 We've complained a lot about the policy stances of Labour under Keir Starmer, whether that be on rent or on cashmere. But at PMQs today, the new Labour leader absolutely destroyed Boris Johnson. He asked precise questions about the tragedy the Tories have overseen in care homes, and Johnson could only respond with bumbling evasion, or in two cases at least outright lies. Let's go to the first clip from today's PMQs. Mr Speaker, in his speech on Sunday, the Prime Minister said that we need to rapidly reverse the awful epidemic in our care homes. But earlier this year, and until 12 March, the Government's own official advice was, and I'm quoting from it, it remains very unlikely that people receiving care in a care home will become infected. Yesterday's ONS figures showed that at least 40% of all deaths from COVID-19 were in care homes. Does the Prime Minister accept that the Government was too slow to protect people in care homes? Prime Minister? No, Mr Speaker, and it wasn't true that the advice said that, and actually we brought the lockdown in care homes ahead of the general lockdown. That last part was true. It's not particularly relevant because even though the lockdown was brought in earlier in care homes than the rest of society, it was still way too late, which is why so much coronavirus was able to get in. But the lie, the specific lie, the outright lie, was when he said Government advice wasn't that outbreaks were unlikely in care homes. He said that wasn't the advice. Unfortunately for Boris Johnson, the receipts are online and available for anyone to see. So let's get up graphic 10. So this is from the Government website. So it's not, you know, it's not hidden anywhere. Guidance for social or community care and residential settings on COVID-19. So published the 25th of February, withdrawn 13th of March. I remember Keir Starmer said this was the advice up to the 12th of March. Now we can look at the guidance. This guidance is intended for the current position in the UK where there is currently no transmission of COVID-19 in the community. It is therefore very unlikely that anyone receiving care in a care home or the community will become infected. This is the latest information and will be updated shortly. Now what happened after that PMQs was that Starmer probably had a pre-prepared letter which was sent to Boris Johnson saying, can you please come back into the House of Commons and correct your lie when you said that that wasn't the advice. In response, Downing Street, Boris Johnson's team have said, no, the problem was Starmer took it out of context because he didn't mention the part that said this is the latest information and will be updated shortly. The problem with that argument is, yes, it did say this is the latest information and will be updated shortly, but it wasn't updated until the 13th of March. And you can see from the ONS data that that is way, way too late. There was already rampant coronavirus in society and in care homes because the government had been slow on this. I want to now take a look at lie number two. The Daily Tarograph this week carried the following quote from a cardiologist. We discharged known, suspected and unknown cases into care homes which were unprepared with no formal warning that patients were infected, no testing available and no PPE to prevent transmission. We actively ceded this into the very population that was most vulnerable. Does the Prime Minister accept that the cardiologist is right about this? Prime Minister. Well, Mr Speaker, I have the utmost respect for all our medical profession who are doing an extraordinary job in very difficult circumstances, but I can tell the House is that actually the number of discharges from hospitals into care homes went down in March and April, and we had a system of testing people going into care homes, and that testing is now being ramped up across all the 15,000 care homes in this country. So what you saw there, Keir Starmer, again, very good strategy, very good tactics for PMQs because what he does is he reads out a quote from the Daily Telegraph, which is the paper that Boris Johnson used to work at. So it's very difficult to dismiss that as some left-wing propaganda, and the point he made, or the point that the Telegraph article made, was also an incredibly important one, which is that the government said that we need to protect care homes, but what they actually did was send people back from hospital into care homes without testing them, literally seeding coronavirus in those spaces where people were most vulnerable to it, completely outrageous. But let's focus on Boris Johnson's response. So he said there, what I can tell the House is that actually the number of discharges from hospital into care homes went down in March and April, and we had a system of testing people going into care homes. Now, again, how do we find out this is bullshit? We look on the government's own website. It's not difficult to find. So the government did have a system of, so it turns out the government did have a system of testing people being discharged from hospital into care homes, but not until the 15th of April. He's implying they had it in March and April, right? Let's get up this section from the website. So the government to offer testing for everyone who needs one in social care settings, all care home residents and social care staff with coronavirus symptoms will be tested as capacity is built up. The government is announcing today's government press release. Then you can see at the bottom published the 15th of April 2020. And we can go to the content of that press release. All symptomatic care home residents will be tested for COVID-19 as testing capacity continues to increase. This is the really important one. All patients discharged from hospital to be tested before going into care homes as a matter of course. So that was not happening before the 15th of April as a matter of course. And all social care staff who need a test will now have access to one. So by the 15th of April, already 8,000 people had died from COVID-19 in the UK. And as on average, it takes 23 days between catching COVID-19 and dying from it. That means we were in a really, really late stage of the epidemic. You know, you look at the curbs every day, we were really high up that curve. Coronavirus was absolutely rampant in the country at that point in time. And the Tories, the government hadn't even been testing people going from the place where coronavirus is most widespread, which is our hospitals, going straight from those places into the places where people are most vulnerable, which is care homes. And I mean, obviously, as a policy, this is completely outrageous, but also what you're seeing there is Boris Johnson managing to lie in a space of about five minutes in front of the country. And my question for you, Dalia, is that, you know, Boris Johnson lying hasn't really damaged his career up to now. That seems to be something that people have priced in when, you know, for example, at the last general election, the Labour Party tried to say, oh, don't vote for Boris Johnson. He's a liar. It didn't really work. What I think could change this, though, is he's not now lying about his past position on Brexit or lying about what he did or didn't write in a newspaper 20 years ago. He's lying about people dying in care homes, right? And this is older people or people with older parents are also in the Tories target group. So this isn't like, you know, to be incredibly cynical about it. This isn't like Grenfell. These are the people who are dying from coronavirus are people who, you know, the Tories give a shit about because they vote for them. So do you think that him being so blatant in his disregard for the lives of people in care homes is finally going to come back and undermine his political career? I mean, I've given up trying to predict elections, quite frankly. But I think that, you know, what the strategy of the Tories right now is to kind of try and weasel their way through things by talking about technicalities, right? So the thing about, you know, capacity to test rather than how many people are being tested. Boris Johnson at PMQs was trying to kind of weasel his way and say, oh, well, you know, we were testing before, you know, and then we, you know, the number of discharges went down and much. If you had a like, as a way to kind of pretend that this is all under control, we're doing the best that we can, etc, etc. And it's like, if you did, if this was all happening, and if everything was under control, why are 40% of the deaths in care homes? Like simply the reality and the kind of like, technicalities that the Tories are trying to rely on are just completely fished from one another. I think also, as well as looking at older people, I also think wonder how this will impact sort of working class people that that turns to the Tories in the last election, how they will kind of reckon with this, because we know this is also deeply affecting working class people. But fundamentally, this all goes down to how this is going to be narrativized. So essentially, will this be narrativized as a kind of, oh, the government was doing everything that they could, but you know, the UK is very specific, it can't be compared to other countries, which is what the what the kind of Tory line is, is it going to be rested on personal responsibility? Fundamentally, that that is the issue. What I think that we should be pushing is the reality, which is that herd immunity, they've stopped using it as a tagline. But ultimately, we know from the leaks of from Dominic Cummings, saying at a dinner, just as this crisis was beginning to sort of dig its claws into this country, very casually saying that, you know, we should allow it to move through the population. And if a few pensioners die, then so be it. And it was as black and white as that. And I don't remember Boris's ratings going down after it was said in such black and white terms. But ultimately, some kind of strategy of herd immunity is still being deployed. It is not being talked about, but the whole system of trying to undo the lockdown of trying to release people back into unsafe conditions, Germany is lifting their lockdown right now. But they're lifting it firstly after having locked down way earlier than anyone that than we had. And also, they have very strict regulations to ensure that everyone who needs it is provided with PPE. You cannot get on a train right now or a bus without a mask on. We simply don't have the infrastructure or the apparently political will to implement that kind of safe easing out of lockdown. What we are seeing is a herd immunity approach, which is that if some people, whether they're vulnerable people, whether they're working class, whether they're elderly, if they have to lose their lives in order for us to try and get the economy going again, that is simply the price that we are willing to pay. And I think that that is the argument, you know, and using kind of what the fact that even Piers Morgan is talking in these terms, that is the kind of message that we should be very, very clear about. I wonder kind of how much this kind of technical nitpicking really grabs the British population as much as a kind of very big narrative of is herd immunity, the secret policy that is actually being pursued by this government. And I think there is evidence to suggest that in some form it is. Yeah, I mean, I think you're absolutely right there. And I mean, you could say I think Keir Starmer was brilliant at PMQZ, put forward some great arguments and caught Boris Johnson out getting him to lie on the spot is very powerful. But but actually, I think the most powerful way to make the argument that the Tories aren't actually trying to suppress Coronavirus is just to show someone a video of people piling off a London bus this morning. Because if you had a government that cared about suppressing Coronavirus, they would not be piling people on buses without PPE. Some of them have masks, but some of them don't because you haven't made it a requirement and you haven't really, you know, given people a way of getting these masks. Then you wouldn't do that if you didn't have as part of your plan or built into your plan that this virus is going to spread through the population.