I know this is no longer news, but my mind keeps going back to last week when Michael Fabricant MP turned up on the airwaves to defend Boris Johnson’s partying during lockdown, breaking the laws he himself had introduced:
“I don’t think at any time he thought he was breaking the law… he thought just like many teachers and nurses who after a very long shift would go back to the staff room and have a quiet drink.”
It was one of those I cannot believe what I am hearing moments. Here was an actual member of parliament suggesting that it was perfectly all right for the prime minister to get shit-faced at a number of work-based parties because that’s what teachers and nurses did. But they didn’t. They really didn’t.
Fabricant later claimed that he had received evidence from around the country that teachers and nurses up and down the country had been on the lash after long shifts. He just didn’t want to share that evidence with anyone else, suggesting that either he wanted to protect law-breakers or he was lying through his teeth. I am not one to cast aspersions to anyone’s integrity but I suggest it was the latter: Fabricant has made up his evidence and is a liar. I doubt that he is an avid reader of this world-leading blog but if he is, I’ll be glad to retract my accusation if he can provide evidence to the contrary.
I have friends and acquaintances who work for the NHS and unless they are liars like Fabricant – spoiler alert: they aren’t – they were national heroes during lockdown, as were, in my view, teachers who are much maligned by a vicious lying right wing media. Most NHS staff were so knackered, both physically and mentally, the very last thing they would have wanted to do was party. Johnson and his staff were attending meetings, nothing more. They weren’t saving lives or anything useful like that. Their levels of tiredness would not be comparable to public servants who went way beyond what was expected of them.
It’s all about muddying the water for these ugly little politicians. Barely acknowledging the fact that Johnson and Brand Rishi Sunak have accepted fines for breaking the law, this horrible little man suggests this was basically the norm for nurses and teachers. Whataboutery on an industrial scale.
It was barely two years ago when we were on our doorsteps every Thursday night clapping for public sector workers. Now a prominent politician is saying that they were all on the piss at the time. They really weren’t, but the evidence suggests Fabricant may have been when choosing his latest hairpiece.
