Johnson faces anger from flood-hit residents Britain
Boris Johnson was confronted by angry residents yesterday who criticised his response to the flooding crisis and forced him to ferry supplies to a submerged village in his official car.
As he arrived in Stainforth, South Yorkshire, where villagers were braced for more flooding, the prime minister was almost immediately heckled by a man walking his dog who shouted: ‘‘You took your time, Boris, didn’t you?’’ He was visiting almost a week after a month’s worth of rain fell in one day last Friday, causing the River Don to burst its banks. The worst affected area is around the village of Fishlake, next to Stainforth, where more than 1000 homes were flooded.
At a relief centre he was confronted by a volunteer who asked: ‘‘Are you going to Fishlake? Are you going to take some supplies with you? We’ve been taking them in 4x4s and if you have got a vehicle out there we could put some supplies in it.’’
A number of boxes and buckets were bundled into a car in Johnson’s convoy, before more were dumped beside the prime minister and a box was placed on his lap as he sat in his Range Rover. ‘‘We will get people back on their feet,’’ he said as he arrived in Fishlake.
He was earlier brushed off by Angela Causer, a prison service worker, who refused to speak to him as she handled a wheelbarrow while she helped troops to reinforce flood defences with sandbags. ‘‘I’m not very happy about talking to you so, if you don’t mind, I’ll just mope on with what I’m doing,’’ she said. ‘‘You’ve not helped us. I don’t know what you’re here today for.’’ Causer described the prime minister as an ‘‘annoying little man’’ who didn’t get his wellies wet and that she had planned to vote for him but his response to the crisis had ‘‘wiped out’’ her support.
Johnson was also approached by Shelly Beniston, 48, a cleaner who told him that he was ‘‘a little too late": ‘‘We’ve had no authorities helping us. We didn’t know where to start.’’
Billie Troops, 39, a selfemployed cleaner, questioned why he had not visited earlier, asking the prime minister: ‘‘Right, Boris, why has it taken you five days to come here? I was here Saturday dinner, me and my three daughters, there was no one from the council, no help.’’ – The Times