JOHNSON, THE SERIAL LIAR, AND HIS MINISTERS CONTINUE TO MISLEAD - AND STARMER IS STILL A FAILURE

 SKWAWKBOX continues to inform those who are open to truth. Here are a couple of this week's highlights:

Trickett takes Tories to task for claiming units in existing hospitals are ‘new’ hospitals

’48 new hospitals’ has always been a scam – but backbench MPs are having to do the job of the Opposition in calling it out

Trickett and Javid

Back-bench Labour MP Jon Trickett has long been one of the pillars of opposition to the Tories in the absence of any functioning leadership or opposition from his party’s notional leader. And it was again Trickett who was first out of the blocks when the Tories tried to claim that they had opened a ‘new cancer hospital’ in Cumbria yesterday.

Trickett was quick to point out that the ‘new hospital’ is no such thing. Instead, it’s a unit inside an existing hospital, one that was announced in 2017, long before Johnson became Tory leader:

And he followed up again later today, taking on Javid directly over his dishonest claim and

adding that the ‘new’ unit is in fact a replacement facility:

He was backed up by a member of staff from the hospital in question:

Trickett’s point was also quickly picked up and amplified by others about their local hospitals, who rightly pointed out that Johnson’s ‘new hospital’ plan is (and always was) a scam, claiming as new either hospitals that have merged – actually reducing the availability of treatment to local people – or small new or repurposed units within existing hospitals.

The scale and dishonesty of the con is remarkable, with in at least one case a new entrance to the hospital and a change of the Accident and Emergency floor plan being classified as a ‘new hospital’:

Front-bencher Jon Ashworth did eventually get round to making the same point, though only a single tweet – compared to the five he posted about workshy Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab’s holiday, despite Ashworth’s brief as Shadow Health Secretary being – well, health. At the time of writing, party leader Keir Starmer had not even managed one tweet on the issue.

As so often in the past sixteen months, the real work of opposition, pointing out Tory lies and standing up for the interests of the people, is being borne by left-wingers sitting on Labour’s back benches.

This next SKWAWKBOX piece reveals the results of an opinion poll that focused on Keir Starmer and his performance as Leader of the Opposition. 

‘Simply staggering’ results as YouGov respondents massively prefer Corbyn

More than three out of four consider Starmer incompetent – and four out of five find him dislikeable and think he will never be PM

Corbyn and Starmer

A set of ‘simply staggering’ polling results from the YouGov website – results from almost 12,000 respondents, a huge sample by normal polling standards – suggests that Keir Starmer is massively outshone by his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn.

The results – which come despite the easiest possible ride in the media for the former Director of Public Prosecutions (as he never tires of reminding us all) and the stark contrast with the non-stop media and Establishment war on Corbyn – include damning assessments of Starmer’s competence as well as his likeability or lack of it. So much for ‘forensic’.

The numbers were tweeted by trade unionist Martin Abrams after a friend came across them on the YouGov site as part of a ‘chat poll’. The first question asked was on Starmer’s competence – and after answering, the respondent was informed that more than three quarters – 76% – of the almost 12,000 respondents so far consider Starmer incompetent:

Next came likeability – and four out of five respondents said Starmer was unlikeable, compared to only 13% who thought him likeable:

After that, the question of whether Starmer would ever become PM – and just as many thought Starmer will never occupy Downing Street as find him unlikeable:

And when it came to comparing him with Jeremy Corbyn, the man he pledged to emulate in order to win the leadership election but has instead thrown out of the party, he was outscored by a wide margin:

Starmer’s team appears to have given up on any hope of making their man appealing to voters, instead hoping Boris Johnson will screw up badly enough to let him sneak through on the inside rail – and conjuring up management-speak gibberish like ‘adopt[ing] a product-mindset by using agile ceremonies’.

And based on these numbers, even those desperate ploys look like a better bet.

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                         I hope you have found food for thought here.