Read on Twitter
Lots of replies/RTs to this saying "quell surprise" or similar.
Naively perhaps though, I still am surprised, or at the very least shocked. 1/ https://twitter.com/GuitarMoog/status/1243608164991488001">https://twitter.com/GuitarMoo...
Naively perhaps though, I still am surprised, or at the very least shocked. 1/ https://twitter.com/GuitarMoog/status/1243608164991488001">https://twitter.com/GuitarMoo...
Not that this bunch would lie, or even lie about something important, of course. Many senior ministers in this government have a history of looking right down the camera at the public and knowingly lying to them.
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No, what (still) shocks me about this is that they would lie about this, in this way, right now.
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Why lie about this, and why tell this specific lie about it?
Sure, they& #39;ve been caught out with a decision that they thought would be red meat to their brexity supporters, and demonstrate the virility of & #39;independent& #39; Britain.
"See, we don& #39;t need them. We& #39;re Britain."
Sure, they& #39;ve been caught out with a decision that they thought would be red meat to their brexity supporters, and demonstrate the virility of & #39;independent& #39; Britain.
"See, we don& #39;t need them. We& #39;re Britain."
Or they may have assumed it would go unnoticed, or that, despite the best efforts of some to explain the Withdrawal Agreement, people would assume that because UK wasn& #39;t in the EU any more it was a moot point.
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It may even have been a cock-up, and someone didn& #39;t make the decision in time to participate.
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But faced with the unexpected backlash against the decision, why tell such a poor lie that smacks of incompetence and can easily be shown to be untrue?
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As @DmitryOpines and others have pointed out, there might have been a good procurement reason. If there wasn& #39;t, and you& #39;re happy to lie to get out of this, why not make one up?
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Or just make up any better lie. Say you weren& #39;t convinced the EU mechanism would be up and running quickly enough, or that you thought you could do a faster procurement process yourself, etc., etc.
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Or just tell something close to the truth. We didn& #39;t think it was important then. We were wrong, but we& #39;re catching up and we& #39;ll be involved in the next round.
You can omit that you misjudged it as a great political wheeze and still get away with it.
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You can omit that you misjudged it as a great political wheeze and still get away with it.
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The shocking thing then is that it was done so shoddily and casually about such as serious thing and in such an unprecedentedly serious time.
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This time requires that people suspend and even, in the case of medical and other essential staff, risk their lives on the say so of the government. It requires a serious level of trust to be put in them. Without people doing that, we& #39;re all in trouble.
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Most understand that in times of crisis and war, governments tell official lies for justifiable reasons. This was not that. It was petty politics in a time of high human stakes.
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But it shows that the usual rules - tell any lie you like, assume everyone& #39;s forgotten about it by tomorrow, move on - that worked so well politically for this government over Brexit still apply.
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