LBC Host Rips Rishi Sunak For Betting It All On Boris Johnson’s Rwanda ‘Brain Fart’

LBC’s James O’Brien ripped the “the Rwanda idea” as a passing “brain fart” of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson that has been taken too far and is now fracturing the Conservative Party.

In a monologue during his Wednesday show the stunned host mused at how a passing idea of Johnson’s was causing so much damage, one day after the Tory Party rebellion against Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda bill in Commons.

O’Brien told listeners: “The Rwanda idea was never supposed to be law. It was never supposed to be a proper policy. It was about as accurate and as honest as the claim that they’d built 40 new hospitals or that [Johnson] had got all the big calls right. In fact, initially it was in the same box as getting all the big calls right and building 40 new hospitals. It was just something to say, not something to do. The essence of Boris Johnson really was something to say, not something to do. ‘I never lied to the House of Commons. I built 40 hospitals, I got all the big calls right. I got Brexit done. Don’t examine the reality or the facts of what I’m claiming. Just do it.’”

He continued: “How has this ludicrous Rwanda brain fart of Boris Johnson’s ended up hobbling the Tory party in the most spectacular and public way? But the question perhaps that might be even more interesting, and I can tell you now it’d be quite easy to get through in the first few minutes of this conversation, because these are quite nebulous questions and that they often take a little bit more thinking, but you obviously have to do the thinking: How much of this is Rishi Sunak’s fault? How much of this has he brought upon himself?”

Comparing Sunak to the bland gelatinous dessert blancmange, he said: “The man is a… He’s a blancmange. He’s a blancmange in curiously short trousers, but I don’t know what else he could have done, having inherited a Boris Johnson flavoured gimmick.”

Amid failure to deliver on other policy promises, Sunak has become fixated on pushing the Rwanda bill in a bid to appease the party only to find the Tory right in rebellion against him and pushing for a harder bill. Tuesday night’s amendment votes saw 60 Tory MPs, including the two deputies, push for a more harder approach, signalling the largest rebellion under Sunak’s tenure.

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