Lying comes frighteningly easy to Boris Johnson and his government machine.
The sleaze poisoning Downing Street and the country matters because the price of an incompetent, slapdash, flippant leader is ultimately paid by working families.
Whether hiding who was paying for his No10 wallpaper or dismissing the suffering of tens of thousands of bereaved people, Johnson displays the arrogance of undeserved privilege.
The Prime Minister is now living with a reputation as a charlatan who has a hotline his VIP friends can call to ask for favours.
Instead of ruling for the many not the few, this Conservative PM’s main priority is himself.
Conceit and deceit are a lethal combination for a man in his powerful position.
We owe India
Medical equipment from Britain will help India but the Covid-19 humanitarian crisis in the world’s most populous democracy is overwhelming.
The ventilators and oxygen equipment we are sending to Delhi are a tiny but welcome contribution, 700 items in the context of 320,00 new infections, in a nation of 1.4 billion.
Britain’s historic ties with India, colonised and exploited by the British empire before it won independence, include obligations.
Close on 200,000 official deaths illustrate why this is a callous moment for a Conservative Government to slash the aid budget.
The £4billion axed will cost lives around the world and undermine Britain’s reputation.
Tory boasts of promoting a Britain as a global force are pure self-deception.
Queen’s duty
Thebereaved everywhere will empathise with the Queen, photographed carrying out official duties for the first time since the death of her husband Prince Philip.
She was taking part in an official video meeting with ambassadors. Life must go on but nobody who has lost a loved one would pretend it’s easy.
That is as true for a monarch as it is for any other person experiencing grief.
