We need more than a PM blagging his way through crisis

WE all know what Boris Johnson thinks about people like me. He said single mothers should be subjected to “destitution on a Victorian scale”.

He said the children of single mothers are “ill-raised, ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate”.

I’m sure he couldn’t quite believe it that a working class woman, who was a single mum and grew up on a council estate, was facing him at the despatch box during PMQs.

The Prime Minister only knows one approach, and he’s been doing it since he was in his bow tie at the Oxford Union.

Bluff and bluster, distraction and deflection, denying problems exist and then blaming other people for his own incompetence. He’d have made the exams algorithm resign if he could.

Never has there been a Prime Minister more out of his depth and ill-equipped for the task than our winging it, making it up as he goes along Bullingdon Club blagger.

He lights up Downing Street “Green for Grenfell” and promises to make sure the tragedy is never repeated, then whips his MPs to block the implementation of the Grenfell inquiry recommendations.

He claps for our carers when it suits him for a photo opportunity, but doesn’t even know what they earn and won’t give them the pay rise they deserve. And he prioritises making sure his mates can go grouse shooting, when frontline staff can’t get the tests they need and people cannot say goodbye to their loved ones.

This Government is taking the people for fools – from Dominic Cummings’ cross-country eye tests to Matt Hancock blaming the public for the collapsing testing system.

We already have one of the highest Covid-19 death rates and deepest recessions in the world.

Infections are rising and the testing system is collapsing. We are staring down the barrel of a second wave, with no plan for the looming winter crisis.

Time and time again the Prime Minister makes promises and then breaks them.

Back in June, he promised everyone tested would hear back within 24 hours.

This month, only one in three taking “in person” tests got their results within that time, falling to one in seven for all tests.

And then there are all the people who can’t even get a test, including my constituents in Greater Manchester who were told to travel to Kent or Aberdeen.

Instead of reopening old wounds on Brexit he needs to get his priorities right.

With lives and livelihoods on the line, the British people deserve better.