How Boris Johnson’s Week From Hell In Parliament Went Down
“For those of us who from a young age have had to endure or face up to being called names such as ‘towel head’, or ‘Taliban’, or coming from ‘bongo-bongo land’, we can appreciate full well the hurt and pain felt by already vulnerable Muslim women when they are described as looking like ‘bank robbers’ and ‘letter boxes’,” the Labour backbencher challenged the PM.
“Rather than hide behind sham and whitewash investigations, when will the prime minister finally apologise for his derogatory and racist remarks, which have led to have led to a spike in hate crime?”
But it didn’t end there for Johnson. That night, he was hit with yet another blow when MPs successfully pushed the bill to block a no-deal Brexit through the House, leaving it one step closer to becoming law. (A move the PM said would hand control to the EU, leading to “more dither, more delay, more confusion”.)
When Johnson tried to hit back, tabling a motion for an early general election, he was roundly rejected. With Labour saying they would not back a snap poll until a no-deal exit was ruled out in law, many of the party’s MPs, joined by the SNP, abstained from the vote, denying the PM the 434 votes he needed to get it across the line. Ouch.