Boris PMQs Care Homes Lie EXPOSED

It seems that there was more than one occasion during Prime Minister’s Questions last Wednesday when alleged incumbent Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was economical with the actualité: he’s been caught out over a claim made about care homes.

After the BBC reported yesterday that “More than a third of care homes in England have now recorded a coronavirus outbreak, official figures reveal. Public Health England data shows 5,546 care homes out of a total of 15,514 had confirmed or suspected outbreaks since early March and almost every district has now had an outbreak in at least one”, there was scepticism over Matt Hancock’s claim that care homes had been protected.

Brian Moore asked “To [Matt Hancock] when you say you threw a protective ring around care homes, can you tell us in what form please?” ITV political editor Robert Peston mused “I am pretty sure [Matt Hancock] said 36% of care homes have been infected with #Covid19. Or rather he suggested that 64% of care homes being free of the virus was a good outcome. Surely he cannot think that. Imagine what would have happened if 34% of all homes had been infected”. And then came the bad news on Bozo’s whopper.

Reuters - it keeps falling to media outlets that are not UK newspapers to do the proper investigative journalism - told that their “Review contradicts Boris Johnson on claims he ordered early lockdown at UK care homes”. He had told the Commons “We brought in the lockdown in care homes ahead of the general lockdown”. So what did he do, or not?

“The prime minister’s spokesman told reporters on Wednesday that in his comments earlier that day to parliament, Johnson was referring to government advice to care homes, issued on March 13”. However, “The March 13 guidance … by the government was equivocal, a review of the documents shows. The advisory, reviewed by Reuters, did not impose a ban on visits from family or friends”. There was no lockdown.

Public Health England’s advice to care providers had been to “review their visiting policy by asking no one to visit who has suspected Covid-19 or is generally unwell, and by emphasising good hand hygiene for visitors”, adding that care homes “should also consider the wellbeing of residents, and the positive impact of seeing friends and family”.

Worse, “Reuters found no official guidance which made that advice mandatory. The news agency asked 10 Downing Street, Johnson’s office, if it could point to any official order that care homes must close to outside visitors, prior to the broader UK lockdown on March 23. A government spokeswoman referred Reuters to the March 13 advice. Asked if there were further instructions to care homes between March 13 and the March 23 general lockdown, the spokeswoman said there were not”. So Bozo misled Parliament. Again.

Worse still, “According to a Reuters analysis of official figures … the pandemic has resulted in over 20,000 deaths in UK care homes”. Colette Austin observed “‘Review contradicts Boris Johnson on … claims he ordered early lockdown at UK care homes’ Reuters confirms it. He didn't. We knew he didn't. Loved ones died because he didn’t”.

The economist and commentator J K Galbraith said of the art of leadership that “A leader can compromise, get the best deal he can … but he cannot be thought to evade”. Bozo keeps on evading, and he keeps on getting caught. Not much leadership there, then.

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