Tory Brexit Vaccine Lie FAILS

The need to find good news, any good news, to justify the UK leaving the European Union finally became too much, the temptation too great. So it was that, basking in the euphoria of approval being given for the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, Matt Hancock, who is supposed to be Health Secretary, declared that the UK approving the jab first was down to Brexit. His assertion was then repeated by several desperate and gullible Tory MPs.

Wake up Master Cole - Bozo just disowned your porkies

So it was that Jacob Rees Mogg, the member for times long past, repeated the claim. So did (yes, it’s her again) Nadine Dorries. So did Michael Fabricant (with or without his Irish). And after the Tory MPs came the right-leaning pundits, including Tom Harwood, replacement teaboy to the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines at the Guido Fawkes blog, and self-promoting TalkRADIO host Julia Hartley Dooda.

By this point, the lie was halfway around the world, but the truth had at least got its socks on: Dr June Raine, head of the MHRA, corrected the claim, telling “We’ve been able to authorise supply of this vaccine under provisions under European law which exist until January 1st”. The UK could have done it under EU provisions. And, indeed, it did.

But the temptation to claim the vaccine approval as a win for Brexit was, for one particularly dishonest individual, just too much. So it was that the odious flannelled fool Master Harry Cole, so persistent in his claim to be a real journalist that he has been appointed political editor of the Murdoch Sun, decided it was Brexit Wot Really Done It.

No-one should be surprised at this move: it was, after all, Master Cole’s first Sun front page splash back in September 2015, that promoted the totally untrue claim that Jeremy Corbyn would have to be sworn of the Privy Council in order for Labour to secure its allocation of what is called “Short Money”. It was a pack of lies, and Cole’s single source soon disowned the claim. His Brexit vaccine claim is little better.

This from today’s Sun: “BRITAIN deliberately broke away from the European Medicines Agency control for vaccine approval in October - meaning the UK could rubber stamp the jab quicker. Any EU member could in theory do this, but Brussels ordered the 27 remaining EU countries to form a united vaccine policy and wait for central approval”. Just the two lies there: Brussels ordered no-one, and Britain is still bound by EU rules.

Worse for Master Cole, his fellow pundits, and the string of dishonest Tory MPs, their hero, alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, has disowned the claim. After noting Bozo’s good news on vaccine approval, the Guardian then cautioned “But the prime minister also moved to prevent what he called the ‘huge moment’ being tarnished by a row after Matt Hancock suggested Brexit had paved the way for the move”.

There was more. “Later, with negotiations on a free trade agreement at a delicate stage weeks from the end of the transition period, Johnson eschewed the language of ‘world-beating’ UK science and twice declined the opportunity to hail the rapid approval as a Brexit dividend”. Thus throwing Master Cole, and many of his MPs, under the bus.

Gordon Brown once warned Damian McBride “Don’t. It’s the lie that gets you”. Yesterday it got more of those for whom belief routinely transcends reality. No change there, then.

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