Re John Crace’s sketch (Broken Boris Johnson can no longer lie his way out of trouble, 15 December), there were two blatant falsehoods from Boris Johnson at Wednesday’s PMQs. Perhaps we don’t care any more. Or perhaps they should always be called out.
The prime minister claimed “we have the fastest growing economy in the G7” and that “we now have 500,000 more people in work than there were when the pandemic began”. However, from the Office of National Statistics website, we can see that there were in fact 33,012,000 people employed in January to March 2020 (before the pandemic) and 32,506,000 in August to October 2021. That’s roughly 500,000 fewer people in work, not more.
With regard to the “fastest growing economy in the G7”, this also doesn’t seem to be true. From the figures for quarterly GDP growth published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, we can clearly see that the UK was behind Germany, Italy and France for the third quarter of 2021. UK growth in the second quarter was a lot better (5.5%), but that would be cherry-picking a good quarter. In the overall ranking of recovery compared with the start of the pandemic, the UK is a laggard.
How is he allowed to spout this easily disprovable nonsense?
Tom Parke
Abingdon, Oxfordshire
• I could not believe what I was hearing at PMQs, so I am grateful to John Crace for confirming that Boris Johnson actually denied that the government had to rely on Labour to win the vote on new Covid measures in England. Surely the Speaker should have intervened with the prime minister and called him out for ordure, ordure.
Mike Pender
Cardiff
• Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication.
