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Damning polling for Sunak – politicalbetting.com
Damning polling for Sunak – politicalbetting.com
Wow.A separate poll by Focaldata has revealed that 59 per cent of voters believe Sunak intentionally hid his WhatsApp messages from the Covid inquiry. Even among Conservative voters, 48 per cent believe he deliberately kept his the messages hidden.https://t.co/rAChCbdURp
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Starmer asks him difficult questions for about five minutes, the enquiry is going to be asking difficult questions for two whole days.
https://x.com/crimeldn/status/1733978594051842551?s=61&t=s0ae0IFncdLS1Dc7J0P_TQ
As with Boris Johnson and the SNP government there's a pattern when it comes to WhatsApp messages from the pandemic.
The prime minister has bet his political future on legislation that is not only unworkable but dreadful in principle
It is already clear that, after David Cameron and Theresa May, Sunak will go down as yet another Conservative casualty of Brexit. Desperate for something to unite a political coalition that had only Brexit in common, he has cleaved to a terrible policy he cannot enact and which has besmirched the one thing he had going for him — the claim that he was better, more constitutionally proper and less reckless than the two prime ministers who had preceded him.
Shredding what is left of his reputation as he goes, all that is left for a sunk Rishi now is an election defeat and safe passage to California.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/this-wretched-rwanda-plan-will-sink-sunak-nh9djh2js
The big problem for Sunak is that he has always insisted that he followed the scientific advice about EOTHO but the scientists have already given evidence that they knew nothing about it until it was in force. His contention that he was relying on advice is looking like a lie right now. Not sure what he can come up with.
I don't disagree with the headline, though it's not much change. The question is not whether the electorate will defenestrate Sunak, but the storey from which he will be flung.
When Da youfff of the Country think Hitler was a good guy... its not difficult to be skeptical.
Its more about the perception even if its wrong.
If it was in force, and effective, then 60%+ of the populace would be supportive of it with only a small voluble liberal minority crying murder about it.
But you are right, fewer people would care.
The whole enquiry is demonstrating how not to do this sort of thing. One of the the reasons that airplanes and trains are so safe is that when things go wrong, the resultant investigations are conducted deliberately not to assign blame, but to figure out what went wrong, then work out how a similar incident it could be prevented or mitigated next time. This fosters a culture of openness where people will actually admit to making mistakes, and will give accurate accounts of what happened when to the best of their knowledge.
Suspect the polling is more about vibes than details. The public have mostly decided that they don't like Rishi, and view everything he says and does through that lens. A politician complaining about that is as absurd an idea as a fish complaining about the wetness of water.
Worth noting that approval of the government itself is even worse than Sunak as PM.
2 of the richest men in aviation:
Name: Michael O'Leary.
Occupation: CEO Ryanair.
Net worth: 800 million.
Number of planes: 500.
Name: Paul Kagame.
Occupation; President of Rwanda.
Net worth: 290 Million.
Number of planes: None.
What worked?
What didn't?
What can we do better the next time anything similar comes along?
Of these 3 questions the third is by far the most important. This absurd focus on who said what about whom is beyond irritating.
“The law is a system of rules without morality”
I don’t know where to start with that absolute pearl of an observation.
There is no doubt that the Chancellor was right to be concerned about the financial impact of Covid. The level of support required to maintain hundreds of thousands of businesses not allowed to trade was immense. It made sense to have such a scheme to encourage at least limited trading.
But the scheme was not road tested in terms of its potential impact in spreading Covid. Whilst it is not hard to see the reasons for the scheme that would surely be in the do not repeat pile.
So, in a future pandemic, we need to recognise that we will need to do what we can to keep things going as much as possible but these kind of ideas need to be integrated into the overall plan for handling and modelling the pandemic and not separate from it.
I'll send my bill to the Inquiry.
A broad brush enquiry into government, such as this, is a long grass exercise masquerading as one of accountability.
In terms of biosecurity and public health policy, it was always going to be largely a waste of time. And money, and political attention.
The point is that it shows (once again) Sunak’s terrible political judgement in allowing this policy to remain so salient.
Any future pandemic will be courtesy of a different virus, likely with completely different epidemiological characteristics.
And the interventions available to us - for example testing and vaccines - will also be of a completely different order to what was available even a couple of years ago.
The more interesting question is what day 1 measures could we be in a position in future to take in order to limit (and if possible halt) spread of virus, without destroying the economy in the process ?
Having such a plan was what made Taiwan such a notable success in dealing with Covid.
Beyond already having capacity in place, plans for dealing with pandemics once they have taken hold are necessarily ad hoc, I suspect.
We can't catch all the boats
We have nowhere to intern all the people we do catch. Hotels bad, army bases not in my constituency, barges don't exist and the single one they got was dangerous
We have no capacity or capability in the Home Office to generate legal cases for deportation, nor capacity in the courts to hear those legal cases
We can't "send them to Rwanda" having legally removed them. Rwanda can only take a fraction of the number we have, and won't take any if we break international law which is the only way to get through the courts.
This was a crayon policy thrown out as a distraction. Quite why Rishi chose to make it the hill he dies on I have no idea. Its not happening, and the angrier the right get the funnier this is.
A lot of the lessons around testing and how the testing technology works generalises to other viruses and indeed other pathogens. RNA-based vaccine technology also generalises a fair amount.
So, I think there’s plenty of learning that may carry forward, around testing, vaccines, NPIs, etc.
The reason why we need to tear apart the spin is that lies can get solidified into truth. "He got all the big calls right" could easily have become accepted political reality. Thanks to the enquiry he set up we know know the opposite is true. And people will vote accordingly.
Oh year, thats why the right don't like this enquiry...
What I think is important is that we recognise that complete and total shutdown is simply not economically viable for anything other than the shortest of periods and that we need to focus as much on what we can do safely as what we can't.
The obligation to take records of government decisions in the first place, arises under the Civil Service and Ministerial Codes - the first if which, but not the second, is based in statute.
So it's a fairly long standing muddle which, if government ever has the time, could do with sorting out. Hopefully without making it worse.
I'd put someone like @Cyclefree in charge of drafting any new policy framework.
(That will never happen, of course.)
Also, more European countries would emulate it.
As opposed to the real truth. Or the helpful truth...
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/national/actors-tv-personalities-and-campaigners-call-for-scrapping-of-rwanda-scheme/ar-AA1lii9F?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=17aa18ee48bf4cd7a529302ba2edc870&ei=16
The shock is that rather than counting the awful value for money element and the damage the programme would have on our reputation as the World's policeman, why did Rishi double down?
Sunak is going to get a right spanking today too. His defence of course must be EOTHO was nowhere near as egregious or dangerous as Currygate.
No other Country is copying it, cos it doesn't, can't and won't work.
Apart from that, great point...
Processing asylum claims offshore is fine. That is the Australia scheme. Our scheme is that we do not process asylum claims at all.
Had we copied Australia we would have set up a processing centre in Rwanda, have already sent plane-loads of people there. And already brought some back having successfully applied for asylum in the UK.
Our scheme is illegal because we are abrogating our obligations under international law. We don't want *any* asylum claims other than the chosen few we invite over to claim it. Which legally we cannot do. But Tories think we just tell foreigners how it is and they accept...
I welcome this decision. In my 2022 letter to the UK Government and subsequent engagements with the Parliament of #Scotland regarding the #GRA Reform Bill, I had stressed that it "would be important to clarify the relationship between the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill and the Equality Act 2010". I also welcome the court's ample consideration of the extent of the potential effects of the proposed reform, from a range of sources, including women's organizations, experts and civil society.
https://x.com/UNSRVAW/status/1734056224327434494?s=20
For you it's terrible because of what it is. If planes were taking off and deporting people there, and it was having a notable impact on boat crossings as a result, this sort of polling would start to melt away.
I imagine your fury would then be directed against the narrow mindedness of a majority of the British public.
They were watching to see if it could work and, indeed, if it did they would copy it.
The comedy is that come the election some people will be insisting that we cannot allow corruption and malfeasance and incompetence and grifting to be embedded in our politics. That to stop the SNP we must vote Conservative. Who offer corruption and malfeasance and incompetence and grifting on a much larger scale. The size of the plank in Scottish Tory eyes is truly spectacular...
Capacity for testing (and particularly for domestic production of mass tests) and rapid vaccine production are generally applicable.
As is better surveillance testing (eg of aircraft waste water).
Given the UK's life science strengths, such things needn't be unduly expensive.
But the central irony remains. The UK government were desperate to avoid lockdowns and return to normality. (See also EOTHO, which wouldn't have been a bad idea once the pandemic was actually over.) In doing so, in trying to run the pandemic warm, if not hot, they ended up in a situation where they had to lockdown- and the winter 2021 lockdown was longer and grimmer than in many other countries, despite our vaccine advantage.
Stitches in time saving nine is not a new insight.
They didn't.
Has anyone even looked at the alternative effect of spending an extra £250m on asylum claims processing, for example ?
All the current PPE ideas seem based around non-airborne.
Reusable PPE systems need to be investigated - there are some that exist already that are component based. Think mask you can attach to hoods/full body suits. Positive pressure (so they leak outwards) from a pump driven air filter.
Fitting unusual facial geometry can be done by 3D printing the removable rubber seal around the face.
This is all existing tech - far better than the medley of disposable mask, face shields, bin bag grade gowns that seems to be the current setup - full of gaps.
Obviously the governments in question will resist.
Tell you what, you can start assembling the troops, I’ll open another wing at the British Museum. Deal?
Cargo is transported, typically, in containers which take a couple of weeks (minimum) to go from one port to another. With little human intervention.
So countries like New Zealand could keep on importing and exporting with quite low risks.
If it were actually working it would be even worse because we would be guilty of abrogating our responsibilities. It is the asylum equivalent of a loan shark sending a couple of heavies round to give a good beating to a defaulting single Mum to 'make an example'.
Me, when my code doesn't work.
We are unlikely to have a grown up conversation on immigration anytime soon. In any country that has significant immigration.
Because bothering to qualify the cost/benefits of various levels of immigration from various social/economic backgrounds is hard and involves those nasty number things.
It’s much easier to throw mud at each other.
But for me the big 3 topics are:
- The decision to devolve vaccine strategy to a non Civil Service body and lead them to get on with it. That worked
- An instinctive bias to liberty be state control. Not talking about specific decisions which could be argued but mindset. Starmer was always “harder, longer, stricter” which worries me
- A tendency by the civil service to gold plate rules in ridiculous detail and a pettifogging desire by police and others to enforce control. That’s worrying
- Use of WhatsApp to prevent government records being kept. Problematic - but given the way the inquiry has resulted in political games being played out perhaps understandable (if not forgoveable)
- Boris was a chaotic disorganised jerk who thought rules didn’t apply to him. That was priced in anyway and ultimately cost him his job
So yes, the biggest call of all and the mindset were both right
Sunak got so many things right during Covid - a bazooka of cash to keep businesses alive. EOTHO was hubris.
However, the liberal western world is not rushing to suggest, for example, that it would be a great and peace making idea to open the gates to all and every resident of Gaza, every single one of whom without exception would be fleeing war.
We should have done Butcher & Bolt.
And given that the vast majority of immigration is completely under the control of the Government and that they have previously actively chosen (rightly in my opinion) to prioritise keeping the economy and services running over shutting the doors to migration, this idiotic policy on 'stopping the boats' is simply a performance by Sunak to pander to a small, ignorant, section of society (and a far larger but equally ignorant section of his own party).
In both cases, actions taken in preparation before any new pandemic are at least an order of magnitude (probably a couple of orders) more important than anything government does once it's started.
Do you think we should have a one-minute silence now in this exchange, one for you to apologise for daring to suggest that you know how I think, and second perhaps in memory of your party and it’s policies?
I’m sure the scientists were modelling all sorts of scenarios. And I suspect their denial is very narrow “we weren’t told about this specific scheme” rather than “we had no discussions about schemes to increase the number of customers in the hospitality sector”.
If it is the latter then that is a massive failing of the scientists, the civil servants, the politicians and everyone involved in scenario planning and modelling. I doubt that is the case.
They are pointing fingers and dodging the blame. Very effectively judging by your response.
Erik ten Hag’s half time talk.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2023/11/14/30390/2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbWpjGuNmTY