on winning a government contract.
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I am sitting in a Danish restaurant listening to a pair of American businessmen discussing how to shift their deliveries from Michigan to Europe from going through the UK. ‘Do we need to do this now?’ asked one. ‘It’s what they voted for,’ replies the other. Sadly true.
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3)
@AmberRuddHR
dd work & pensions sec: 'The idea of leaving the EU to take back more control into parliament and to consider the idea of closing parliament to do that is the most extraordinary idea I've ever heard. It is a ridiculous suggestion to consider Proroguing parliament
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‘I find it incredibly insulting the care minister has no idea how many people are dying in our care homes. These are elderly & vulnerable people dying of Covid19 & you’re not taking the deaths seriously.’
@piersmorgan
asks care minister
@Helen_Whately
on care unlike
@BBCr4today
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.
@Oxfam
is preaching about inequality again today. Yet the US arm of this hypocritical charity paid its boss $380,039 last year and shared $2,612,503 among its top 12 executives - an average of $217,708 each.
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4) Sajid Javid, chancellor: You don't deliver on democracy by trashing democracy . . . we are not selecting a dictator of our country"
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I was in a Washington cafe when a senior British diplomat sat beside me with an ambassador from Europe. After outlining the official Brexit position & discussing editorial changes at the Mail, the UK official said they expect the government to ask for an Article 50 extension...
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Could people stop bullying
@bbclaurak
? She is a brilliant journalist who is daily walking a political tightrope in these fractious times and does a fantastic job.
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Highest support for returning to the office comes from the age group least likely to be returning to the office
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If you want to see the damage that Brexit has wrought to Britain, consider the fact that Claire Fox became a regular voice on the BBC, then an MEP and now has been elevated to the House of Lords by Boris Johnson.
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‘Sweden isn’t as different as people think,’ claims Prof Neil Ferguson on
@BBCr4today
. Actually it is: they ignored his modelling, took a wider view of public health, kept schools open, adopted a sustainable approach, trusted their citizens and had consistent leadership
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Definition of hypocrisy:
- Theresa May's husband profits from medical marijuana
- Drugs minister's husband profits from medical marijuana
- UK is world's biggest exporter of medical marijuana.
BUT
@NickHurdUK
bans life-saving marijuana medicine for kids
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Another Brexit triumph: Shortage of pickers leaves 50 million apples rotting in UK orchards
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Russia lost 5000 soldiers in two years of the first Chechen War.
Russia lost 15,000 soldiers over ten years of fighting in Afghanistan.
Russia has lost 5,200 soldiers in the first four days of fighting in Ukraine, according to Kyiv’s ministry of defence
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Since everyone attending
@BorisJohnson
's cabinet has signed up to backing No Deal Brexit, here is what some of his ministers said in the recent past. Such flip-flopping as they put personal ambition over national interest underlines why so many people feel dismayed by politics
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5)
@MattHancock
again: Proroguing Parliament undermines parliamentary democracy. I rule it out and call on all candidates to do the same
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6)
@AmberRuddHR
again: 'I think it’s outrageous to consider proroguing Parliament. We are not Stuart kings.”
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World's most famous medical journal is accused of doing China's dirty work - my Mail on Sunday report on how
@TheLancet
stifled debate on the lab leak theory while praising Beijing
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The journalist Oleg Baturyn has been kidnapped in Kakhovka by the Russian occupiers, say his family and friends
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Appalling to see UK dropping opposition to death penalty in secret deal with US. However reprehensible the crime, this stance should be an unbendable moral value underpinning our liberal democracy
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8)
@michaelgove
, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster: 'I think it will be wrong for many reasons. I think it would not be true to the best traditions of British democracy
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Dishonest by Dominic Raab to argue the European position has changed & hardened since Boris Johnson became PM, forcing the government towards No Deal. Like it or not, the EU stance has been consistent & crystal clear
#r4today
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7)
@MattHancock
yet again: 'A policy on Brexit to prorogue Parliament would mean the end of the Conservative Party as a serious party of government'
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'In the end, decisions are taken by politicians.'
Boris Johnson ditches the idea he is following scientific advice after over-ruling Sir Patrick Vallance, chief scientific adviser, by changing advice on working from home.
Significant Vallance or Whitty not standing beside him
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‘Boris Johnson wants to smash his head through the wall but the wall is thicker than he thinks’ - great quote from Florian Hahn, European policy spokesman for Angela Merkel’s party, ruling out new negotiations or changes to the backstop as the PM arrives in Germany
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This exposes the corrosive mindset of many behind Brexit - still fighting wars of the past, obsessed by British exceptionalism & oblivious to reasons for EU creation as a vehicle to bring countries closer together. Disgraceful, even for this ennobled buffoon
So the EU are going to charge Brits €7 to travel to Member States after Brexit. Just a thought.......did any of them want to charge my Great-uncle Thomas in 1917 or my wife’s Dad or uncle in 1944?
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The argument that Theresa May oversees a ‘positive, welcoming, liberal, forward looking’ immigration policy, put forward by
@michaelgove
on
#r4today
, is offensive to those at mercy of the cruel, duplicitous & expensive system she has created
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9)
@NickyMorgan01
again: 'Proroguing Parliament is clearly a mad suggestion. You cannot say you are going to take back control … and then go: ‘Oh, by the way, we are just going to shut Parliament down for a couple of months, so we are just going to drift out on a no deal’
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Just imagine how many lives might have been saved if the Tories has elected someone serious such as
@RoryStewartUK
for leader instead of
@BorisJohnson
“This is the most serious epidemic since the end of WWI. You can use the police to enforce emergency measures, and call out the military to support.”
Rory Stewart says the government has responded too slowly to coronavirus, and that tough measures need to be taken now.
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No doubt who won the
#C4Debate
. It will be a travesty if
@RoryStewartUK
is not in the final two
#ToryLeadershipContest
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...The diplomat then said there was 'considerable movement' towards a second referendum, which would offer the choice of accepting Theresa May's deal or keeping the status quo. Sounds good to me
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Good
@jeremycorbyn
comparison: airlines put 1000s up in hotels if planes delayed but public sector failed 400 people who lost homes
#Peston
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@NickyMorgan01
10)
@andrealeadsom
, business sec, was asked if she could go along with such a plan. 'No I don’t believe I would and I don’t believe it would happen.'
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There was nothing inevitable about so many deaths in care homes. It is down to incompetence & shamefully slow response. But also down to structural flaws in the way our society treats older and disabled people, packing more and more of them into bigger homes run by crap providers
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Welcome to Brexit Britain: £4.2bn blown planning for no deal, 3,500 troops on standby for disruption at ports, planes chartered to fly in medicines, firms in fear, politics in stasis, parties splitting, nation turned into global joke.
Was any of this on the side of that bus?
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So the abysmal PM staggers on to the next scandal, the next deception, the next apology - propped up by careerists who value their ambition more than their country, party or self-respect
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Spot the difference: which country does not bother to include deaf people in its briefings? (From
@Channel4News
)
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Insightful New Yorker piece on
@POTUS
is essential reading on Trump's takeover, social media, politics & populism
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@NickyMorgan01
@andrealeadsom
@GeorgeFreemanMP
@michaelgove
14)
@BorisJohnson
, PM (h/t
@Sandbach
): 'I would like to make it absolutely clear that I am not attracted to arcane procedures such as the prorogation of Parliament. As someone who aspires to be the PM of a democratic nation, I believe in finding consensus in the House of Commons'
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I no longer recognise this party of fanatical militants, says
@PhilipHammondUK
. He is not alone
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One newspaper claims this morning 'at least 60 people have made it to the UK undetected' since November on boats across the Channel. Begs the obvious question: how on earth would they or anyone else know?
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Strange how
@BorisJohnson
looks so rattled and evasive under hostile fire from ordinary people.
@joswinson
had tougher questioning, fewer (if any) supporters and arguably a tougher message to sell but responded far more fluently
#bbcqt
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Only the most perverted extremist could think this man deserved to die for helping others. Remember him this way
http://t.co/rKzuSl5cGe
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@NickyMorgan01
@andrealeadsom
11)
@andrealeadsom
also said: 'It's certainly not something I would seek to do. I'm passionate about parliament democracy.'
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British police officers are doing China’s dirty work in Hong Kong - my short
@thetimes
column
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@NickyMorgan01
@andrealeadsom
@GeorgeFreemanMP
[Sir John Major, former Tory PM: 'I cannot imagine Mr Disraeli, Mr Gladstone, Mr Churchill or Mrs Thatcher even in their most difficult moments saying let us put parliament aside while I carry through this difficult policy that a part of my party disagrees with.’]
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@NickyMorgan01
@andrealeadsom
12)
@GeorgeFreemanMP
, transport minister: 'The idea that a new PM will want, let alone be allowed by backbench MPs or Peers, to prorogue Parliament is bonkers. It would look appalling.'
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Today we learn Johnson has no intention of renegotiating Brexit deal, despite saying he would do so (Guardian) & he's set to defy parliament by clinging to power if he loses no confidence vote (Times).
And this charlatan has the gall to talk about democracy & uniting the UK
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