The Prime Minister has a habit of telling fibs. We’ve collated his favourites – and our rebuttals of them – so you can pounce on them as they drip from his lips.
Johnson won’t “get Brexit done” 🔗
He has only done the divorce deal. Nailing down a trade agreement will take years. Day after day, year after year, we’ll wake up to news about Brexit. The only way to stop this is to beat the Tories and stop Brexit.
He won’t get a great trade deal in super-fast time 🔗
The Prime Minister says we can get a ‘Super Canada Plus’ free trade deal with the EU without following its rules. This is cake-and-eat-it nonsense.
EU citizens aren’t scrounging on the NHS 🔗
In fact, they contribute more to the public finances than Brits – and we get the right to use other EU countries’ health systems too.
EU migration is only a quarter as big as that from outside EU 🔗
Johnson wrongly says that EU and non-EU migration are equal in size. Strange that, as he weaponises migration, he can’t get the basic facts straight.
We don’t need to leave the EU to scrap the tampon tax 🔗
The Prime Minister wrongly gives the tampon tax as a reason for Brexit. The EU wants to change VAT regime to allow zero rate for sanitary products.
Worker, consumer and environmental rights aren’t guaranteed 🔗
Johnson falsely claims that his withdrawal agreement means workers’ rights will never be inferior to those in the EU – and that consumer and environmental rights are guaranteed too.
Johnson’s fishy promise can’t be trusted 🔗
The Prime Minister says we’ll take back control of our “marine wealth”. But he has agreed with the EU to try to cut a new fisheries agreement by July.
Brits will be safer if we stay in EU 🔗
Johnson’s partner in the Vote Leave campaign, Michael Gove, says Brits will be less safe if we have free movement. In fact, we’ll keep the European Arrest Warrant and other crime-fighting tools.
There’ll be checks on goods in the Irish Sea in both directions 🔗
Johnson says there won’t. But he has agreed that Northern Ireland will follow hundreds of EU rules to do with customs etc.
Northern Ireland deal isn’t temporary 🔗
Johnson falsely claims the deal he’s done for Northern Ireland is temporary, evaporates or will be superseded by a trade deal.
Northern Ireland may not ‘benefit’ from new trade deals 🔗
It can only benefit from new trade deals if they don’t prejudice the “Protocol” Johnson agreed with the EU.
Edited by James Earley
Dominic Grieves’s description of Johnson’s pathological dissimulation as “whopping lies” seems more accurate than “fibs”.
Johnson makes it hard for the Russians to outdo him in disinforming the electorate about basic aspects of the UK’s future relationship with the EU, to adversely influence the most important election of our lifetimes, to our lasting detriment.
Add another one – the oft repeated allegation that every extra month the UK remains in the EU costs the UK exchequer £1billion. In fact these costs are set against the settlement bill agreed at £39 billion. For that reason the said bill was already down to £33 billion when the leaving date was extended to October 31 2019 and will continue to decrease now that the further extension to January 31 2020 has been agreed.
The cost to the UK of further extension is therefore nil. Indeed, given that the immense benefits of EU membership to our economy are still continuing, the cost is less than nil!
With these TV debates, politics is being reduced to a branch of showbiz. The future of the country may be decided on the basis of whether people like Boris Johnson’s hairstyle better than Jeremy Corbyn’s beard.
Hey, guys, stop it with the euphemisms!
BoJo doesn’t tell ‘fibs’ – this isn’t nursery school. BoJo tells LIES – he knows they’re lies and he simply doesn’t care. Anything to win.
Call and spade a spade. Please.
p.
Rude, crude, sex-obsessed, immoral, amoral, unprincipled, the personification of mendacity. A chancer, spiv, chiseller. And a majority of voters seem happy to put the future of the country into the hands of a dirty-minded, puerile, emotionally damaged man-child simply because he’s ‘funny’. Many years ago people thought that Austrian chappie with the little moustache and the jerky arm, ranting about making Germany great again, funny. How did that work out? People found the Italian bombast strutting around screaming make Italy great again funny. Wasn’t so funny a while later was it?