Boris Johnson press conference.
He just said the UK will have the worst performance in the G7 next year cos “we came out of the pandemic first, so had a faster recovery”.
So [deep breath] we’re doing badly because we’re doing so well.
Then he said we need to build 300,000 more homes.
Then he said building more homes isn’t the answer.
And then he said we’ve never built enough homes.
And then he said he was building more than Labour.
And then he repeated that building more homes isn’t the answer.
After that, he claimed as London Mayor he built more homes than Labour.
This is only true if you count the homes the Labour government started building but were finished while Johnson was London mayor, and over which he had absolutely no influence.
So [deep breath] to fix housing we need more homes, but that won’t fix housing, and we’ve never built any homes, as he should know, cos he built most of the homes we didn’t build.
And to prove he’s good at building homes, look at all the homes somebody else built.
If this isn’t a breakdown, I don’t know what is.
At no point in this has anybody raised the subject of Brexit. It cost us £32bn in the last year. That’s more than £1200 per person, which you should think about while you’re writing a rubber cheque to keep the lights on and contemplating eating your cat.
On it goes.
So far today he’s told us building more homes isn’t the answer, but that he’s going to build 300,000 new homes anyway.
Now saying he probably won’t meet his own manifesto promise for new homes. Which is 300,000 homes.
There aren’t enough houses for everybody, so he will let tenants buy the house they rent.
Fine, but this doesn’t create new homes. It just shrinks availability of rental homes, so they cost even more, and renters are even less able to save for a deposit.
Can he think? At all?
He goes on to say he’s doing all he can to create well-paid jobs, then (obvs) almost immediately says he’s sacking 91,000 civil servants.
He says civil service is “bloated” with 28,000 extra staff created in 5 years. We needed those to cope with your f*cking Brexit, you clown!
Then says the reason tax is so high is because of the pandemic.
The single biggest tax increase was his own social care levy, which (a) he won the election promising would never happen, and (b) he introduced before the pandemic.
The PM has now broken off from this speech about housing and the economic crisis to bewail Britain’s lack of a bananas and olives industry.
I’m not joking. Four solid minutes on the lack of banana plantations in Blackpool.
From the Prime Minister.
No, really.
I exaggerated. It was only two minutes. It just felt like four.
No, to be honest it felt like a year.
[211 MPs voted for this man…Ed]
