UK general election 2019: Ice sculpture stands in place of Boris Johnson at climate change debate
They say revenge is a dish best served cold, which is exactly what UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson got after turning down a climate change election debate, in which a block of melting ice took his place.
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UK voters could have easily mistaken a farcical election debate for an advert for Frozen 2 as a huge ice sculpture stood in Boris Johnson’s place.
Mr Johnson had refused to attend a seven-way climate change debate hosted by the left-wing Channel 4 because he will only appear against the alternative prime minister, Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn.
So instead of allowing another Tory minister on, Channel 4 decided on Thursday night to replace the UK prime minister with a big block of melting ice.
The Tories have now accused the broadcaster of “conspiring” with Labour to humiliate the PM with his frozen substitute and complained to the UK’s television regulator Ofcom.
Buzzfeed UK reports that the Conservatives are looking at going even further and reviewing Channel 4’s license if it wins a majority government on December 12.
“If we are re-elected we will have to review Channel 4’s Public Services Broadcasting obligations,” the Tory source is quoted as saying.
“Broadcasting organisations are rightly held to a higher standard — and particularly Channel 4 which has a special role enshrined in legislation. Any review would of course look at whether its remit should be better focused so it is serving the public in the best way possible.”
While the Tory prime minister refused to go on stage, he bizarrely sent his father - environmentalist Stanley Johnson - to the debate to try and represent him.
Mr Johnson’s war with Channel 4 and his reluctance to do an interview with one of the BBC’s most fearsome interviewers now threatens to get in the way of what polls say will be a cruisy two weeks towards victory.
Channel 4 - which receives taxpayers money - has been in Mr Johnson’s firing line for months over its left-wing bias. Its head of news Dorothy Bryne recently called the prime minister a “liar” at the Edinburgh Television Festival.
Mr Johnson is also fighting with the BBC as he refuses to set a date to set down with its main political broadcaster Andrew Neil, who is infamous for his tough questions and recently took Mr Corbyn to task in a train-wreck interview.
But polls still say Mr Johnson will ultimately prevail on December 12 and win the biggest victory for the Tories since Margaret Thatcher’s third term win in 1987.
The YouGov/Times poll - which correctly predicted Theresa May would lose her parliamentary majority in 2017 - has Johnson winning 40 more seats and breaking Labour’s decades-long hold on the North of England and the Midlands.
The poll does warn, however, that the seats are close and that if the polls continue to tighten in the next few weeks then Mr Johnson could easily face a hung parliament.
CORBYN’S TRAINWRECK UK ELECTION INTERVIEW
Mr Corbyn refused to say he would have dangerous terrorists killed to protect British people and failed to apologise for anti-Jewish hatred in his own party.
He was skewered in a 30-minute train-wreck interview on the BBC over his anti-Western policies, his failure to deal with anti-Semitism and his £84 billion ($A158bn) election cash splurge.
The Labour leader appeared tetchy and ripped off his mic at the end of the disastrous interview that some commentators have labelled the defining moment of the election campaign.
Mr Corbyn refused, when pressed several times, to say he would ever give the order to kill a terrorist like Islamic State Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, who was taken out by US troops in October.
“I will take the appropriate decisions at the appropriate time with all the information,” he said.
“If it is possible, and only if it is possible, then you try and capture that person.”
Last month, the Labour leader said Al-Baghdadi should have been captured by US forces despite the fact that the ISIS tyrant blew himself and two children up with a suicide vest.
He had previously said the death of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden at the hands of US troops was a “tragedy upon tragedy.”
When asked again how he could be trusted to protect Brits from killers like Bin Laden and Al-Baghdadi, Mr Corbyn refused to get into “hypotheticals.”
Mr Corbyn was given four opportunities to apologise for anti-Semitic comments made by himself and his far-left supporters, and for the abuse Jewish Labour MPs have suffered in recent years.
“Racism in our society is a total poison be it Islamophobia, anti-Semitism or any other form of racism. And I want to work with every community to make sure it’s eliminated,” he said.
Mr Corbyn also struggled to answer how his plans to spend billions on public services and taking state control of major industries would be paid for.
The Labour leader has repeatedly said nobody earning more than £80,000 (A$151,000) a year would be affected, but it was pointed out that many of those workers would be hit by tax hikes.
‘UK’S SOUL AT STAKE’: CHIEF RABBI LASHES CORBYN
Britain’s Chief Rabbi says Jeremy Corbyn is not fit to be elected prime minister next month due to his failure to handle anti-Jewish hatred in the Labour Party.
In an extraordinary intervention into the UK election campaign, the nation’s top Jewish cleric Ephraim Mirvis told The Times of London newspaper that Mr Corbyn’s claims he had dealt with anti-Semites in his party was a “mendacious fiction”.
Jewish Labour activists have already promised to campaign against their own leader due to his connections with anti-Jewish terror groups like Hamas and his own anti-Semitic comments.
Rabbi Mirvis writes in The Times that a “poison” has taken hold of the Labour leadership and that he wants all voters - Jewish and non-Jewish - to examine their consciences before they vote.
“How complicit in prejudice would a leader of Her Majesty’s opposition have to be to be considered unfit for office?” Rabbi Mirvis writes.
“Would associations with those who have incited hatred against Jews be enough? Would describing as ‘friends’ those who endorse the murder of Jews be enough? It seems not.
“It is not my place to tell any person how they should vote. I regret being in this situation at all.
“I simply pose the question: What will the result of this election say about the moral compass of our country? When December 12 arrives, I ask every person to vote with their conscience. Be in no doubt, the very soul of our nation is at stake.”
The Labour leader has been slow to kick out Labour MPs and activists close to him - like former London mayor Ken Livingstone - who have said offensive things about Jewish people.
Mr Corbyn himself has been dogged by allegations he is also anti-Semitic.
The Labour leader in 2012 protested the removal of a street mural showing elderly Jewish men playing Monopoly on the pack of emaciated bodies. He later claimed he did not look closely enough at the building-size artwork.
In August 2018, Jewish groups criticised him and Mr McDonnell for supporting a parliamentary motion calling for Holocaust Memorial Fay to be renamed “Genocide Memorial Day.”
He attended and held a wreath at a ceremony in Tunisia in 2014 which was claimed to be a memorial for the perpetrators of the 1972 Munich massacre, in which 11 members of Israel’s Olympics team were murdered. Mr Corbyn said he was at the ceremony to honour victims of a 1985 Israel air strike.
And in 2013, he told a conference that British Zionists had “no sense of British irony”.
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Multiple Jewish Labour MPs have left the party over anti-Semitism and other Jewish Labour stalwarts have had their pre-selections challenged by Mr Corbyn’s far-left socialist supporters for criticising his handling of anti-Jewish hatred.
“We sit powerless, watching with incredulity as supporters of the Labour leadership have hounded parliamentarians, party members and even staff out of the party for facing down anti-Jewish racism,” Rabbi Mirvis writes.
“Even as they received unspeakable threats against themselves and their families, the response of the Labour leadership was utterly inadequate.
“And all of this whilst in opposition. What should we expect of them in government?”
Originally published as UK general election 2019: Ice sculpture stands in place of Boris Johnson at climate change debate
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