It was just after Rishi Sunak had answered Stephen Flynn’s first question that the speaker intervened. The SNP leader in Westminster had merely wondered if some of the prime minister’s promises to fix the economy showed that he had been taking honesty lessons from Boris Johnson. This was too much for Lindsay Hoyle. He urged MPs to be more cautious in their use of language. There was a danger that people might think Flynn was accusing the prime minister of deliberately misleading parliament.
So there we had it. A new precedent. No one can now compare another MP to Boris Johnson, because to do so is to accuse them of lying. Spare a thought for Jacob Rees-Mogg. Or Jake Berry. Now officially banned from being mentioned in the same breath as their hero. From now on, “to do a Johnson” is officially translated in Hansard as “to habitually tell lies”.
