Boris delivers another masterclass in misinformation
A day after Police issued twenty fines for Downing Street lockdown party breaches – that Boris Johnson claimed he knew nothing about, and didn’t attend – the Prime Minister was back at PMQ’s no doubt emboldened to continue his run of telling lies and half-truths.
Here are a few of Wednesday’s best false claims:
“There are 1.3 million fewer in absolute poverty” thanks to his government
According to think tank the Resolution Foundation, Rishi Sunak’s mini-budget will actually plunge 1.3 million people into absolute poverty, after the Spring Statement failed to offer support to low-income households.
Britain is heading for its biggest fall in living standards since the 1950s this year, with the double whammy of soaring cost of living charges and rising taxes in April.
The Resolution Foundation said low-and-middle-income families will be “painful exposed” to poverty in the coming year with half a million children impacted.
Johnson claimed he and Sunak are “tax-cutting Conservatives”
The pair have actually hiked the UK’s tax burden to its highest level since the 1950s over the past two years.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank has described the Chancellor as a “fiscal illusionist”, after experts calculated that his Spring mini-budget would raise taxes on Britains to their highest levels since Clement Attlee.
“They want to raise taxes, we want to cut taxes, and that’s what we’re doing”
Johnson claimed his government has announced the biggest personal tax cut in decades, but Keir Starmer accurately quoted a calculation from the Office for Budget Responsibility, which estimated that the Budget will give the public back £1 for every £6 in higher taxes already announced by Sunak.
In just two years, the current Chancellor has announced tax rises of a similar scale to those seen under Gordon Brown.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies said “given that Mr Brown’s period in the Treasury stretched for almost a decade, the annual rate of increase in taxation announced under the current administration is substantially higher”.
Keir Starmer would take Britain back into the EU
With his back against the wall, Johnson claimed the Labour leader would want to take Britain back into the EU.
In February this year, Starmer ruled out any prospect of Labour granting another Brexit referendum.
“We have exited the EU and we are not going back – let me be very clear in the northeast about that. There is no case for rejoining,” he told BBC Radio Newcastle.
“What I want to see now is not just Brexit done in the sense that we’re technically out of the EU, I want to make it work. I want to make sure we take advantage of the opportunities and we have a clear plan for Brexit.”
In recent PMQs, Johnson has repeatedly claimed that Starmer has voted 48 times to take the UK back into the European Union.
This is also false. Most of these votes took place before Britain had left the EU, and were not about whether Britain should actually be a part of the bloc.
It’s true that Starmer has often opposed the government in Brexit votes, but it’s also true that he has voted in support of Brexit.
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