BREXITEERS OF THE WEEK: Nadine Dorries caught out claiming ‘fake news’

NADINE DORRIES

‘Liverpool Echo, I’m gutted. I thought better of you. This is a classic fake news story,’ tweeted the health minister (yes, you didn’t dream it, she really is one) in response to the local newspaper’s report that the contract signed by Deloitte to carry out coronavirus tests in England did not require them to share results with national or local health bodies.

Where should such a fanciful idea have originated? The answer turned out to be, erm, Nadine Dorries who a couple of days earlier had told the Commons: ‘Deloitte’s expertise is being used to supplement in-house resource to deliver significant programmes of work, which currently includes the national response to Covid-19. The contract with Deloitte does not require the company to report positive cases to Public Health England and local authorities.’

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MIKE STOCK

The Kylie Minogue songwriter apologised after appearing to taunt a Remainer who is battling stage four bowel cancer. After musician Greg Gilbert tweeted that new treatments might be denied him after we leave the EU, Stock posted: ‘You’re still here? Stage 4?’ He also said of Gilbert: ‘The new world of Brexit and Donald Trump will bite him on the bum.’

The 68-year-old later wrote: ‘I never intended to mock his illness’ Not very Respectable, but it gives us a chance to repeat Mitch Benn’s joke in TNE after a 2017 encounter with the Brexiteer hitmaker: ‘I did ask Mr Stock to give me one good reason for leaving, in return for which I would give him ten good reasons to stay, but he didn’t seem to get the Jason Donovan reference.’

MORE: Why Arron Banks’ plan to target Jacinda Ardern is not going to planFREDERICK FORSYTHThe Day Of The Jackal author and veteran Brexiteer has unveiled a cunning plan to end civil unrest: Snipers armed with telescopic cameras and rioters sentenced to toil in farms depleted of EU migrant workers.Forsyth, 81, told Daily Express readers: ‘Take a leaf from the Army. Use snipers. Not with bullets but with film and telescopic sights. Take half a dozen high-rise roosts round the site and install marksmen with their scope-sights and cameras. Those faces will be fixed in freeze-frame. Then enlarge and identify.’Then it is down to the magistrates – no legal defence possible in face of the photographic evidence. How about 100 hours’ potato lifting? Lots of chips, a grateful farmer and all that energy usefully worked off… The healthy potato fields await.’ Brexit logic at its finest!BORIS JOHNSONWhile his media cheerleaders were busy promoting the idea that ‘Bojo has got his mojo back’, the prime minister was busy blaming care home workers for coronavirus deaths while refusing to blame his father for his walkabout to Greece. Meanwhile, his flagship Build, Build, Build slogan turns out to have been nicked from the Philippines, where Rodrigo Duterte won the 2016 election with promises of a huge £114 billion spend on 75 infrastructure projects.But the portents don’t look good for Boris and Dom: By last year only nine of the planned 75 projects had started construction and shortly thereafter the government announced only halfwould be finished by the end of Duterte’s term in 2022. Then 43 were scrapped altogether, and now the timeline has been ripped up completely because of coronavirus. Good omens!