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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Scoping the damage of the Cummings road trip and Johnson’s dec
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Scoping the damage of the Cummings road trip and Johnson’s decision to ignore it
We all know that on Friday May 22nd the Guardian and the Mirror first broke the story of the trip to Durham by Cummings and his family just before the Easter Weekend. Over the following few days it was just about the biggest thing dominating the UK media and everybody it seemed had an opinion.
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Look at other nations across the globe. Even awful leaders like Trump had a rally around the flag surge in approval at the same time, which has also unwound. Is that due to Cummings too?
'Iraq – Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation (more commonly known as the Iraq Dossier, the February Dossier or the Dodgy Dossier) was a 2003 briefing document'
IDS, so moronically credulous that he was suckered by a document 2 years before it came into existence.
YouGov:
Final pre-election: Approve 41%, Disapprove 52% (Net -11%)
Most recent: Well 43%, Badly 50% (Net -7%)
2% Net swing from Badly to Approve
Opinium:
Final pre-election: Well 33%, Badly 47% (Net -14%)
Most recent: Approve 37%, Disapprove 43% (Net -6%)
4% Net swing from Disapprove to Well
IPSOS MORI:
Final pre-election: Approve 36%, Disapprove 56% (Net -20%)
Most recent: Satisfied 48%, Dissatisfied 49% (Net -1%)
9.5% Net swing from Dissatisfied to Approve
No Survation pre-election it seems to compare with. No recent Deltapoll to compare with.
So across all the pollsters there has been a net swing from pre-election in Boris's favour. Post-Cummings, post-COVID, post-Brexit as it stands the Johnson approval is higher as it stands than it was pre-election.
I really don't see how we get our economy working again properly without schools operating at pretty close to full capacity. Parents cannot go to work if their kids are at home. Parents find it hard to WFH if kids are at home.
We need to (a) reach a concluded view on the 2m nonsense. So far as I am aware there is no science supporting this at all, it was just an initial best guess that has got stuck in concrete; (b) be realistic and upfront about risk. Children are pretty much not at risk. They are facing much greater risks in the traffic getting to school than they face when they are there. This involves a conversation which might have to go beyond a soundbite. Tricky, I know. (c) Be much more upfront about the damage being done to children's education, mental health, sociability and general development. Keeping kids at home is not "safe"; it is taking a series of much more significant risks and actual damage.
Of course the UK government looks positively bold compared with the Scottish government's position but that does not excuse the failure south of the border. We benighted souls in Scotland just have to hope, as with the shopping and leisure industry, we will eventually play follow the leader.
Do you dispute a single one of the numbers I quoted? You've regularly done thread headers based upon pollsters final pre-election numbers haven't you? Do you dispute final pre-election polls as a reasonable baseline?
They'd also bounced before it. Bounces have a tendency to reverse, as they have globally, hence pre-election is surely a better baseline. That corresponds to when people were voting and not rallying to the flag.
He has done it twice already
Nothing non-existent about it. If they continue their current tactics, they'll be gifting a gigantic win to Boris and Priti as they give them every licence in the world to crack down with the public's blessing.
https://twitter.com/uk_domain_names/status/1272462738678259712
Oh, wait a minute - they show literally nothing of the sort, to the evident disappointment of those who predicted that the effectiveness of lockdown would collapse after that nonsense story.
Fortunately, the public responded like adults instead of sulky toddlers.
If Campbell's dodgy dossier had not been published, Bliar would have had a much more difficult job to get his war past Parliament.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Dossier
https://www.itv.com/news/2020-06-15/snp-mp-amy-callaghan-stable-after-life-saving-op-following-brain-haemorrhage/
Furthermore it's in the news and that is not due to the Tories. Sky have been talking about it, the BBC, ITV, Facebook, Twitter and everything else have been. If Labour haven't been what does that say about them?
If what the PM is saying is unreasonable criticise it. If what he's saying is reasonable then why aren't the other parties singing from the same hymn sheet?
If the Left want the Tories to stop talking about the destruction and vandalism of national monuments, perhaps the lefty protesters could just stop, er, doing it?
It's not really necessary to play games like this to make the UK look incompetent, it looks incompetent already.
Everyone knows he's running the policy unit at No.10, and of key importance to the PM's project and agenda once the virus is out of the way. The fact that the whole Establishment led by the Lobby mob see him as the Devil incarnate, makes Johnson more determined to see through the reforms that are coming down the line.
And the corollary is that the Scottish, NI and Welsh administrations are conveniently put in a position where they can be belaboured by the Tories for not following suit.
Also: if there is a spike in England, who will Mr Cummings and his administration blame? Themselves? Or the coinveniently whipped up statue demonstrators?
*sighs*
You are subject either to paranoia, or untreatable hyperbolics.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-53049438
I wish her all the very best. Just 28. Dreadful.
I have no personal experience of brain haemorrhage, but I do know that it killed one of my best friend’s big brother, an FT journalist, when he was in his late twenties. Killed him stone dead, so I am amazed that Amy is talking and in good spirits. Any doctors in the house know how life is likely to look for a young woman with this history?
The only movement is that LD voters who moved to the Tories have now gone to Labour instead
The PM is responding to the news, he didn't create it. Whether that's sustainable for four years depends upon what news gets created for four years.
https://twitter.com/JMPSimor/status/1272297428591480832
I'm guessing how soon they get caught and how well they get treated makes a massive difference.
a) true blue (Bluestblue?) Conservatives; or
b) those not fussed either way; or
c) lefties?
Black people should be used as whipping boys. Worse than dogs. Should be kicked instead of the dog. And then "see you later" as he went into the shop.
This is the kind of petty white scum bigotry that Johnson and his team have in mind when banging on about protecting our statues...
The trend should concern you.
...for once, possibly for the first time since the start of the pandemic, it doesn't do too much harm for the government to dither for a week or so.
The bugs are slowly being ironed out of the testing program, with results tending to come within 24hrs rather than sometime during the week, and the haphazard track and trace effort is becoming less haphazard.
At the same time, new cases continue slowly to dwindle.
Taking those things together, taking a few more risks becomes steadily less risky.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1269837128059453440?s=20
The UK statistics are basically a joke.
I think the problem the government has is that it is making decisions based on what is popular not on what is right for the country overall.
This approach might shore up popularity short term (eg keeping schools shut is popular) but will damage the country (eg kids education, jobs) long term. Not asking for a Brexit extension is another example.
Populism might be a shrewd approach if there was an election tomorrow, but it's not for four years. Johnson likes populism. It makes him feel good and has been electorally successful for him. But eventually you run out of road. Someone mentioned roadrunner and the cliff. The shift in sentiment could be swift.
A lot of footfall that does happen is people browsing shops as a social/leisure activity and not actually purchasing that much. Similarly in a lot of pubs people going in perhaps for just one drink.
Given the queues etc I couldn't think of a worse social activity right now than shopping. So I imagine those going out are doing so specifically because they have something they want to buy and have money in their pockets to do so.
I wonder if the Pareto Principle will apply to expenditure as the economy reopens? If so, that could be a good thing.
I now have the perfect picture in my mind of BluestBlue marching arm in arm to the Cenotaph with Comrade Corbyn. It warms the cockles...
The Spanish statistics are a joke.
In France leaving the home without the official paperwork authorising you to do so and explaining when, where and why you are going was subject to a hefty fine.
In the UK you could go out and about whenever you wanted and just needed to say you had a good reason if asked why.
*Edit: some of the strongest reactions I saw on Twitter to the Bruce news (and not in support of the vandalism) were actually from staunch unionists.
People whose sides lose!
a) lefty marches he took part in: approve
b) lefty marches he didn't take part in: disapprove.
Fifty percent is above the pass mark, so well done.
He seems to think that a socially distanced queue of around 120 households queueing to go into what is I think a 100k sqft branch of Primark is some sort of existential threat. That with the full set of govt recommended measures in place.
Each household will have roughly as much floorspace as the average house...
https://twitter.com/uk_domain_names/status/1272448150096220160
Well, at least that tells us all we need to know about the sincerity of your principles.
My point was that Scott's tweet is valid. The difference between the UK and other countries is too stark to be dismissed as playing games with statistics.
The UK will now be at or below average deaths for the time of year
It's negatively, I have to say. Never liked or rated Johnson, disappointed our country would choose such a person as our PM, but I was warming to him. I was OK with the tone he struck with his early virus meetings, then he got sick, recovered and I was very impressed with his first video address fresh out of hospital. Moved even. It felt authentic. The first time I had been able to say this about him. So my 'Johnson rating' at this point was 'unfavourable' but trending towards neutral.
The scandal then broke and there was a Header on here which concluded that Cummings ought to go and that he would go. I disagreed on both counts. I thought he probably should stay - given his value to the government - and I never for a moment thought he would resign or be sacked. Armed with my new and improved opinion of Johnson, I assumed he would have the integrity and the political skill and capital to (i) keep his most important SPAD but (ii) make it clear to the public that there had been a reprimand and an unreserved apology.
Well (i) proved to be the case, but as for (ii) how wrong could I be? Instead of reprimand and apology what we got from the PM was praise - PRAISE - for Cummings.
"He acted as he saw fit in the best interests of his family and I will not mark him down for that."
Absolutely incredible. You could have knocked me down with a feather. On recovering composure, I analysed the matter and came to the only possible conclusion. Here you had a guy, the PM of this country, an 80 seat majority won just 7 months ago, who without this "Dom" character would be a lost little lamb. Such was the measure of his vacuity and laziness - the reliance on a SPAD to supply all the intellectual heft and drive at the top of government because he had none of either. A dependency so craven that not only could he not bring himself to criticize the rule breaking and rank hypocrisy of Cummings, he ended up praising it.
Pisspoor. Just so so poor. And what a weak weak man. It's a bit pathetic, frankly, and one hates to say this about our PM. I do anyway, I much prefer to respect the person in that position, regardless of party.
Anyway bottom line. I was 'unfavourable trending better' and now I'm HIGHLY UNFAVOURABLE and trending the other way. Christ knows how low he can go. I'd rather not speculate.