His written statement begins:
"This statement updates the House on what we have achieved since I was invited by Her Majesty The Queen to form a government in July 2019, and puts on record why the millions of people who voted Conservative in 2019, many for the first time, were right to place their trust in me and in this Conservative Government."
It is a valediction of Brexit and everything that he has done, written I assume by himself. There is barely a true word in it.
The video is a long one, nearly half an hour, which ought to be seen on British television but won't be while the Conservatives are in power. Do watch it if you have the time. It focuses on the fishing business in the two ports on and near the Humber estuary where fishing has traditionally been at the centre of life.
It looks at a trawler owner, who, after Brexit, bought an old trawler and refurbished it, spending £500,000 only to learn that because it had been out of action for over two years, the vessel had lost it's quota of fish and couldn't be used to catch anything. He's now trying to sell it for £400,000 but can't find a buyer.
We then saw Grimsby fish market with hundreds of crates of cod and haddock which now arrives by road from elsewhere in England, having been brought in from Iceland because the British deep sea fleet can't get access to Icelandic or Norwegian waters where the fish have migrated to because of global warming. Johnson and Frost couldn't negotiate access - despite 'holding all the cards.'
A fish and chip shop owner struggles to survive because his fish cost 60% more than they did before Brexit, cost increases he can't pass on. He has to cut the fish up into smaller pieces and even then most customers go for a chip butty (£1). Mushy peas have doubled in cost since last year because there's nobody to pick the crop, meaning supply goes down and the price rockets.
He says they were told about the money being sent to Brussels by the UK but nobody told them what we got in return. He's wrong of course, they were told, but they weren't listening.
A customer, who was made redundant from a frozen fruit company because of Brexit issues, with three kids brings them to the chippy once a month for a chip butty with curry sauce as a 'treat.' His eldest boy is in an arts group which teaches rap music and which used to receive EU funding until Brexit but don't get a bean now from the UK government.
This is a community that voted to leave the EU with a near 70% majority because they believed Johnson and his lies both in 2016 and 2019. The chip shop owner admits he feels embarrassed to have voted out and wishes he could turn back the clock.
They all seem resigned to things being worse than before Brexit. The trawler owner openly admits his company is worse off and he says they all thought that Brexit would help. He wrote to his newly elected local Tory MP and the fisheries minister about his plight but a month later had received no rely from either.
They all seem simple, salt of the earth people who didn't deserve to be lied to, betrayed and abandoned. Compare them to Johnson and his £200K flat refurbishment, gold wallpaper and parties at Chequers.
This is the reality of Brexit. There is a chasm between those two Britains. I admit it makes me absolutely furious to see what Johnson has done to those communities that were struggling even before Brexit and now have been left to their fate.
Hull is to get a freeport although there is zero evidence that it will have any impact whatsoever on fishing.
