Left-Wing UK Mayor Says PM Boris Johnson 'Completely Deserves' COVID, Gets Stripped of Party ID
America is obviously my favorite country, but our cousins over in Albion make for a close second.
I love British music, which has always had us beat. The Beatles, the Stones, David Bowie, the Smiths, Sade, Blur, Oasis, the Arctic Monkeys. There’s the literature, from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Martin Amis and Zadie Smith. I even love British food and swear by mushy peas. They have London and Manchester. And then there’s the best part: the British countryside.
Literary descriptions of it don’t do it justice. The rolling hills and undulating roads through quaint towns dating back hundreds of years. My personal favorite part of Great Britain has to be Cornwall, but a close second is Derbyshire. Beautiful landscapes, the Pennines, wonderful towns, amazing historical landmarks — what could go wrong?
Well, if you’re in the town of Heanor, you have Mayor Sheila Oakes. Oakes is a member of the Labour Party and really doesn’t like Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
In fact, she’s now apologizing for saying that he “completely deserves this” when he went into intensive care for COVID-19.
According to the BBC, Oakes “made the comments below a Facebook post about the news.”
Under a post urging Britons to say a prayer for Johnson, who entered the ICU on Monday one day after being admitted to the hospital, Oakes decided to make everyone aware she wasn’t a fan of BoJo, a man who was one step away from a ventilator.
“Sorry, he completely deserves this and he is one of the worst PMs we’ve ever had,” she wrote.
Oakes quickly backtracked, saying she had “made a mistake.” Well, duh. It beats “mistakes were made,” but not by much.
The Heanor mayor also told the BBC she “apologized for upsetting people and saying it.” She then quickly showed how little self-awareness she possessed.
“I didn’t think what I said would upset so many people. It came across as not a nice thing to say,” Oakes said.
“I’m concerned about nurses and doctors who don’t have protective equipment. I said something when I was angry without thinking about the prime minister or his family.”
I’m sure she’s concerned about nurses and doctors who don’t have protective equipment — or thinks she is — but this is mutually exclusive to the fact Johnson in the hospital with the worst form of the most dread disease since the Spanish flu.
The Amber Valley Labour Group said it has withdrawn her whip, which is basically the adorably British way of saying that she’s no longer a member of the party.
“This behavior is totally unacceptable and not what the Labour Party are about,” Chris Emmas-Williams, leader of Amber Valley Labour group, said, according to the BBC.
“I’ve not made the comments but I feel as leader of the Labour group I have to apologise as well to Boris Johnson and his family and we wish him well because we need everyone possible to fight this disease,” Emmas-Williams said.
The mayor isn’t resigning, which is rather surprising as these things go. I mean, once you say the leader of your country deserves to be in intensive care, your political future becomes pretty dim.
However, Oakes has lost her day job as a solicitor at VHS Fletchers Solicitors, where she’s a paralegal. The firm said Oakes was “no longer employed by this firm in any capacity.”
VHS Fletchers said it had become “embroiled in criticism” because of the remarks.
In a statement on its website, the firm said her comments were “deeply offensive” and “not shared by the partners or any other members of staff.”
“To wish illness upon anyone must be abhorrent to all right thinking members of the public,” it said.
So basically, I’m guessing that she’s not going to get mayor of the year honors for slagging the former mayor of London and basically hoping that he dies.
Again, this isn’t new. The left has always been happy to countenance the idea of death and likes when tragedy befalls people on the right. That hasn’t changed at a micro level even as the coronavirus ravages the earth.
This is what some of them did when Arizona Sen. John McCain died. This is what some of them did when former President George H.W. Bush died. This is what they do when Boris Johnson is in extremis in a London hospital.
There’s apparently no hiding from this kind of stupidity — not even in the verdant English countryside.
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