Louis Staples
Sep 29, 2019
After a week of political turmoil, prime minister Boris Johnson has appeared on The Andrew Marr Show.
Johnson has faced accusations of insighting death threats towards MPs by using rhetoric such as "surrender". In the House of Commons, female MPs urged Johnson to tone down his rhetoric, which they claimed leads to violent threats. Friends of murdered MP Jo Cox expressed their worry that such an incident might happen again.
But speaking to Marr, Johnson defended his use of language.
Johnson described the abuse faced by MPs as "reprehensible", particularly when directed towards women. He also insisted that his use of "humbug" as a response was not meant as a dismissal of MP's concerns​, but to dismiss the idea that the word "surrender" was contributing to it.
If you cannot use a metaphor like 'surrender' to describe the 'surrender act', then, in my view, you are impoverishing the language and diminishing parliamentary debate.
On Twitter, people weren't impressed with Johnson's defence.
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