Another Labour MP has backed Dawn Butler, lending more weight to her accusations that Boris Johnson has “lied to the House and the country over and over again”.
Butler, the Brent Central MP, was told to leave the House of Commons on Thursday after repeatedly refusing to retract her comments about the prime minister’s uneasy relationship with the truth.
“Poor people in our country have paid with their lives because the prime minister has spent the last 18 months misleading this House and the country over and over again,” Butler said.
She highlighted disputed claims made by Johnson, including that the link between Covid-19 infection and serious disease and death had been severed.
“It’s dangerous to lie in a pandemic,” she added. “I am disappointed the prime minister has not come to the House to correct the record and correct the fact that he has lied to the House and the country over and over again.”
Now Andy McDonald, the Shadow Secretary of State for Employment Rights and Protections, has backed Butler, becoming the latest Labour parliamentarian to call Johnson a liar.
Speaking on Sky News on Tuesday morning, McDonald – the MP for Middlesborough – said: “I agree with Dawn Butler, I think he is a liar.”
Highlighting a viral video by campaigner Peter Stefanovich, which is approaching 30 million views on Twitter, McDonald said footage has set out “very clearly” when the prime minister has not told the truth.
McDonald’s intervention comes a day after Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, lent his support to Butler.
Speaking on LBC on Monday, Starmer branded Johnson “the master of untruths and half-truths”, saying: “I agree with what Dawn had to say.
“I think there’s a lot of people that feel that, you know, it’s the person who’s not telling the truth rather than the person who’s calling it out that ought to be on the hotspot. So, I agree with Dawn on that.
“But I do want to, in fairness to the temporary Speaker, Judith Cummins, who was there, she did the right thing, she followed the rules because parliament doesn’t allow you to call other parliamentarians liars in the chamber, so I don’t criticise the Deputy Speaker for what she did, she was following the rules. But do I support Dawn in what she said? I absolutely do.”
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