Tag Archives: Politics

Boris Johnson’s Weird Running Outfit Impressed Basically Nobody

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TOBY MELVILLE via REUTERS

Boris Johnson jogs in the morning before the annual Conservative Party conference in Manchester

Boris Johnson caused a stir when he was pictured jogging in Manchester wearing shorts, formal shoes and a white shirt on Sunday.

The prime minister is in the city along with the rest of the Conservative Party to attend the annual Tory conference.

While Johnson has been spotted out running in the past, this was the first time he’s mixed up his exercise wear with business clothes – he reverted back to normal sports clothes on Monday, but the blunder has not been forgotten.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak addressed the outfit on Times Radio on Monday and said: “I have not spoken to him about that, I have only seen the photo… I could not pull that off the way the Prime Minister does.”

Not everyone was as complimentary as Sunak, though.

Broadcaster Ryan Bailey joked that he was worried “I don’t dress formally enough when I go running”, while football coach Gary Neville tweeted: “Surely a Tory donor can get him some running gear.”

Satirical Twitter account Newsthump also tweeted: “Fortunately, the prime minister avoided a terrible fashion faux pas by remembering his jogging cufflinks.”

Others noticed that this is a trend with Johnson, as he has previously been spotted wearing shirts during runs.

The image was also brutally edited by photoshop account Cold War Steve to accompany the prime minister’s controversy on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show when he said: “I’ve given you the most important metric – never mind life expectancy, never mind cancer outcomes – look at wage growth.”

It was noted as a distraction technique too, as a fuel crisis and HGV driver shortage continues to grip the nation.

Others even compared to the cautionary tale of The Emperor’s New Clothes.

However, by Monday Johnson seemed to recognise that he had not won over any fans with his latest stunt and returned to normal jogging wear.

Stefan Rousseau – PA Images via Getty Images

Prime Minister Boris Johnson goes for a run ahead on Monday

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Rishi Sunak Defends ‘Reasonable’ £20-A-Week Universal Credit Cut

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Christopher Furlong via Getty Images

Rishi Sunak also warned there could be shortages in the run-up to Christmas caused by supply chain challenges.

Rishi Sunak has denied he is being “dogmatic” by sticking to the impending cut to Universal Credit, arguing that the government is “not done supporting people”.

The chancellor is under pressure to reverse his decision to end the £20-a-week uplift to Universal Credit as people struggle with higher energy bills and higher prices for goods.

But Sunak said it was “reasonable” that the benefit uplift was coming to its “natural end” and argued that it was only intended as a temporary measure.

He told BBC Radio 4: “We put in place a lot of things during the acute phase of coronavirus that were necessarily temporary – there’s things that are appropriate when you’re dealing with a hopefully once-in-a-century pandemic, and it’s reasonable that those things will come to a natural end.

“Whether it’s universal credit or indeed furlough, these things are coming to their end, but we’re not done supporting people.

“I don’t think anyone, given the support we’ve provided over the last year and a half, could accuse me or the government of being dogmatic or not wanting to support people, we just have a view about the best way to do that.”

The chancellor will give a speech to Tory party conference today in which he will unveil a £500m package to help people come off furlough and get back into work as the country recovers from the coronavirus pandemic.

Local councils will also be given £500m to support the most vulnerable households throughout the winter months. 

The Conservatives have already begun hammering the message that wages are rising as the economy recovers, but already there are warnings that this could soon be outstripped by inflation. 

Senior Conservative Jake Berry warned that families were being “kept up at night” by the higher costs of living and as the cut to Universal Credit approaches.

Berry, who chairs the Northern Research Group of MPs, said removing the £1,000-a-year uplift was going to be “really difficult for people”.

And he said that while wages were increasing in some sectors, they were not in all and prices for commodities were going up.

“If wages are going up at the same time as prices are going up – and the chancellor said yesterday inflation kept him up at night, I’m sure it keeps loads of families up at night who are managing their budget – then it will only work if the salary for all jobs goes up,” he said.

“And what we’re hearing about is certain sectors – transport and logistics, people working in the hospitality sector – their wages are going up but not necessarily everyone else.

“If your wage isn’t going up at the same time as prices are going up, you’re getting poorer aren’t you?”

The backdrop to Tory party conference has been set by rising food and energy prices and a high demand for petrol that has resulted in long queues at stations particularly in London and the south east.

A shortage in HGV lorry drivers has led to distribution problems with fuel and could also cause food supply issues this winter.

Sunak admitted there could be food shortages this Christmas and said that while the government would do its best to “mitigate” the problem, he could not “wave a magic wand” and make the problems disappear.

“It’s reasonable that people expect us to do what we can,” he told the BBC.

“But we can’t wave a magic wand and make global supply chain challenges disappear overnight.

“With regards to butchers, my understanding is that those are indeed on the shortage occupation list that we already have.”

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University Of Oxford Made Me Feel ‘Totally Thick’ Says Labour MP

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JUSTIN TALLIS via Getty Images

Shadow secretary of state for sousing Lucy Powell 

A Labour MP has revealed she dropped out of the University of Oxford after a year because it left her feeling “totally thick”. 

Shadow housing secretary Lucy Powell described herself as a “fish out of water” when she went to study Chemistry at the elite university nearly 30 years ago.

Powell told Gloria De Piero on GB News she was studying maths, physics and chemistry at her state sixth form when a teacher picked her out and said she should apply to Oxbridge. 

Powell said: “I went down for my interviews and I phoned my mum up just crying because I hated it so much. 

“It was just so awful. But then I got in, I got an offer. I cried when I got the offer, I didn’t want to go at all. 

“But what do you do? You get an offer from Oxford. You get into Oxford and everyone’s like oh that’s amazing. That’s great. 

“I just was like a fish out of water for most of it. I did make some really good friends there and I’m sort of glad I went to see how the other half live in a way. But I didn’t thrive there at all. So, I left after a year and then went to Kings.” 

Asked why she felt like a fish out of water, Powell replied: “I was a state educated, northern girl doing science. 

“It’s not an environment I was used to at all. I’d come from Hacienda Manchester.

“And I was sort of in Oxford with a load of books and there was no support. What I realised was everybody else had had a lot of coaching, a lot of extra tuition, a lot of support. 

“There was no teaching really, it’s just like here’s an exercise book get on with it. And so it just crushed my confidence immediately.”

Powell said she had gone from being picked out at her sixth form from two thousand children to “basically being made to feel like I was totally thick” and described the experience as “crushing”.

She added: “I sort of lost interest, I really struggled, I put on weight. Over that summer, after my first year when I came home, I just made the decision that I wasn’t going to succeed there and I hadn’t done very well.” 

Powell phoned around other universities and transferred straight into second year at King’s College in London. 

The MP for Manchester Central added: “Oxford and Cambridge are getting a bit better, but that was nearly 30 years ago. My experience, you don’t expect it to still be like that in 21st century Britain, do you? But I think unfortunately, it is still for too many.” 

Powell also revealed that she went clubbing at the age of 15 and used to go to the Hacienda nightclub that became famous during the “Madchester” years. 

She added: “I used to go clubbing on a school night and things I really shouldn’t have done that my parents really didn’t know I was doing.” 

But she also revealed that she never gets drunk now, adding: “I’ve become a lightweight and maybe I am a sort of control freak about it. 

“In my youth, as people who were at university or at school will testify, I was perfectly able to get completely paralytic drunk as lots of people were at that age. 

“But as I’ve got older, I don’t know when that kicked in, I’m very sensible I’m afraid. So I just have my two spritzers and that’s me done.”

The interview will be broadcast on GB News at midday on Thursday.

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Boris Johnson Vows To Save Christmas (Again) And Everyone Made The Same Joke

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Anna Moneymaker via Getty Images

Prime minister Boris Johnson is fighting to save Christmas…again

Boris Johnson promised the public that he was going to make sure supply chains “get through to Christmas and beyond” this year – a vow which felt very familiar to many of his critics.

The prime minister famously pledged to save Christmas last year by relaxing Covid rules for five days, only to scupper the country’s plans just before December 25 due to a spike in Covid infections.

Downing Street made a sudden U-turn on December 19, and Johnson told the public: “It is with a very heavy heart that I must tell you we cannot proceed with Christmas as planned.”

London and much of south-east England was put into tier four, meaning people could only mix with their own households and support bubbles, and no-one could travel.

Other parts of England were put in tiers one to three and asked to stay local. Only three households could come together for Christmas.

In Wales, only two households could unite for Christmas Day while in Scotland it was three households up to a maximum of eight people.

Johnson’s last minute U-turn did not impress many, considering Covid infections had been rising steadily for weeks.

It’s safe to say it was not the Christmas most people had in mind – and judging from the response on Twitter, few are looking for a repeat performance from the prime minister this year.

People were quick to compare the newspaper front pages of this year to those from November last year, when the public were told “Boris battles experts to save Christmas”.

Journalist and author Sathnam Sanghera tweeted: ”Boris battling to save Xmas seems to start earlier every year.”

Another Twitter critic joked: “Boris battles to save Christmas 2…..the sequel no one wanted. But a large chunk of the electorate would probably vote for.” 

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Matt Hancock’s New Video Becomes An Accidental Partridge Classic

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House of Commons – PA Images via Getty Images

Matt Hancock, former health secretary

Matt Hancock was compared to the fictional character Alan Partridge after he uploaded an unusual video to Twitter on Saturday.

The former health secretary, who resigned after it emerged he breached social distancing guidelines by kissing his aide in June, has kept a relatively low profile over the summer as his marriage broke down.

Now the Tory backbencher appears to be re-emerging into the world of politics and posted a 50-second video online where he meets and greets his constituents in Haverhill.

With upbeat music in the background, Hancock looks slightly out of place as he fist-bumps one member of the public while another affectionately touches his face.

Safe to say, it didn’t go down very well online.

Anti-Brexit campaigner and writer Femi Oluwole commented: “150,000 people dead…the worst breach of Covid lockdown rules of the whole pandemic…

“And this guy (along with 100s of other Tories) is just going to stroll back into Parliament at the next election as if nothing happened because they’re in safe seats. #MakeVotesMATTER!”

Others couldn’t quite believe it was real, with one account tweeting: “This is so cringe. It has to be satire. If he thinks this does him a favour, I’m speechless.”

Some accounts didn’t miss a beat and immediately compared it to the political satire show The Thick of It – or Alan Partridge.

The phrase “accidental Partridge” began showing up all over Twitter, meaning Hancock’s awkwardness embodied Steve Coogan’s character Partridge, a broadcaster who lacks significant social skills.

Coogan describes Partridge as a Little Englander with ring-wing values, and he has become a cultural touchstone on what not to be in broadcasting.

Even the Twitter account Accidental Partridge – which catches clips of awkward public appearances – recognised Hancock’s video.

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Labour Parties: MPs Let Their Hair Down In Brighton Nightclub

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HuffPost UK

MPs let their hair down at Dawn Butler’s Jamaica party

Sadiq Khan made a speech behind the DJ decks and MPs raved on the dancefloor at Dawn Butler’s Jamaica party last night. 

The event took place in Pryzm on Brighton seafront and has become one of the biggest parties at Labour’s annual conference. 

Among those spotted include MPs Nadia Whittome, Lloyd Russell-Moyle and Barry Gardiner as well as ITV’s political editor Robert Peston. 

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan made a guest appearance, telling the crowd from behind the DJ decks: “The best party in this Labour conference week is Dawn Butler’s Jamaican party.

“I’ve got to tell you, I saw Michael Gove coming to Brighton but [he] likes dancing so don’t be surprised if you see Michael Gove here dancing.

“Have a great conference, have a great Dawn Butler Jamaican night.”

Butler, the MP for Brent Central, tweeted at around 7.30am the morning after: “What a night! Just getting to bed. Thank you to everyone who came and raved, enjoyed and just went with the vibes.”

Party conference will run through to Wednesday when Sir Keir Starmer will give his first speech at the event as leader of the Labour Party.

Labour uses the opportunity to vote on major policies from taxes to foreign affairs.

As well as the main speeches, smaller events including panel discussions and drinks receptions are also taking place.

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‘It’s Street Language’ – Angela Rayner Defends Calling Tories ‘Scum’

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Stefan Rousseau – PA Images via Getty Images

Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner speaks at the Labour Party conference in Brighton.

Angela Rayner has defended calling Tories “scum” last night, saying it was her “street language”.

The deputy leader of the Labour Party launched an attack on Conservatives calling them “scum, homophobic, racist, misogynistic”. 

She made the comments at a reception for Labour members in the north west of England at the party’s annual conference in Brighton.

The comments sparked a backlash from Tory MPs but Rayner stood by her words this morning, saying it was “post-watershed”.

She told Sky’s Trevor Phillips on Sunday: “That was post-watershed as we’d say, with a group of activists at an event last night.”

Rayner said she was trying to get across in her “passionate way” the frustration and anger people feel over Boris Johnson’s comments and actions.

The senior MP said she would only apologise if Johnson said sorry for his past comments that she claimed were “homophobic, racist and misogynistic”.

Pressed on her comments, Rayner said she was talking about members of the cabinet. 

She added: “Anyone who leaves children hungry during the pandemic and can give billions of pounds to their mates on WhatsApp, I think that was pretty scummy. 

“Now that is a phrase, and let me contextualise it, it’s a phrase that you would hear very often in northern working class towns that we’d even say it jovially to other people. 

“We say it’s a scummy thing to do. And that to me is my street language as you would say – about actually it’s pretty appalling that people think that’s okay to do.”

Last night Rayner said: “I’m sick of shouting from the sidelines and I bet you lot are as well. We cannot get any worse than a bunch of scum, homophobic, racist, misogynistic, absolute vile…Banana Republic, vile, nasty, Etonian…piece of scum.”

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the tirade was “not language that I would have used”.

He told BBC’s Andrew Marr Show it was a matter for Rayner whether she apologised but said he would speak to her about it.

“Angela and I take different approaches and that’s not language that I would use,” he said.

Asked if she should apologise, Starmer said: “That’s a matter for Angela… but I would not have used those words. I will talk to Angela about it later on.”

Labour former shadow chancellor John McDonnell rowed in behind Rayner, saying: “We’ve all been there, late at night, getting very angry about what’s going on. What I like about Angie Rayner is that she’s human.

“She may well drop herself in it, just as I have time and time again, but she’s human and she has human emotions and when you get angry about something sometimes the language that you use might be over the top.”

Dan Kitwood via Getty Images

Starmer was quizzed about Rayner’s comments on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show.

However, transport secretary Grant Shapps called on Rayner to apologise and said her comments were “absolutely appalling”.

The cabinet minister said: “There’s no place in public life for that sort of language, that sort of behaviour. I saw that she had described herself as being somebody who wanted to see a kinder kind of politics back in 2019. I’m very sorry that seems to have disappeared.”

He added: “I think it would be befitting if she actually just apologised, rather than talked around the subject.”

Tory MP Alec Shelbrooke told HuffPost UK: “It once again shows that Labour have nothing to offer the north other than bitter and nasty comments against those who northern voters elected over an out of touch Labour Party, who still show that instead of recognising the issues that people want addressed, would rather stoop to the actions of the defeated play ground bully. Labour continue to show that the true party of the workers is the Conservative Party.”

Foreign Office minister James Cleverly also hit back, tweeting: “I’m sure this went down well in the room but when voters look at the party that has had both female PMs, with half of the great offices of state filled by women, half by Bame, most diverse government, more gay ministers than Labour ever had etc they’ll know she’s talking crap.”

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David Lammy Calls Out Grant Shapps Over ‘Nasty And Unnecessary’ Cuts

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BBC Question Time

Grant Shapps and David Lammy during BBC Question Time

Grant Shapps was hung out to dry by Labour’s David Lammy over the upcoming cuts to universal credit on Thursday.

The transport secretary and the shadow justice secretary were at loggerheads on BBC Question Time as Lammy demanded a U-turn over the upcoming £20-a-week reduction.

Lammy said: “When given a choice, the government is always choosing not to side with the poorest in society.

“I remember it was not that long ago that the Conservatives were described as the nasty party.”

Glancing at the Tory minister, Lammy added: “Grant, you can stare at your notes as much as you like, you’re not going to find the answers.”

He continued: “This cut should not be being made, it’s as simple as that.”

The government is trying to take the universal credit back to pre-pandemic levels with this £20 cut, but recent analysis seen by The Observer has predicted that the cut would push 840,000 people into poverty.

Lammy pointed out that the £20 a week could, for example, cover the average energy bill and so described it as “mean, nasty and unnecessary”.

He also noted that the cut was “coming alongside an increase in national insurance, economists are predicting an inflation rise and certainly interest rates going up by next February”.

Defending the government, Shapps said: “OK, look, you say you would do all of these things, but the effective tax raise for people on Universal Credit was 90%.

“There were cliff edges for people working 60, 24 and 30 hours.

“It’s not like the system’s been perfect in the past.”

Shapps concluded: “We have to work on the facts here, and the facts are we need to pay for whatever it is we do provide, the universal credit system is working vastly better than the system it replaced and actually handled the coronavirus [pandemic].”

Yet, even some Tory backbenchers were reportedly pushing for a compromise deal as it will undermine the prime minister’s promise to “level up” the UK.

There have also been reports that ministers are now looking to increase benefit payments to cushion the universal credit cut.

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Grant Shapps Does Not Rule Out Using Military To Tackle Fuel Crisis

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Leon Neal via Getty Images

Grant Shapps has not ruled out bringing in the military to help deal with the fuel crisis.

Speaking on Friday morning, the transport secretary tried to dissuade drivers from panic buying petrol, after BP was forced to close down a handful of its forecourts.

“The advice would be to carry on as normal, and that is what BP is saying as well,” he told Sky News.

Asked in a separate interview with LBC if the military could be deployed, he said: “I certainly won’t rule anything out at all, we’ll look at all the various different contingency measures.” 

On Thursday BP said it had closed a “handful” of its petrol forecourts due to a lock of available fuel.

A “small number” of Tesco refilling stations have also been impacted, said Esso owner ExxonMobil, which runs the sites.

Shapps promised he would do what is needed to ensure that petrol gets to drivers.

“I’ll move heaven and Earth to do anything that’s required to make sure that lorries carry on moving our goods and services and petrol around the country,” he said.

He denied that Brexit was the culprit in the UK’s recent shortage of lorry drivers, arguing that the split from the European Union has helped the government react.

At a meeting a week ago BP reportedly told the Government that the company was struggling to get fuel to its forecourts.

Its head of UK retail Hanna Hofer described the situation as “bad, very bad”, according to a report by ITV News.

BP had “two-thirds of normal forecourt stock levels required for smooth operations”, she said, adding that the level is “declining rapidly”.

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Boris Johnson Swiftly Put Down After His Climate Speech: ‘Speak For Yourself Mate’

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Boris Johnson didn’t hold back when calling on the world to act against climate change – and his words definitely caused a stir on Twitter.

The prime minister spokes to the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Wednesday and urged the world to “grow up” and stop “trashing” the environment.

He then pulled apart the famous saying, “it’s not easy being green” from the Muppets’ character, Kermit the Frog.

However, his past scepticism towards climate change was not forgotten by his Twitter critics.

The Independent’s Tom Peck pointed out that Johnson himself did not support the idea of climate change for ten years after Al Gore’s 2016 film, An Inconvenient Truth which looks at how humanity have damaged the Earth.

Peck added: “And now, apparently, we’re meant to take this cartoon clown  seriously.” 

Satire website The Poke did not hesitate to take aim at Johnson either, noting that he told the world to “grow up” just hours after he had flown to the US and told France to “get a grip” of its anger over the new AUKUS pact.

Even Brexiteer and former MEP Patrick O’Flynn tweeted: “Perhaps someone on the team could have look at the draft [of the speech] and told the PM: ‘Some people may react to this passage by saying ‘speak for yourself mate’.”

This was then retweeted by Alastair Campbell, former prime minister Tony Blair’s spin doctor.

Johnson wrote several columns for The Telegraph over the last two decades which undermine the idea of climate change.

In 2012 he described fracking as a “miracle”, in 2013, he backed climate change denier Piers Corbyn and questioned the phrase “climate warming”, and in 2015, he rejected the idea that warm weather in December was down to a change in the climate.

This checkered past did not escape other Twitter accounts either last night as they mocked his speech.

Some accounts noted that just the other day, he appointed former climate change denier Ann-Marie Trevelyan as his new international trade secretary.

Not everyone thought the prime minister’s words should be mocked, though.

Times Radio’s Matt Chorley tweeted that it was a “bad take” to criticise Johnson’s accurate remarks based on his past climate denialism.

Former leader of the Green Party Caroline Lucas also took note of his speech – and demanded that the prime minister’s actions now reflected his words.

She tweeted: “Good to hear PM’s new enthusiasm for climate action.

“Since Govt failing its own climate targets, I look forward to imminent cancellation of Cumbrian coal mine, Cambo oil field, £27 billion road building plan, reversal of aid cut and a #GreenNewDeal.”

She added the hashtag #WalkYourTalk.

Former London MEP Lance Forman appeared exasperated just at the idea Johnson had referred to a character from the Muppets in a serious speech on the world stage – an opinion shared by plenty of others too.

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