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Johnson turns truth on head in lines about UK response to Ukraine refugee crisis | Zoe Williams

Link [2022-03-09 19:56:47]

When you stand up and deliberately mislead, call the worst the best, it all starts to sound a bit Putin-esque

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Since 2015, Boris Johnson told an antsy House of Commons at prime minster’s questions, “We’ve done more to resettle vulnerable people than any other European country”. It didn’t make sense, so perhaps it was a mistake. Poland has taken 1.2 million Ukrainian refugees, Hungary has taken 190,000, Germany 50,000. By Tuesday, we’d taken 300. Maybe he didn’t mean Ukrainians, because he hadn’t refreshed his browser? Maybe he meant Syrians, 621,000 of whom were given sanctuary by Germany; 29,000 by the UK. Nope. Or maybe he said it by accident? But then he said it again, and again. Could it have been a straight lie? A dicey move, in parliament.

Not exactly: he was referring to the number of people taken in under a resettlement scheme over the past seven years, in which the UK numbers do surpass other nations’. Overall, our figures are absolutely dwarfed by even much smaller neighbours.

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