Good read about Boris and election ‘lies’

I HIGHLY recommend Peter Oborne’s book The Assault on Truth.

He is an award-winning writer, journalist and broadcaster who has worked for several newspapers, including the Spectator, The Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph, where he was their chief political commentator until his resignation in 2015.

In this book, he covers the last General Election in some detail and I would like to share some of this with your numerous politically aware readers.

On December 6, 2019, he covered a Boris Johnson rally in Oldham.

Speaking live on Sky News to his supporters, Boris said that he (the Tories) was going to was build 40 new hospitals in UK.

It sounded a hugely impressive election pledge, one that he repeated numerous times during that election campaign – but it was a blatant lie.

At best, at that time, the government had only allocated money for six hospitals.

The Prime Minister designate then goes on to tell another blatant lie. He tells his supporters and other listeners “20,000 more police are operating on our streets to fight crime and bring crime down’.’

Recruitment to employ an additional 20,000 officers was planned to take place over three years and even if it actually happened, it would do no more than replace the drop in police numbers since the Tories came to power, jointly with the Lib Dems, in 2010.

Needless to say, he did not say anything about the nearly 50 per cent reduction in our police stations under the Tories.

Also, during the 2019 General Election, Johnson and his ministers repeatedly stated that their plans for the NHS included “the biggest increase in funding in living memory’’ and a gross figure of £34 billion was quoted.

The Tories repeated this lie even though it was disproved by experts.

For one thing, no inflation effect was taken into account and, if this was, the quoted £34 billion comes down to just £20.5 billion – not even close to the £24 billion a year spent on average by the Labour government up to 2009.

Your own comparison of recent actual performance of his government against the above will tell you just what a fibber he is.

Then, perhaps, the planned 1 per cent increase for our frontline nurses will also make sense.

Suresh Chauhan, Glen Parva