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Boris Johnson Urged To Apologise For ‘Shameful’ Margaret Thatcher ‘Joke’

Boris Johnson and Margaret Thatcher
Credit: Channel 4

Boris Johnson has been urged to apologise for a ‘shameful’ joke he made about Margaret Thatcher closing the coal mines.

The Prime Minister claimed she gave the UK ‘a big early start’ in the fight against climate change during a recent visit to Scotland.

He said: “Look at what we’ve done already. We’ve transitioned away from coal in my lifetime.

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“Thanks to Margaret Thatcher, who closed so many coal mines across the country, we had a big early start and we’re now moving rapidly away from coal altogether.”

According to the Daily Record, he then laughed and said: “I thought that would get you going.”

Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has now blasted his comments on Twitter.

She said: “Lives and communities in Scotland were utterly devastated by Thatcher’s destruction of the coal industry (which had zero to do with any concern she had for the planet). To treat that as something to laugh about is crass & deeply insensitive to that reality.”

Labour leader Sir Keir also hit out at him.

He wrote: “Boris Johnson’s shameful praising of Margaret Thatcher’s closure of the coal mines, brushing off the devastating impact on those communities with a laugh, shows just how out of touch he is with working people.”

Nigel Farage added: “Why is Boris Johnson rubbing salt into the wounds of old mining communities, with his crass comments about Thatcher closing the coal mines? Does he even understand the red wall? Madness.”

And it’s not just MPs who are angry.

Journalist Jonathan Lis wrote on Twitter: “No prime minister has ever openly laughed in the faces of so many people, so confident that they will still vote for him. He has no incentive to succeed. He simply needs to fail while suffering no adverse consequences whatsoever.”

Broadcaster James O’Brien added: “It’s not a ‘clanger’ or a ‘mistake’, people like Boris Johnson really do find it hilarious that huge swathes of the country were crippled for generations by the closure of coal mines. And they laughed themselves stupid when Corbyn gift-wrapped the so-called ‘red wall’ for them.”

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Written by Editorial