Sir Keir has finally explained why he’s spent almost 57 days in isolation since the start of the pandemic. Appearing on a live episode of the Full Disclosure podcast with James O’Brien – which Guido listened to in its entirety on your behalf – Starmer joked about his notoriously weak immune system by ‘blaming’ it on the amount of time he spends with his children:
“…This is why I keep getting COVID, you see, I actually spend time with my kids.”
A clearly pointed dig at the PM…
James O’Brien – author of “How to Be Right” and “How Not to Be Wrong” – made it seven minutes into his LBC show this morning before he made a classic error. During one of his usual self-satisfied monologues against the government he said the £2 billion per month* (he actually said week) cost of free Covid tests would be easier to swallow had the government not wasted £37 billion on test and trace:
“Having £2 billion pounds-worth of testing unfolding every single week is significant. Of course all of these are offset by the knowledge that they wasted so much money… £37 billion on the test and trace which never felt like it had landed properly”
That’s the same money, James…
*That’s not the exact figure either.
Public school bully-boy and radio host James O’Brien has clearly got bored of ‘owning’ ‘thick’ Brexiteers and instead turned its gaze towards a new target: concerned parents who want their children to return to school:
“And the problem will be, and I think we should probably get this front and centre before it happens… when there is an outbreak or god forbid even a fatality… when that happens, it’s on you mate. You can’t not agree with that, it’s true.”
Despite the subsequent pushback against his comments after they were clipped and tweeted out by LBC, O’Brien has doubled down, throwing the broadcast team under the bus saying he is “stunned by the incredibly crass way the clip was written up & promoted by @LBC”
This went even one step too far for Coronavirus alarmist-in-chief Piers Morgan:
Wow. You tell a listener the death of ANY schoolchild from covid is personally on him if he thinks (as most people do) that kids should now return to school - and now chuck your network & its social media team under the bus for tweeting accurately what you said? Shameless. https://t.co/tarQbs2J5A
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) August 24, 2020
O’Brien’s final say on the matter? To plug his book. Classy…
Yesterday’s pro-Brexit ruling in Northern Ireland thoroughly dismissed a Remainer case attempting to make No Deal illegal – by arguing it would damage the Northern Ireland peace process. In his judgement Lord Justice McCloskey thoroughly slapped down the spurious arguments that the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement hinges on membership of the European Union, or even regulatory alignment with it…
“Neither NIA 1998 nor the international treaty scheduled to the Belfast Agreement (or, for that matter, the Agreement itself) has the effect in law of requiring the continued membership of the EU on the part of the UK.
The Supreme Court was alert to this in Miller: see [129]. Furthermore, none of the sources mentioned subjects the EU 27 to conclude an Article 50 Withdrawal Agreement in any particular terms.”
“Once again, neither the Belfast Agreement nor this suite of provisions was predicated on the basis that UK membership of the EU would continue forever. Neither of them can be construed as requiring a customs Union or continued regulatory alignment. More fundamentally, there is no sufficient evidential foundation for the incompatibility asserted. There is no suggestion that the incompatibility has already materialised”
This expert ruling will come as sad news to some of Guido’s Remoaner friends, who have repeatedly, erroneously, argued that it does:
It is impossible for anyone who understands the Good Friday Agreement to believe that Northern Ireland can leave the Customs Union without breaking the treaty. Hoey is not the only one daft or deluded enough to miss this point. But this? This is a whole new level of batshittery. https://t.co/4TFQQzdnM4
— James O’Brien (@mrjamesob) December 15, 2018
The man who tells us all ‘How To Be Right’ getting it wrong…
The Good Friday Agreement is guaranteed by the EU. Without the EU and the four freedoms, without the Uk and Ireland both being in the EU, it wouldn’t have been possible. Hence why the GFA and peace are threatened by Brexit.
— David Schneider (@davidschneider) May 15, 2019
Maybe stick to comedy mate…
Ireland & UK signed the Good Friday Agreement explicitly as EU members. 3,600 deaths preceded it. If there was an easy solution they’d have found it at 36 deaths.
WE chose to undermine the agreement with no solution.
We should be ASHAMED that it’s not US insisting on the backstop— Femi (@Femi_Sorry) February 20, 2019
Spoken with such confidence, just a shame its completely inaccurate
Dublin seeks to preserve the Good Friday Agreement. London’s (and the DUP’s) choices are inconsistent with its preservation. https://t.co/I9a63XeJFt
— Jo Maugham QC (@JolyonMaugham) December 2, 2017
The Twitter Lawyer is wrong again. Awkward…
King of smug, James O’Brien, had clearly overestimated the number of people in the country wanting to be lectured to by the personification of ‘FBPE’, as his book ‘How to be Right’ was reduced to a meagre 99 pence by Amazon. Must have been an ego blow…
The book, which was published three months ago, is described as providing an “hilarious and invigorating guide to talking to people with faulty opinions”. Despite the target audience being well heeled Remainers, Amazon looks like it felt the need to slash prices to shift it…
Earlier this month, left wing agitator James O’Brien got into a protracted argument with Silkie Carlo, Director of privacy-campaigning NGO Big Brother Watch, ironically over the issue of whether they publish a list of their donors or not. O’Brien would not let Carlo talk (about the issue of facial recognition cameras) because she supports privacy rights across the board. He then let the cat out of the bag…
Carlo: “I used to work at Liberty, Liberty doesn’t publish who funds it. Open Rights Group doesn’t publish who funds it…
O’Brien: “No, but I’m not troubled by their agenda.”
This brazen hypocrisy reveals the fundamental lie at the heart of the unrelenting ‘Who Funds You’ smear campaign. It has never been about a genuine concern about transparency over who funds various charities and NGOs – big state think tanks are never challenged in the same way. It has always been a deliberately partisan exercise in trying to drive groups that the O’Briens of this world disagree with out of public debate…
