Back before Christmas Starmer claimed at PMQs that Boris and Sunak had Covid “convictions.” A falsehood seeing as a Fixed Penalty Notice does not a criminal conviction make, which the former DPP would be expected to know…
Boris made clear that the PM had misled the house, telling Guido the same, and called for him to retract that claim. This has now finally been done, in the quietest way possible, by Starmer’s key ministerial outrider…
Cabinet Office minister Georgia Gould now retracts the claim on Starmer’s behalf in a parliamentary written answer to Richard Holden:
“My Rt Hon Friend the Prime Minister was referring to the Fixed Penalty Notices received by two former Prime Ministers for breaking COVID lockdown rules. The Prime Minister is happy to clarify that a Fixed Penalty Notice does not constitute a criminal conviction. He stands by the relevance of raising to the attention of the House that two former Conservative Prime Ministers were fined by the police for breaking the COVID rules that they put in place for others.”
Under usual form Starmer would have to make this retraction verbally in the Commons, the Tories (whether they back Boris, Rishi or neither) should have asked for it at the time…
Speaking on Times Radio, former Home Secretary David Blunkett spoke about overdiagnosis of mental problems:
“Let’s distinguish those who are really severely mentally ill, diagnosed with things that require prolonged medical and diagnostic treatment. My wife and I talk about this a lot, because she’s a retired GP, about the fact that you can be sad without being ill. You can be momentarily depressed because your boyfriend or girlfriend’s just thrown you and you’re not mentally ill. You can even have mild issues, which can be dealt with with the right kind of support, but it doesn’t make you mentally ill. So we’ve got a real task, I think, to get the psychology, if you like, of this over. But there are things where you definitely need medical intervention, and there are other things where you need good friends, you need good connectivity, and you need a job.”