Martial law was declared yesterday. And today Boris was expected to arrive at PMQs dressed in jackboots, an olive tunic and wraparound shades, with a Glock 18 machine-pistol tucked into his holster. Instead he wore a plain business suit. Perhaps he wanted to give his people a friendlier impression of their overlord.
He seemed unusually jovial and upbeat at the despatch box, despite all the barmy rumours swirling around the internet. He was as bouncy as a spaniel on a trampoline. And he was helped by his secret weapon, Sir Keir Starmer’s over-active legal brain. The Labour leader had spotted a discrepancy between two prime ministerial utterances.
‘Three months ago today,’ he said, in his menacingly toneless voice, ‘the prime minister said test and trace can be a real game-changer…Yesterday he said test and trace has very little or nothing to do with the spread of the disease. Both cannot be right. Which is it?’
Boris swatted this aside and declared that the government was following ‘in granular detail’ the advance of the pandemic.
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