James O’Brien delivers epic rant about British politics and the response to the coronavirus pandemic

Radio presenter James O’Brien said forcing MPs back into the Commons the same week the UK registered more Covid-19 deaths in a single day than the EU combined and while a cabinet minister is forced into self-isolating after fears he contracted the virus, was ‘hilarious’.

‘I still find myself marvelling after everything we’ve been through,’ he told listeners. ‘The daily death rate in this country is now more than the rest of the European Union combined, although these figures go up and down.

‘If you’d said to me a year ago there was going to be a global pandemic, [that] we’re going to be the worst country in the world at handling to it and yet the football scarves will still work.

‘[That] you will still have people cheering Boris Johnson, even as he says he hasn’t been in charge since January. He only took charge on Monday, he announced. Even I – as an arch-chronicler of the madness – would have baulked that the madness would have gone that far.’

He then ridiculed the prime minister for calling on EU citizens to return to the UK on the same day his government established a committee to oversee the end of freedom of movement.

He said: ‘You’ve got Boris Johnson yesterday calling for EU citizens to come back here because we need them to work on the same day they’re setting up a committee to oversee the abolition of freedom of movement. You’ve got Conservative MPs boasting about a committee that is designed to reduce British people’s freedom.

‘You’ve got fruit rotting in the fields and you’ve got the prime minister begging EU citizens to come back here if they went before the lockdown.

‘But even against that backdrop, the idea that the great and the good of the UK government at some point in the last month sat around the table at Downing Street and contemplated an epic operation – maybe not as epic as what you do for a living but more epic than what Jacob Rees-Mogg has done so far.

‘The idea that somebody would sit there any say ‘I know who we can put in charge of this challenging and rather difficult logistical operation [of getting MPs back to parliament]… let’s get J-dog [Jacob Rees-Mogg] to do it and from day one it looks as if a cabinet minister has carried coronavirus into the Commons.’

He ended his plea, saying: ‘Photos of MPs bottlenecking at the bottom of an escalator, Brexit hardman Steve Baker filming himself describing it [the new voting measures] as a complete ‘farce’ then marching into the lobby to then vote for it… It’s hilarious.’