Theresa May stood at the dispatch box and lied. She lied that the decision to destroy immigration landing cards was taken by the Labour Party in 2009 when it wasn't. She lied because she was desperately trying to deflect criticism over her grotesque 'hostile environment' policies that led to the dehumanisation, detention, denial of rights and even and deportation of Commonwealth British citizens. And most of all she lied because she thought she could get away with it.
If the British press had any instinct to hold the UK government to account they would have looked into her claim, immediately found it to be contradicted by the previous day's Home Office admission that the documents were destroyed in October 2010, and run a story criticising the Prime Minister for lying to the House of Commons, and for cynically misleading the British public in order to deflect negative attention away from herself.
But that's not what happened. That's not what happened at all. Instead of investigating her claim, the BBC and various other mainstream media outlets uncritically parroted her lie, and helped her misleadingly deflect the Windrush criticism onto others.
Of course the billionaire owned right-wing propaganda rags and the legions of Tory social media propaganda accounts got in on the misdirection act, but the behaviour of the BBC is much more problematic. They didn't just make Theresa May's lie the number one story on their website, they also uncritically regurgitated her lie into millions of homes and workplaces in TV and radio news segments.
When the state broadcaster refuses to investigate even the most blatant of government lies, and instead uncritically parrots the lie into the homes and onto the devices of millions of people, they're not worthy of the name journalists, or news reporters, they're nothing but impotent court stenographers, and cynical mind manipulators.
But let's not forget the real issue here. The real issue isn't that a batch of documents were destroyed and when. It's that in 2014 Theresa May introduced horrific new anti-immigrant rules giving the government the power to deny employment, deny health care, deny benefits and pensions that people have paid for through decades of National Insurance contributions, and to make British citizens live in constant fear of imprisonment and deportation to places many of them last saw when they were toddlers.
The reason she inflicted this appalling state of limbo on thousands of British citizens was just to grub a few votes off UKIP by appealing to the extreme-right ultranationalist anti-immigrant demographic.
Nobody in the Tory party complained about this blatant Faragisation of the Tory party and the UK government back in 2014, and even now still none of the supposedly more liberal One Nation Tories dares to stand up and criticise what Theresa May has done in their name.
Theresa May brought in these harsh new rules in 2014, and she was undeniably warned at the time by Diane Abbott that such rules could be used against British Commonwealth citizens without paperwork, but May just evaded the question and waffled on about whatever she wanted to, in the way we've all become all-too-familiar with since she became Prime Minister.
If the BBC was up to it's job it would have reported that Theresa May lied. If the so called free press that are not constrained by impartiality rules were up to their jobs they would be calling for Theresa May's resignation for introducing such disgusting rules, then lying to parliament and the public to try to deflect the negative attention. And if Theresa May had the slightest shred of personal integrity she's would have already shown her contrition by tendering her resignation.
None of that has happened. None of that is likely to happen. But the more the media and the political establishment class circle the wagons to protect their own elitist class from the rest of us, the more furious the British public are going to get until something gives.
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