Entertainment

Jonathan Pie’s sweary rant about the strikes sums up the situation perfectly

Oonagh Keating. Updated December 15th, 2022

Jonathan Pie’s ‘off the record’ rants turned the spoof reporter into something of an icon, and the latest – about the many strikes taking place in the UK at the moment – can only deepen that status.

There’s obviously a lot of NSFW language. It’s Jonathan Pie.

‘Get round the table. Make a decent offer. Instead, they’re sending in the army, telling us the unions are holding the country to ransom. The unions?

Can we all just be clear about this? Our last prime minister blew a £30 billion hole in the economy – overnight! Test and Trace cost us £37 billion. Useless PPE wasted £8.7 billion, which ended up in the pockets of Tory donors.

A shambolically executed Brexit lost us £40 billion in tax revenue alone. Rishi Sunak lost £11 billion by overpaying interest on UK debt.

And yet, you read the front pages – it’s nurses who are greedy and irresponsible. It’s the Fire Service that’s holding the country to ransom because they all just decided they’d prefer to drink tea on a freezing picket line than save children in burning buildings.’

Pie – through the writing and performing skills of comedian Tom Walker – perfectly captures why support for the strikers has remained high with the general public – and in less-expected quarters.

The rant saw Jonathan Pie trending on Twitter.

At the time of writing, the YouTube video has had more than 400,000 views in less than a day – and his tweet containing the link has been shared more than 5000 times, picking up hundreds of comments like these –

We’re not sure we’d want to see Jonathan Pie stuck behind a GMB desk …

But we’d love to watch Richard Madeley try to argue with him.

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James O’Brien had the best summary of Nadhim Zahawi’s desperate argument against the nurses’ strike

Source Jonathan Pie Image Screengrab