boris-johnson-long-nose

“Actually it is only about 500 pages”

Boris Johnson, UK and EU Trade Deal announcement speech

24 December 2020

Facts

In the Prime Minister’s Johnson’s press conference after his speech announcing the UK and EU trade deal, he corrected BBC Correspondent Laura Kuenssberg when she suggested that the document ran to almost 2000 pages. He said “actually it is only about 500 pages”.

This is incorrect. The government document is 1,246 pages long.

Verdict

Johnson had agreed to the trade deal just a few hours earlier. It is reasonable to assume he knew what was in it and how long it was. His assertion that it only contained about 500 pages was simply wrong. As so often the Prime Minister was displaying lack of awareness of the contents of documents produced by his own government. For more examples see here, here, here and here.

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