The one thing peculiar thing about all criticisms of Trump are that they boil down to manner rather than policy. As I've posted before its like they come from the head of some sort of political finishing school.
What an uncouth fellow. Did you know he shouted at some female leaders! We're talking about people who have dined on the entrails of their competitors to get where they are, but that's OK because they did it in the RIGHT way. They didn;t upset any journalists. They listened to think tanks and didn;t call out sacked advisors when they vented their spleen.
They caved in to the Erdogans and Putins of this world, but crucially they acted tough and pulled stern faces when needed. When the press were there. Which is what counts.
Its amazing really.
"all criticisms of Trump" what a pile of crap.
what about off the top of my head: attacking Obamacare massive tax giveaways to the superrich - with a big increase in govt to pay for it massive boosts to fossil fuels and going for global suicide via overheating stripping anti-pollution and environmental laws nepotism support for white supremacists appointing loads of ultra-conservative judiciary separation of families open racism
besides, it's not just "shouting at some female leaders" it's about trashing US alliances and sucking up to dictators.
Now, these might all be things you approve of, but they are also things that Trump is criticised for which are actually matters of policy rather than manner.
Mr. xP, you give too much praise to Boris Johnson and not enough censure for the pro-EU campaign.
A positive campaign on economics would've swayed enough people. Instead they developed a bus fixation and tried arguing that we don't give Ultramegabucks to the EU, but only Hypermegabucks.
People are there to be persuaded, that's the point of democracy. The fearful approach taken by Remain proved their undoing. Boris Johnson wasn't some sort of incredible pied piper. He was a plus for the Leave campaign, but we should not forget the campaign overall was dreadful.
It's just that Remain managed to be even worse.
I disagree. The Leave campaign was better than I expected while the Remain campaign was worse than expected.
Prior to the Referendum it was expected that Leave would campaign on immigration and Remain on the economy. Instead Leave took the battle onto what was perceived to be Remains ground and the economy debate became a question of how much money we pay the EU each year.
It was a tactical and strategic masterstroke. Had Leave been led by Farage and his ilk it'd have been immigration day in, day out and would have lost.
On the subject of spikes in cases - a scary looking graphics of hotspots was posted in the other thread.
So I looked at the Pillar 1 data. See below. I have coloured any days where more than 5 cases occurred to make them stand out.
I particularly like the Isle of Wight, 3 cases in the whole of June and the story was reposted on here as if gospel that there were a spike of cases on the Island.
It's just pillar 1, so there are more cases than that. But Pillar 1 data was used to write the story!
It is interesting, as well, to see how Leicester stands out. Rather validates the idea that a lock down was ordered *before* things got out of hand again - indications over the last couple of weeks, and then definite changes last week.
This chart from the Daily Mail perhaps illustrates it better. I would ignore places with fewer than 5 as likely to be sporadic variation in R number. In Leicester the r number looks to be about 1.
Doncaster, Derbyshire, Medway and several boroughs in West London look problematic though.
In fact the story would have worked if they hadn't got greedy - just the ones with cases>10 AND increasing, albeit with very low actual numbers. But some are just stupid -the Wilts case included (my area)
Mr. xP, you give too much praise to Boris Johnson and not enough censure for the pro-EU campaign.
A positive campaign on economics would've swayed enough people. Instead they developed a bus fixation and tried arguing that we don't give Ultramegabucks to the EU, but only Hypermegabucks.
People are there to be persuaded, that's the point of democracy. The fearful approach taken by Remain proved their undoing. Boris Johnson wasn't some sort of incredible pied piper. He was a plus for the Leave campaign, but we should not forget the campaign overall was dreadful.
It's just that Remain managed to be even worse.
Couldn't agree more. Leave's campaign was only brilliant in comparison to Remain.
Do you think if Leave had campaigned on immigration like Farage wanted instead of changing the battle onto extra money for the NHS etc that the Leave campaign would have been better or worse?
Leave would probably have done worse, although Immigration was a popular issue. Remain never managed to get on the front foot. It was absolute pants compared with 1975.
Alternatively, Remain wasn't pants, it was a standard issue campaign with some good moments and decent performers - like Ruth Davidson in the debates - it was just confronted with an unexpectedly brilliant opponent, who out-thought them
eg TAKE BACK CONTROL
That is electioneering genius. Very hard to refute or deny, without sounding mad or boring
Take Back Control was indeed very good. However, as we here all recognise elections, referenda etc are not won or lost in the campaign; that's just the final push. And Leave pushed and pushed in the three or four years before.Cameron didn't mind too much because it was taking the pressure off the Governments economic policy. Then, having shafted the pro-EU LibDems in the 2015 election (although they didn't help themselves) he found himself short of allies.
The problem for the EU is that the UK lets anyone in. I could fly from the US to the UK and then straight on to Madrid.
Not that I have Coronavirus.
Not if the UK maintains 14 day self quarantine for US arrivals. AIUI the proposal is to keep that in place, except for certain countries - the same list as the EU presumably - who have been clear that we either offer quarantine free access to all, or UK arrivals in the EU would face quarantine.
But the self quarantine rules are a joke. I get off at Heathrow from Atlanta and jump onto the tube without a mask.
The one thing peculiar thing about all criticisms of Trump are that they boil down to manner rather than policy. As I've posted before its like they come from the head of some sort of political finishing school.
What an uncouth fellow. Did you know he shouted at some female leaders! We're talking about people who have dined on the entrails of their competitors to get where they are, but that's OK because they did it in the RIGHT way. They didn;t upset any journalists. They listened to think tanks and didn;t call out sacked advisors when they vented their spleen.
They caved in to the Erdogans and Putins of this world, but crucially they acted tough and pulled stern faces when needed. When the press were there. Which is what counts.
The one thing peculiar thing about all criticisms of Trump are that they boil down to manner rather than policy. As I've posted before its like they come from the head of some sort of political finishing school.
What an uncouth fellow. Did you know he shouted at some female leaders! We're talking about people who have dined on the entrails of their competitors to get where they are, but that's OK because they did it in the RIGHT way. They didn;t upset any journalists. They listened to think tanks and didn;t call out sacked advisors when they vented their spleen.
They caved in to the Erdogans and Putins of this world, but crucially they acted tough and pulled stern faces when needed. When the press were there. Which is what counts.
Its amazing really.
"all criticisms of Trump" what a pile of crap.
what about off the top of my head: attacking Obamacare massive tax giveaways to the superrich - with a big increase in govt to pay for it massive boosts to fossil fuels and going for global suicide via overheating stripping anti-pollution and environmental laws nepotism support for white supremacists appointing loads of ultra-conservative judiciary separation of families open racism
besides, it's not just "shouting at some female leaders" it's about trashing US alliances and sucking up to dictators.
Now, these might all be things you approve of, but they are also things that Trump is criticised for which are actually matters of policy rather than manner.
Blimey you just proved my point. talk about a Private Eye....er......that's it list. laughable. Really weak. Often completely wrong too.
Appointing loads of ultra-conservative judges who.....er......recently made a number of high profile rulings against the administration for example.
I am really not sure why people are supposed to care what she thinks. After all very few did when she was PM and trying to sell her deal to the House of Commons.
In general terms I agree with you. Nevertheless, May is articulating quite forcefully what people who care about national security think. Cummings/Gove/Johnson are picking fights with a lot of powerful lobbies and the defence/national security lobby has just been added to the list.
On the subject of spikes in cases - a scary looking graphics of hotspots was posted in the other thread.
So I looked at the Pillar 1 data. See below. I have coloured any days where more than 5 cases occurred to make them stand out.
I particularly like the Isle of Wight, 3 cases in the whole of June and the story was reposted on here as if gospel that there were a spike of cases on the Island.
It's just pillar 1, so there are more cases than that. But Pillar 1 data was used to write the story!
It is interesting, as well, to see how Leicester stands out. Rather validates the idea that a lock down was ordered *before* things got out of hand again - indications over the last couple of weeks, and then definite changes last week.
This chart from the Daily Mail perhaps illustrates it better. I would ignore places with fewer than 5 as likely to be sporadic variation in R number. In Leicester the r number looks to be about 1.
Doncaster, Derbyshire, Medway and several boroughs in West London look problematic though.
In fact the story would have worked if they hadn't got greedy - just the ones with cases>10 AND increasing, albeit with very low actual numbers. But some are just stupid -the Wilts case included (my area)
But an increase from 0 to 1 is MORE THAN ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND MILLION BAZZILION PERCENT!!!!!!
Mr. xP, you give too much praise to Boris Johnson and not enough censure for the pro-EU campaign.
A positive campaign on economics would've swayed enough people. Instead they developed a bus fixation and tried arguing that we don't give Ultramegabucks to the EU, but only Hypermegabucks.
People are there to be persuaded, that's the point of democracy. The fearful approach taken by Remain proved their undoing. Boris Johnson wasn't some sort of incredible pied piper. He was a plus for the Leave campaign, but we should not forget the campaign overall was dreadful.
It's just that Remain managed to be even worse.
Couldn't agree more. Leave's campaign was only brilliant in comparison to Remain.
Do you think if Leave had campaigned on immigration like Farage wanted instead of changing the battle onto extra money for the NHS etc that the Leave campaign would have been better or worse?
Farage and his immigration focus was a necessary but not sufficient condition of the Leave win.
On the subject of spikes in cases - a scary looking graphics of hotspots was posted in the other thread.
So I looked at the Pillar 1 data. See below. I have coloured any days where more than 5 cases occurred to make them stand out.
I particularly like the Isle of Wight, 3 cases in the whole of June and the story was reposted on here as if gospel that there were a spike of cases on the Island.
It's just pillar 1, so there are more cases than that. But Pillar 1 data was used to write the story!
It is interesting, as well, to see how Leicester stands out. Rather validates the idea that a lock down was ordered *before* things got out of hand again - indications over the last couple of weeks, and then definite changes last week.
This chart from the Daily Mail perhaps illustrates it better. I would ignore places with fewer than 5 as likely to be sporadic variation in R number. In Leicester the r number looks to be about 1.
Doncaster, Derbyshire, Medway and several boroughs in West London look problematic though.
In fact the story would have worked if they hadn't got greedy - just the ones with cases>10 AND increasing, albeit with very low actual numbers. But some are just stupid -the Wilts case included (my area)
I think most former PMs have recognised their place and given space to their successors.
That the worst PM since Lord North hasn't perhaps shouldn't be a shock.
The worst PM since Lord North, and possibly well before is currently in office. TMay was bad, but she was a consummate professional compared to Johnson. She had some leadership ability, he has none.
She absolutely didn't. That was the problem. Her idea of leadership was to say nothing for a very long time and then announce things with no consultation, no consensus building, no allies and ultimately pretty much no followers.
I still think the deal that she did with the EU was a good compromise, better than Boris's in some respect. But her leadership skills were such she could not deliver it. Selling ice cold water in the Sahara on a sunny day would be beyond that woman, it really would. She was awful. I hesitate to say worse than Brown (at least she did make her mind up eventually) but right up there with worst PMs of the last 100 years or so.
I have been evaluating leadership skills for two decades. I can assure you that while she scores lower than you would want for an executive leader, she scores higher than Boris Johnson, by a long way. He is utterly hopeless, only those with no understanding of leadership ability would think otherwise.
In your masterful evaluation of leadership skills over two decades, how many general election landslides did you win? Because you do come across a little bit like a film reviewer for the Scunthorpe Telegraph slagging off Martin Scorsese...
I think most former PMs have recognised their place and given space to their successors.
That the worst PM since Lord North hasn't perhaps shouldn't be a shock.
The worst PM since Lord North, and possibly well before is currently in office. TMay was bad, but she was a consummate professional compared to Johnson. She had some leadership ability, he has none.
She absolutely didn't. That was the problem. Her idea of leadership was to say nothing for a very long time and then announce things with no consultation, no consensus building, no allies and ultimately pretty much no followers.
I still think the deal that she did with the EU was a good compromise, better than Boris's in some respect. But her leadership skills were such she could not deliver it. Selling ice cold water in the Sahara on a sunny day would be beyond that woman, it really would. She was awful. I hesitate to say worse than Brown (at least she did make her mind up eventually) but right up there with worst PMs of the last 100 years or so.
I have been evaluating leadership skills for two decades. I can assure you that while she scores lower than you would want for an executive leader, she scores higher than Boris Johnson, by a long way. He is utterly hopeless, only those with no understanding of leadership ability would think otherwise.
I know you're so blinded by rage over Brexit you've lost all critical thinking but come on!
To put it in a way @TheScreamingEagles should understand (but likely won't agree with) Theresa May was the Hicks and Gillette of leaders while Johnson is FSG.
Trump and Johnson/Brexit are two cheeks of the same populist arse.
The main difference between the two at the moment is Trump has had 4 more years to demonstrate how useless he is. My money is on things looking pretty similar here by 2024
Alternatively, Remain wasn't pants, it was a standard issue campaign with some good moments and decent performers - like Ruth Davidson in the debates - it was just confronted with an unexpectedly brilliant opponent, who out-thought them
eg TAKE BACK CONTROL
That is electioneering genius. Very hard to refute or deny, without sounding mad or boring
Yes, that's probably fair. The Remain side weren't very nimble, though, they just worked through their grid (excluding the rather important bits which Corbyn and Seumas Milne sabotaged). In particular they fell straight into Cummings' trap on the £350m a week lie, trying to correct it to 'only' £250m a week and thereby giving it extra legs - not just once but repeatedly.
Indeed. To say Remain was really bad, you have to believe it was led by clueless people. It was not. Cameron and Osborne have their faults, but they are far from stupid.
The main sin of Remain was probably complacency (always a problem with Cameron). They thought they were going to be facing a campaign led by Nigel Farage, Bill Cash and John Redwood, which would indeed have been a walkover; Instead they got Dom Cummings, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson.
They didn't readjust quickly enough. They didn't anticipate problems.
Bit of a liberty! I guess this is going to be the case in a lot of tourist places for a while. Easyjet cancelled our mid July flights to Portugal this morning, two holidays down the drain now
Interesting - Fauci testifying that in the US even where states have managed lockdown well and are gradually opening up have had the problem of people going from 100% lockdown to 0% lockdown - with the young in particular acting like they are invulnerable (even if some of them aren't, and all of them are potentially lethal vectors).
Yep.
That's the kicker. You need to gradually relax lockdowns over months, not allow people to head straight down to the local nightclub.
That's what we've done but I don't see (short of eliminating the virus NZ style) how the nightclubs can reopen in the future.
If you keep gradually loosening while keeping R below 1 you'll eventually reach a point surely where you can't loosen any further without raising it back above 1 - which is probably nightclubs.
And gyms. I think they are screwed until there is a vaccine.
I think it could depend on the gym.
eg Class-based gyms or those with established and regular membership could bubble - just like schools.
Open gym would need careful management, but can be practically managed via booking and spacing.
Many Crossfit or imitation Crossfit gyms could do that if they have reasonable space.
We have fewer than 150 members, classes of up to 20, and 3500 sqft of open exercise mat out of 7000sqft total indoor space, plus miles of running trails on the doorstep.
It will be tricky for those where business models are for massed ranks of strangers, or built on treatments and a TV bar.
Mr. xP, you give too much praise to Boris Johnson and not enough censure for the pro-EU campaign.
A positive campaign on economics would've swayed enough people. Instead they developed a bus fixation and tried arguing that we don't give Ultramegabucks to the EU, but only Hypermegabucks.
People are there to be persuaded, that's the point of democracy. The fearful approach taken by Remain proved their undoing. Boris Johnson wasn't some sort of incredible pied piper. He was a plus for the Leave campaign, but we should not forget the campaign overall was dreadful.
It's just that Remain managed to be even worse.
I disagree. The Leave campaign was better than I expected while the Remain campaign was worse than expected.
Prior to the Referendum it was expected that Leave would campaign on immigration and Remain on the economy. Instead Leave took the battle onto what was perceived to be Remains ground and the economy debate became a question of how much money we pay the EU each year.
It was a tactical and strategic masterstroke. Had Leave been led by Farage and his ilk it'd have been immigration day in, day out and would have lost.
It's also bollocks to say that the Remain campaign was "bad". They did everything you are expected to do: they did the powerful data stuff - how much this would cost us, the damage to trade, the Emergency Budget, the instant recession, the instant unemployment (ie they lied, like Leave).
On top of that they brought in all the big guns: from Obama to Brussels, the major newspapers, the CBI, almost every celebrity. They tugged at heart strings and did clever speeches. They did everything that was done in 1975 which led to a huge win for "JOIN THE EU" (even if it was technically "stay")
The Remain campaign was not bad at all. It was solid and well organised.
The problem is that the Leave campaign was unexpectedly superb. Very clever and very devious. There are two main reasons for this: they got Dom Cummings to mastermind it, and he really is good at this shit, and they got Boris Johnson to be the figurehead of the campaign, and he really is good at that shit.
There's a telling anecdote about the moment Cameron's team heard that Johnson had gone for Leave. They all fell into a terrible depressive hush, because they knew that meant they could lose.
Without Boris, Leave would have lost.
Ditto Farage. I understand why "liberal leavers" - being 8 people in total, most of whom post on here - would love to airbrush him out of history but it can't be done. Grits teeth - one of the most effective and influential British politicians of recent times.
Mr. xP, you give too much praise to Boris Johnson and not enough censure for the pro-EU campaign.
A positive campaign on economics would've swayed enough people. Instead they developed a bus fixation and tried arguing that we don't give Ultramegabucks to the EU, but only Hypermegabucks.
People are there to be persuaded, that's the point of democracy. The fearful approach taken by Remain proved their undoing. Boris Johnson wasn't some sort of incredible pied piper. He was a plus for the Leave campaign, but we should not forget the campaign overall was dreadful.
It's just that Remain managed to be even worse.
I disagree. The Leave campaign was better than I expected while the Remain campaign was worse than expected.
Prior to the Referendum it was expected that Leave would campaign on immigration and Remain on the economy. Instead Leave took the battle onto what was perceived to be Remains ground and the economy debate became a question of how much money we pay the EU each year.
It was a tactical and strategic masterstroke. Had Leave been led by Farage and his ilk it'd have been immigration day in, day out and would have lost.
My personal favourite was when a Northern relative phoned me - apparently a Pro -Remain business leader had been interviewed on the radio. He (the business leader) was in anguish, apparently - because if Brexit went through, wages would go up.....
Indeed. To say Remain was really bad, you have to believe it was led by clueless people. It was not. Cameron and Osborne have their faults, but they are far from stupid.
The main sin of Remain was probably complacency (always a problem with Cameron). They thought they were going to be facing a campaign led by Nigel Farage, Bill Cash and John Redwood, which would indeed have been a walkover; Instead they got Dom Cummings, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson.
They didn't readjust quickly enough. They didn't anticipate problems.
It wasn't complacency, Cameron worked his socks off. However, he was trying to ensure that the Conservative Party didn't destroy itself in the process, so he countermanded some of the attacks on Boris, Gove etc which the Remain campaign wanted to run. An admirable scruple, but unfortunately as it turned out a foolish one, helping both to lose the referendum and ultimately to destroy the very thing he was trying to preserve.
Tim Shipman's book on this really is a masterpiece of political instant history.
Mr. xP, you give too much praise to Boris Johnson and not enough censure for the pro-EU campaign.
A positive campaign on economics would've swayed enough people. Instead they developed a bus fixation and tried arguing that we don't give Ultramegabucks to the EU, but only Hypermegabucks.
People are there to be persuaded, that's the point of democracy. The fearful approach taken by Remain proved their undoing. Boris Johnson wasn't some sort of incredible pied piper. He was a plus for the Leave campaign, but we should not forget the campaign overall was dreadful.
It's just that Remain managed to be even worse.
I disagree. The Leave campaign was better than I expected while the Remain campaign was worse than expected.
Prior to the Referendum it was expected that Leave would campaign on immigration and Remain on the economy. Instead Leave took the battle onto what was perceived to be Remains ground and the economy debate became a question of how much money we pay the EU each year.
It was a tactical and strategic masterstroke. Had Leave been led by Farage and his ilk it'd have been immigration day in, day out and would have lost.
The dumbest thing Remain did - given they had control of all the levers - was time the Referendum so that the last two weeks would be dominated by the immigration numbers coming out. They knew those nmbers were coming out. They knew what they would be, how they would play. ANd yet, still they went for that date.
Amateurs. Anyone think Cummins would have made that mistake?
Indeed. To say Remain was really bad, you have to believe it was led by clueless people. It was not. Cameron and Osborne have their faults, but they are far from stupid.
The main sin of Remain was probably complacency (always a problem with Cameron). They thought they were going to be facing a campaign led by Nigel Farage, Bill Cash and John Redwood, which would indeed have been a walkover; Instead they got Dom Cummings, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson.
They didn't readjust quickly enough. They didn't anticipate problems.
It wasn't complacency, Cameron worked his socks off. However, he was trying to ensure that the Conservative Party didn't destroy itself in the process, so he countermanded some of the attacks on Boris, Gove etc which the Remain campaign wanted to run. An admirable scruple, but unfortunately as it turned out a foolish one, helping both to lose the referendum and ultimately to destroy the very thing he was trying to preserve.
Tim Shipman's book on this really is a masterpiece of political instant history.
I've read it. It is good. Dave should have listened to George.
Mr. xP, you give too much praise to Boris Johnson and not enough censure for the pro-EU campaign.
A positive campaign on economics would've swayed enough people. Instead they developed a bus fixation and tried arguing that we don't give Ultramegabucks to the EU, but only Hypermegabucks.
People are there to be persuaded, that's the point of democracy. The fearful approach taken by Remain proved their undoing. Boris Johnson wasn't some sort of incredible pied piper. He was a plus for the Leave campaign, but we should not forget the campaign overall was dreadful.
It's just that Remain managed to be even worse.
I disagree. The Leave campaign was better than I expected while the Remain campaign was worse than expected.
Prior to the Referendum it was expected that Leave would campaign on immigration and Remain on the economy. Instead Leave took the battle onto what was perceived to be Remains ground and the economy debate became a question of how much money we pay the EU each year.
It was a tactical and strategic masterstroke. Had Leave been led by Farage and his ilk it'd have been immigration day in, day out and would have lost.
Leave was led by Farage and his ilk.
Nope wrong again.
You wish it were not so. You wish "Leave" was lead by sophisticated scholars of sovereignty all debating the merits or otherwise of Droite de Suite or the much prized ability to reduce VAT on home energy bills. But the reality is that it was absolutely lead by Farage and his ilk with their racist posters and message on immigration.
An honest leaver would accept that and note that it was worth hitching their wagon to such people for the greater good of sovereignty.
His key problem is he is desperate to be liked. An admirable trait in a puppy; questionable in a leader. It can get him elected, but not help him when he's there. And he's instinctively lazy and thinks he can get away with a good one-liner instead of doing the detail.
He likes to think of himself as Churchillian. But Churchill could convey bad news and do it in such a way that he reached in through your ears to your balls and pulled them up.
No "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat" from Boris. he;d have been more, "Crikey, I know it looks bad, but I'm sure we'll be okay, right? Just need to think positively!"
And instead of "Action This Day" on things like Integrated Air Defence, it would have been, "Well, I think we should believe in Britain rather than putting it down," with no actual useful instructions attached.
He's not consistent or sufficiently tough with his subordinates - Jenrick would have been gone the same day his dodginess was uncovered; Cummings would have gone (and Churchill wouldn't have had such a total dependency on any one person in the first place).
He needs to be able to give out bad news. He needs to be able to cover the detail. He needs to be consistent and firm. But nothing in his career has prepared him for this - he's been the class Clown for so long and got so much acceptance and popularity from that that he's become a mask he put on back at Eton.
For good times when all is going well, he'd be an okay leader. He's absolutely the wrong one for today.
Bit of a liberty! I guess this is going to be the case in a lot of tourist places for a while. Easyjet cancelled our mid July flights to Portugal this morning, two holidays down the drain now
I won't be rushing to go to Turkey this year - I wasn't anyway but now I have a reason to justify it.
1. It's another candidate on the left of the Democratic Party who fails to win a Primary. This makes it harder for the Republicans to say they're all like AOC, etc
2. While Kentucky has not suddenly become competitive, Mitch is probably slightly more worried about re-election today than he was yesterday. Money that could have been spent on Trump nationally will now get spent on McConnell locally.
The one thing peculiar thing about all criticisms of Trump are that they boil down to manner rather than policy. As I've posted before its like they come from the head of some sort of political finishing school.
What an uncouth fellow. Did you know he shouted at some female leaders! We're talking about people who have dined on the entrails of their competitors to get where they are, but that's OK because they did it in the RIGHT way. They didn;t upset any journalists. They listened to think tanks and didn;t call out sacked advisors when they vented their spleen.
They caved in to the Erdogans and Putins of this world, but crucially they acted tough and pulled stern faces when needed. When the press were there. Which is what counts.
Its amazing really.
"all criticisms of Trump" what a pile of crap.
what about off the top of my head: attacking Obamacare massive tax giveaways to the superrich - with a big increase in govt to pay for it massive boosts to fossil fuels and going for global suicide via overheating stripping anti-pollution and environmental laws nepotism support for white supremacists appointing loads of ultra-conservative judiciary separation of families open racism
besides, it's not just "shouting at some female leaders" it's about trashing US alliances and sucking up to dictators.
Now, these might all be things you approve of, but they are also things that Trump is criticised for which are actually matters of policy rather than manner.
Blimey you just proved my point. talk about a Private Eye....er......that's it list. laughable. Really weak. Often completely wrong too.
Appointing loads of ultra-conservative judges who.....er......recently made a number of high profile rulings against the administration for example.
So you think Trump hasn't appointed a load of ultra-conservative judges? Idiot.
Interesting - Fauci testifying that in the US even where states have managed lockdown well and are gradually opening up have had the problem of people going from 100% lockdown to 0% lockdown - with the young in particular acting like they are invulnerable (even if some of them aren't, and all of them are potentially lethal vectors).
Yep.
That's the kicker. You need to gradually relax lockdowns over months, not allow people to head straight down to the local nightclub.
That's what we've done but I don't see (short of eliminating the virus NZ style) how the nightclubs can reopen in the future.
If you keep gradually loosening while keeping R below 1 you'll eventually reach a point surely where you can't loosen any further without raising it back above 1 - which is probably nightclubs.
And gyms. I think they are screwed until there is a vaccine.
I think it could depend on the gym.
eg Class-based gyms or those with established and regular membership could bubble - just like schools.
Open gym would need careful management, but can be practically managed via booking and spacing.
Many Crossfit or imitation Crossfit gyms could do that if they have reasonable space.
We have fewer than 150 members, classes of up to 20, and 3500 sqft of open exercise mat out of 7000sqft total indoor space, plus miles of running trails on the doorstep.
It will be tricky for those where business models are for massed ranks of strangers, or built on treatments and a TV bar.
I like the idea of class-based gyms.
Let's get @kinabalu on to tell us who's allowed in which one.
Alternatively, Remain wasn't pants, it was a standard issue campaign with some good moments and decent performers - like Ruth Davidson in the debates - it was just confronted with an unexpectedly brilliant opponent, who out-thought them
eg TAKE BACK CONTROL
That is electioneering genius. Very hard to refute or deny, without sounding mad or boring
Yes, that's probably fair. The Remain side weren't very nimble, though, they just worked through their grid (excluding the rather important bits which Corbyn and Seumas Milne sabotaged). In particular they fell straight into Cummings' trap on the £350m a week lie, trying to correct it to 'only' £250m a week and thereby giving it extra legs - not just once but repeatedly.
Indeed. To say Remain was really bad, you have to believe it was led by clueless people. It was not. Cameron and Osborne have their faults, but they are far from stupid.
The main sin of Remain was probably complacency (always a problem with Cameron). They thought they were going to be facing a campaign led by Nigel Farage, Bill Cash and John Redwood, which would indeed have been a walkover; Instead they got Dom Cummings, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson.
They didn't readjust quickly enough. They didn't anticipate problems.
What is overlooked about the referendum, probably because Leave won, is that Remain had the backing of all three parties of government that decade, and lost. The public disagreed with the establishment on a massive issue, and without the referendum we would never have known. People on here would have been quoting opinion polls telling us we were wrong.
I sometimes wish Remain had narrowly won, as there would have been less chaos, and change would have come through the ballot box at the following GE. Also I reckon remainers would have respected the views of those they surprisingly only narrowly defeated more than those who defeated them. All the bitterness since flows from Remain losing authority at the ref, while leave would have seen a narrow defeat as an opportunity to win seats next GE a la SNP post Indy
On the subject of spikes in cases - a scary looking graphics of hotspots was posted in the other thread.
So I looked at the Pillar 1 data. See below. I have coloured any days where more than 5 cases occurred to make them stand out.
I particularly like the Isle of Wight, 3 cases in the whole of June and the story was reposted on here as if gospel that there were a spike of cases on the Island.
It's just pillar 1, so there are more cases than that. But Pillar 1 data was used to write the story!
It is interesting, as well, to see how Leicester stands out. Rather validates the idea that a lock down was ordered *before* things got out of hand again - indications over the last couple of weeks, and then definite changes last week.
This chart from the Daily Mail perhaps illustrates it better. I would ignore places with fewer than 5 as likely to be sporadic variation in R number. In Leicester the r number looks to be about 1.
Doncaster, Derbyshire, Medway and several boroughs in West London look problematic though.
In fact the story would have worked if they hadn't got greedy - just the ones with cases>10 AND increasing, albeit with very low actual numbers. But some are just stupid -the Wilts case included (my area)
But an increase from 0 to 1 is MORE THAN ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND MILLION BAZZILION PERCENT!!!!!!
That would tie up Priti Patel for a whole presser.
Mr. xP, you give too much praise to Boris Johnson and not enough censure for the pro-EU campaign.
A positive campaign on economics would've swayed enough people. Instead they developed a bus fixation and tried arguing that we don't give Ultramegabucks to the EU, but only Hypermegabucks.
People are there to be persuaded, that's the point of democracy. The fearful approach taken by Remain proved their undoing. Boris Johnson wasn't some sort of incredible pied piper. He was a plus for the Leave campaign, but we should not forget the campaign overall was dreadful.
It's just that Remain managed to be even worse.
Couldn't agree more. Leave's campaign was only brilliant in comparison to Remain.
Do you think if Leave had campaigned on immigration like Farage wanted instead of changing the battle onto extra money for the NHS etc that the Leave campaign would have been better or worse?
Farage and his immigration focus was a necessary but not sufficient condition of the Leave win.
Yes but it was there no matter what.
Farage would have been screaming about immigration no matter what. The likes of @isam here would have been voting for it no matter what.
Gove/Cummings/Johnson managed to get me and many other voters like me to switch from Remain to Leave. That wouldn't have happened with a focus on immigration.
The minor problem is that the Brexiteers still have to deliver on what they promised. The good folk of Stoke and Burnley even voted for Johnson with the expectation of getting it. I sincerely hope they are not holding their breath!
Alternatively, Remain wasn't pants, it was a standard issue campaign with some good moments and decent performers - like Ruth Davidson in the debates - it was just confronted with an unexpectedly brilliant opponent, who out-thought them
eg TAKE BACK CONTROL
That is electioneering genius. Very hard to refute or deny, without sounding mad or boring
Yes, that's probably fair. The Remain side weren't very nimble, though, they just worked through their grid (excluding the rather important bits which Corbyn and Seumas Milne sabotaged). In particular they fell straight into Cummings' trap on the £350m a week lie, trying to correct it to 'only' £250m a week and thereby giving it extra legs - not just once but repeatedly.
Indeed. To say Remain was really bad, you have to believe it was led by clueless people. It was not. Cameron and Osborne have their faults, but they are far from stupid.
The main sin of Remain was probably complacency (always a problem with Cameron). They thought they were going to be facing a campaign led by Nigel Farage, Bill Cash and John Redwood, which would indeed have been a walkover; Instead they got Dom Cummings, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson.
They didn't readjust quickly enough. They didn't anticipate problems.
What is overlooked about the referendum, probably because Leave won, is that Remain had the backing of all three parties of government that decade, and lost. The public disagreed with the establishment on a massive issue, and without the referendum we would never have known. People on here would have been quoting opinion polls telling us we were wrong.
I sometimes wish Remain had narrowly won, as there would have been less chaos, and change would have come through the ballot box at the following GE. Also I reckon remainers would have respected the views of those they narrowly defeated more than those who defeated them
Of course Remain didn't have the backing of the Conservative Party.
Indeed. To say Remain was really bad, you have to believe it was led by clueless people. It was not. Cameron and Osborne have their faults, but they are far from stupid.
The main sin of Remain was probably complacency (always a problem with Cameron). They thought they were going to be facing a campaign led by Nigel Farage, Bill Cash and John Redwood, which would indeed have been a walkover; Instead they got Dom Cummings, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson.
They didn't readjust quickly enough. They didn't anticipate problems.
It wasn't complacency, Cameron worked his socks off. However, he was trying to ensure that the Conservative Party didn't destroy itself in the process, so he countermanded some of the attacks on Boris, Gove etc which the Remain campaign wanted to run. An admirable scruple, but unfortunately as it turned out a foolish one, helping both to lose the referendum and ultimately to destroy the very thing he was trying to preserve.
Tim Shipman's book on this really is a masterpiece of political instant history.
I don't mean laziness, I am sure Cammo worked hard; I mean complacency in the sense of Etonian arrogance: natural superiority and all that. The essay crisis prime minister.
I believe the wilier Osborne warned Cameron to wait a lot longer to hold the referendum. That would have been sensible. But Cameron breezily thought he would easily win, as he won indyref (forgetting that indyref was surprisingly close). Recall that Cameron reassured Merkel the vote was in the bag.
Tsk. Too late now. I wonder if Cameron is quietly pleased there is a pandemic (I don't mean that cruelly, I am sure he doesn't want death and disaster). Coronavirus has completely overshadowed Brexit. His catastrophic mistake seems less salient.
Now I really MUST work. I shall take a look at that Shipman book. Thanks for the tip.
Indeed. To say Remain was really bad, you have to believe it was led by clueless people. It was not. Cameron and Osborne have their faults, but they are far from stupid.
The main sin of Remain was probably complacency (always a problem with Cameron). They thought they were going to be facing a campaign led by Nigel Farage, Bill Cash and John Redwood, which would indeed have been a walkover; Instead they got Dom Cummings, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson.
They didn't readjust quickly enough. They didn't anticipate problems.
It wasn't complacency, Cameron worked his socks off. However, he was trying to ensure that the Conservative Party didn't destroy itself in the process, so he countermanded some of the attacks on Boris, Gove etc which the Remain campaign wanted to run. An admirable scruple, but unfortunately as it turned out a foolish one, helping both to lose the referendum and ultimately to destroy the very thing he was trying to preserve.
Tim Shipman's book on this really is a masterpiece of political instant history.
The Conservative Party wasn't destroyed. He preserved the Conservative Party, though May nearly destroyed it.
Who could have thought that Cameron would have managed to lose a referendum, his successor would have become a laughing stock and we'd end the decade with a Tory majority of 80?
As ever, the last 3-5 day of all data is subject to reporting issues and will be heavily updated later. Last 5 days of data included for completeness Mileage may vary. All wrongs reserved. This product may contain nuts. This product may contain nutters. This product may contain trained marxist nutters.
Just back from Morrisons. Lady on the till coughing her guts up. Hmm.
And update on the £6.75 half bottle of scotch scenario. On the label it says "at least 3 years old" and then "manufactured in Scotland". And that's pretty much it.
Not keen on that "manufactured" word. It doesn't sound quite right for a drink.
That's the legal minimum. You can't sell Scotch whisky that isn't made and bottled in Scotland and aged for three years in barrel. If it doesn't say "single malt" or "blended malt" it will be a blended whisky, which is mostly a standard and tasteless grain whisky blended with a number of more expensive malt whiskies for flavour.
As ever, the last 3-5 day of all data is subject to reporting issues and will be heavily updated later. Last 5 days of data included for completeness Mileage may vary. All wrongs reserved. This product may contain nuts. This product may contain nutters. This product may contain trained marxist nutters.
This remains fantastic work and super helpful. Thanks.
Indeed. To say Remain was really bad, you have to believe it was led by clueless people. It was not. Cameron and Osborne have their faults, but they are far from stupid.
The main sin of Remain was probably complacency (always a problem with Cameron). They thought they were going to be facing a campaign led by Nigel Farage, Bill Cash and John Redwood, which would indeed have been a walkover; Instead they got Dom Cummings, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson.
They didn't readjust quickly enough. They didn't anticipate problems.
It wasn't complacency, Cameron worked his socks off. However, he was trying to ensure that the Conservative Party didn't destroy itself in the process, so he countermanded some of the attacks on Boris, Gove etc which the Remain campaign wanted to run. An admirable scruple, but unfortunately as it turned out a foolish one, helping both to lose the referendum and ultimately to destroy the very thing he was trying to preserve.
Tim Shipman's book on this really is a masterpiece of political instant history.
"A leap in the dark"
According to Shipman, that's what Cummings thought Remain should have gone with.
Of course, you can't make predictions about economic growth and household income if you do go with that.
It was Scotland all over again: "It's really scary outside the EU. Do you want to risk it?"
It was a terrible strategy in Scotland (where it nearly lost), and it was a terrible strategy in the EU referendum.
That being said, @LadyG is correct that "take back control" was a brilliant slogan. Because it managed to unite those who felt the EU was too protectionist, with those who felt it was not protectionist enough. The Leave campaign was also very smart with regards to £350m, because Remain (bless their cotton socks) spent most of the time saying "it's not really £350m, it's *only* £250m".
Mr. xP, you give too much praise to Boris Johnson and not enough censure for the pro-EU campaign.
A positive campaign on economics would've swayed enough people. Instead they developed a bus fixation and tried arguing that we don't give Ultramegabucks to the EU, but only Hypermegabucks.
People are there to be persuaded, that's the point of democracy. The fearful approach taken by Remain proved their undoing. Boris Johnson wasn't some sort of incredible pied piper. He was a plus for the Leave campaign, but we should not forget the campaign overall was dreadful.
It's just that Remain managed to be even worse.
Couldn't agree more. Leave's campaign was only brilliant in comparison to Remain.
Do you think if Leave had campaigned on immigration like Farage wanted instead of changing the battle onto extra money for the NHS etc that the Leave campaign would have been better or worse?
Indeed. To say Remain was really bad, you have to believe it was led by clueless people. It was not. Cameron and Osborne have their faults, but they are far from stupid.
The main sin of Remain was probably complacency (always a problem with Cameron). They thought they were going to be facing a campaign led by Nigel Farage, Bill Cash and John Redwood, which would indeed have been a walkover; Instead they got Dom Cummings, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson.
They didn't readjust quickly enough. They didn't anticipate problems.
It wasn't complacency, Cameron worked his socks off. However, he was trying to ensure that the Conservative Party didn't destroy itself in the process, so he countermanded some of the attacks on Boris, Gove etc which the Remain campaign wanted to run. An admirable scruple, but unfortunately as it turned out a foolish one, helping both to lose the referendum and ultimately to destroy the very thing he was trying to preserve.
Tim Shipman's book on this really is a masterpiece of political instant history.
The Conservative Party wasn't destroyed. He preserved the Conservative Party, though May nearly destroyed it.
Who could have thought that Cameron would have managed to lose a referendum, his successor would have become a laughing stock and we'd end the decade with a Tory majority of 80?
The party of Cameron, Hague, Thatcher, Macmillan hasn't survived. It has transformed into a mindless cult, having lost much of its top talent because they had the temerity to point out some uncomfortable truths. We are now watching the slow-motion car crash as it hits reality.
Here's the latest example. One of dozens each week, all slowly building up (see also the latest on the Dover customs checks):
On the subject of spikes in cases - a scary looking graphics of hotspots was posted in the other thread.
So I looked at the Pillar 1 data. See below. I have coloured any days where more than 5 cases occurred to make them stand out.
I particularly like the Isle of Wight, 3 cases in the whole of June and the story was reposted on here as if gospel that there were a spike of cases on the Island.
It's just pillar 1, so there are more cases than that. But Pillar 1 data was used to write the story!
It is interesting, as well, to see how Leicester stands out. Rather validates the idea that a lock down was ordered *before* things got out of hand again - indications over the last couple of weeks, and then definite changes last week.
This chart from the Daily Mail perhaps illustrates it better. I would ignore places with fewer than 5 as likely to be sporadic variation in R number. In Leicester the r number looks to be about 1.
Doncaster, Derbyshire, Medway and several boroughs in West London look problematic though.
In fact the story would have worked if they hadn't got greedy - just the ones with cases>10 AND increasing, albeit with very low actual numbers. But some are just stupid -the Wilts case included (my area)
Has anyone been following the lginform data extracts. They are day by day, so bobble around a lot, but good to see trends.
Latest one I searched up this morning, whiich iirc relates to 27/6, had almost perfect symmetry of 5 pairs of neighbouring authorities with highest daily new case rates per 100k namely:
Ashford & Folkestone (Kent locations have been prominent whenever I've looked for 3-4 weeks, Swale and Medway have featured too) S Staffs & Moorlands K&C & H&F Tameside & High Peak Leicester & Oadby (coming in at 9th and 10th)
All these are between 2-4 cases per 100k per week, which is undoubtably a long way off peaks on the worst days, perhaps even locally in these places.
Mr. xP, you give too much praise to Boris Johnson and not enough censure for the pro-EU campaign.
A positive campaign on economics would've swayed enough people. Instead they developed a bus fixation and tried arguing that we don't give Ultramegabucks to the EU, but only Hypermegabucks.
People are there to be persuaded, that's the point of democracy. The fearful approach taken by Remain proved their undoing. Boris Johnson wasn't some sort of incredible pied piper. He was a plus for the Leave campaign, but we should not forget the campaign overall was dreadful.
It's just that Remain managed to be even worse.
I disagree. The Leave campaign was better than I expected while the Remain campaign was worse than expected.
Prior to the Referendum it was expected that Leave would campaign on immigration and Remain on the economy. Instead Leave took the battle onto what was perceived to be Remains ground and the economy debate became a question of how much money we pay the EU each year.
It was a tactical and strategic masterstroke. Had Leave been led by Farage and his ilk it'd have been immigration day in, day out and would have lost.
Leave was led by Farage and his ilk.
Nope wrong again.
You wish it were not so. You wish "Leave" was lead by sophisticated scholars of sovereignty all debating the merits or otherwise of Droite de Suite or the much prized ability to reduce VAT on home energy bills. But the reality is that it was absolutely lead by Farage and his ilk with their racist posters and message on immigration.
An honest leaver would accept that and note that it was worth hitching their wagon to such people for the greater good of sovereignty.
You seem to have a problem with basic comprehension and facts. No wonder you voted Remain.
Leave was led by Vote Leave. Farage was explicitly excluded and even threatened law suits when his lot were not declared the official campaign.
You want it all to have been down to Farage because that suits your warped and quite deluded world view. You simply cannot accept that your side were beaten by a better campaign that did not rely upon xenophobia.
It was Scotland all over again: "It's really scary outside the EU. Do you want to risk it?"
It was a terrible strategy in Scotland (where it nearly lost), and it was a terrible strategy in the EU referendum.
That being said, @LadyG is correct that "take back control" was a brilliant slogan. Because it managed to unite those who felt the EU was too protectionist, with those who felt it was not protectionist enough. The Leave campaign was also very smart with regards to £350m, because Remain (bless their cotton socks) spent most of the time saying "it's not really £350m, it's *only* £250m".
I have a friend with an unusually bright son, interested in politics, who was twelve years old at the time of the referendum.
The boy was Remain all the way, until he heard the slogan "Take Back Control". He immediately switched. Who wouldn't want to Take Back Control?
A quick skim around Wiki suggests that Peter Rickets had a fairly solid background in security matters but Darroch, Mark Grant and indeed even Sedwell all seem to have a diplomatic background. I appreciate that some prior experience is less likely to be highlighted than others but on the face of it Frost looks pretty similar.
Some pretty senior diplomatic background - UK representative at UN and Chair of Security Council, Permanent Rep in NATO, UK Rep in Brussels. And Sedwell was PS at the Home Office which will have had a very heavy security element. Frost's diplomatic pinnacle was Ambassador to Denmark.
Why don't you consider Chief Brexit Negotiator to be as serious as "UK Rep in Brussels"?
He's been in the job 5 months and so far its too soon to see if he'll be successful. Also not clear to what extent, if any, he's been making progress on the security aspects. He didn't get the job because of his Brexit negotiation role, he got it because of his personal connection to Johnson.
No he's not, he was appointed only just under 12 months ago. 24/7/19 is when he replaced Olly Robbins as chief Europe advisor and effective Brexit negotiator.
In that time he's successfully negotiated a revised deal to replace Theresa May's (something which was said to be impossible at the time) which has successfully been ratified by Parliament (something May catastrophically failed to do).
Prior representatives to Europe have become NSA chief, Frost is not only on a par with that he has comprehensively succeeded where May so comprehensively failed.
To see May criticise the man who succeeded in renegotiating her abysmal deal is utterly absurd. It would be one thing if diplomats had never held the role before but they have consistently done so and he is top of his class where that is concerned.
It was Scotland all over again: "It's really scary outside the EU. Do you want to risk it?"
It was a terrible strategy in Scotland (where it nearly lost), and it was a terrible strategy in the EU referendum.
That being said, @LadyG is correct that "take back control" was a brilliant slogan. Because it managed to unite those who felt the EU was too protectionist, with those who felt it was not protectionist enough. The Leave campaign was also very smart with regards to £350m, because Remain (bless their cotton socks) spent most of the time saying "it's not really £350m, it's *only* £250m".
The last bit was all important - never argue over a statement, you merely confirm it's mostly right - the correct response would have been but that gives us £xbn in exports a week all of which could be lost with the resultant jobs gone.
Just back from Morrisons. Lady on the till coughing her guts up. Hmm.
And update on the £6.75 half bottle of scotch scenario. On the label it says "at least 3 years old" and then "manufactured in Scotland". And that's pretty much it.
Not keen on that "manufactured" word. It doesn't sound quite right for a drink.
That's the legal minimum. You can't sell Scotch whisky that isn't made and bottled in Scotland and aged for three years in barrel. If it doesn't say "single malt" or "blended malt" it will be a blended whisky, which is mostly a standard and tasteless grain whisky blended with a number of more expensive malt whiskies for flavour.
Right. Makes sense then. I am about to glug some. Let it take me away from this rather heavy feeling afternoon in North London.
Latest data: Overall England seems to be steadily reducing reported cases (R=0.69) at a low level (3 cases per day per million) Cases in London are now increasing (R=1.53) though from a low level (3 cases per day per million). However the incidence of cases varies widely across the 33 boroughs. There are seven hotspots: Brent Ealing Hammersmith Hounslow Kensington and Chelsea Waltham Forest Westminster
Hammersmith for instance I calculate has an R of 3.3 and an incidence of 12 cases per day per million. (NB Small numbers so R can be very erratic)
For comparison, I calculate that Leicester has an R of 0.90 (+0.03) i.e. slowly declining but from a very high daily incidence of 17 cases per million.
If a tightening of regulations is needed in London, I reckon it will be by borough. It would be unmanagable and unnecessary to restrict the whole of London.
Indeed. To say Remain was really bad, you have to believe it was led by clueless people. It was not. Cameron and Osborne have their faults, but they are far from stupid.
The main sin of Remain was probably complacency (always a problem with Cameron). They thought they were going to be facing a campaign led by Nigel Farage, Bill Cash and John Redwood, which would indeed have been a walkover; Instead they got Dom Cummings, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson.
They didn't readjust quickly enough. They didn't anticipate problems.
It wasn't complacency, Cameron worked his socks off. However, he was trying to ensure that the Conservative Party didn't destroy itself in the process, so he countermanded some of the attacks on Boris, Gove etc which the Remain campaign wanted to run. An admirable scruple, but unfortunately as it turned out a foolish one, helping both to lose the referendum and ultimately to destroy the very thing he was trying to preserve.
Tim Shipman's book on this really is a masterpiece of political instant history.
The Conservative Party wasn't destroyed. He preserved the Conservative Party, though May nearly destroyed it.
Who could have thought that Cameron would have managed to lose a referendum, his successor would have become a laughing stock and we'd end the decade with a Tory majority of 80?
The party of Cameron, Hague, Thatcher, Macmillan hasn't survived. It has transformed into a mindless cult, having lost much of its top talent because they had the temerity to point out some uncomfortable truths. We are now watching the slow-motion car crash as it hits reality.
Here's the latest example. One of dozens each week, all slowly building up (see also the latest on the Dover customs checks):
Labour voters less likely to believe historical figures should be judged by the standards of their times than the standards of today - although a majority still do (net +31%) vs Conservatives (+84%) or Lib Dems (+57%). The young (18-24 +15%) similarly while still in favour of "standards of their times" are less persuaded than the old (65+ +76%)
Mr. xP, you give too much praise to Boris Johnson and not enough censure for the pro-EU campaign.
A positive campaign on economics would've swayed enough people. Instead they developed a bus fixation and tried arguing that we don't give Ultramegabucks to the EU, but only Hypermegabucks.
People are there to be persuaded, that's the point of democracy. The fearful approach taken by Remain proved their undoing. Boris Johnson wasn't some sort of incredible pied piper. He was a plus for the Leave campaign, but we should not forget the campaign overall was dreadful.
It's just that Remain managed to be even worse.
I disagree. The Leave campaign was better than I expected while the Remain campaign was worse than expected.
Prior to the Referendum it was expected that Leave would campaign on immigration and Remain on the economy. Instead Leave took the battle onto what was perceived to be Remains ground and the economy debate became a question of how much money we pay the EU each year.
It was a tactical and strategic masterstroke. Had Leave been led by Farage and his ilk it'd have been immigration day in, day out and would have lost.
Leave was led by Farage and his ilk.
Nope wrong again.
You wish it were not so. You wish "Leave" was lead by sophisticated scholars of sovereignty all debating the merits or otherwise of Droite de Suite or the much prized ability to reduce VAT on home energy bills. But the reality is that it was absolutely lead by Farage and his ilk with their racist posters and message on immigration.
An honest leaver would accept that and note that it was worth hitching their wagon to such people for the greater good of sovereignty.
You seem to have a problem with basic comprehension and facts. No wonder you voted Remain.
Leave was led by Vote Leave. Farage was explicitly excluded and even threatened law suits when his lot were not declared the official campaign.
You want it all to have been down to Farage because that suits your warped and quite deluded world view. You simply cannot accept that your side were beaten by a better campaign that did not rely upon xenophobia.
LOL. Such a fine distinction: "Vote Leave"..."Leave EU"... @Philip_Thompson meanwhile just said "Leave" which is absolutely right to use. They were all the same.
If you had just one functioning brain cell (which I appreciate you don't) you would see what anyone with a pulse could: the "Leave" effort was lead by Farage.
You want to have aligned yourself with the cerebral Leavers (LOL) but you actually aligned yourself with the racists.
It was Scotland all over again: "It's really scary outside the EU. Do you want to risk it?"
It was a terrible strategy in Scotland (where it nearly lost), and it was a terrible strategy in the EU referendum.
That being said, @LadyG is correct that "take back control" was a brilliant slogan. Because it managed to unite those who felt the EU was too protectionist, with those who felt it was not protectionist enough. The Leave campaign was also very smart with regards to £350m, because Remain (bless their cotton socks) spent most of the time saying "it's not really £350m, it's *only* £250m".
I have a friend with an unusually bright son, interested in politics, who was twelve years old at the time of the referendum.
The boy was Remain all the way, until he heard the slogan "Take Back Control". He immediately switched. Who wouldn't want to Take Back Control?
Maybe Remain would have been better to be unashamedly Euronationalist.
Building a community of nations. Working together to solve our common problems. Europe is stronger when it works together. Continuing the work of Churchill. Etc.
Ultimately, Remain was scared to put forward a positive vision, and saw Project Fear as the best way forward. Who wants to lose their job, after all? The truth is that Project Fear barely worked in Scotland. It was arrogant beyond belief to think it would be enough in the UK.
Mr. xP, you give too much praise to Boris Johnson and not enough censure for the pro-EU campaign.
A positive campaign on economics would've swayed enough people. Instead they developed a bus fixation and tried arguing that we don't give Ultramegabucks to the EU, but only Hypermegabucks.
People are there to be persuaded, that's the point of democracy. The fearful approach taken by Remain proved their undoing. Boris Johnson wasn't some sort of incredible pied piper. He was a plus for the Leave campaign, but we should not forget the campaign overall was dreadful.
It's just that Remain managed to be even worse.
I disagree. The Leave campaign was better than I expected while the Remain campaign was worse than expected.
Prior to the Referendum it was expected that Leave would campaign on immigration and Remain on the economy. Instead Leave took the battle onto what was perceived to be Remains ground and the economy debate became a question of how much money we pay the EU each year.
It was a tactical and strategic masterstroke. Had Leave been led by Farage and his ilk it'd have been immigration day in, day out and would have lost.
Leave was led by Farage and his ilk.
Nope wrong again.
You wish it were not so. You wish "Leave" was lead by sophisticated scholars of sovereignty all debating the merits or otherwise of Droite de Suite or the much prized ability to reduce VAT on home energy bills. But the reality is that it was absolutely lead by Farage and his ilk with their racist posters and message on immigration.
An honest leaver would accept that and note that it was worth hitching their wagon to such people for the greater good of sovereignty.
You seem to have a problem with basic comprehension and facts. No wonder you voted Remain.
Leave was led by Vote Leave. Farage was explicitly excluded and even threatened law suits when his lot were not declared the official campaign.
You want it all to have been down to Farage because that suits your warped and quite deluded world view. You simply cannot accept that your side were beaten by a better campaign that did not rely upon xenophobia.
LOL. Such a fine distinction: "Vote Leave"..."Leave EU"... @Philip_Thompson meanwhile just said "Leave" which is absolutely right to use. They were all the same.
If you had just one functioning brain cell (which I appreciate you don't) you would see what anyone with a pulse could: the "Leave" effort was lead by Farage.
You want to have aligned yourself with the cerebral Leavers (LOL) but you actually aligned yourself with the racists.
Vote Leave was the official Leave campaign and headlined the televised debates and outspent the other lot by about 10:1.
Yes Vote Leave led the Leave campaign. Farage was like a yapping bulldog trying to get attention on the side.
Remember how much of a 'problem' the condemnation of John Major and Tony Blair was before the election? They allowed Boris to contrast himself favourably against disliked figures from both the Tory and the Labour past, to great electoral effect.
No one but no one is pining to have May back.
Rather missing the point. This is not about May and her record. It is about a very valid question, namely, if expertise is so important, why is the country’s security - that is the security of every man, woman and child in the country - being put in the hands of someone with no experience or expertise in it?
Attacking the messenger is what people, regrettably quite a lot of them here, do when they have no answer to the message. Or, in this case, the question.
I listened to TM's outburst but to be honest I doubt it will feature much going forward. It is clear she dislikes Cummings, and no doubt Boris and David Frost, but if David Frost (and it is a big if) manages a deal with the EU the rest is chip paper
Boris was good today, but he is as many say of him (showman) and is running the Country as a CEO, while others get on with it. He is rattling an awful lot of people as evidenced on here, but will it matter in the end ?
He is there for 4 more years if he wants to be and has no need to consider polls.
The problem he will have is if his rhetoric falls short over the next 6 months and just how Brexit is or is not resolved
And before the usual posters come on and accuse me of being a 'Boris cheerleader' I would be far more comfortable if he were to stand down and pass on the baton, most likely into the new year and after our EU exit.
Remember how much of a 'problem' the condemnation of John Major and Tony Blair was before the election? They allowed Boris to contrast himself favourably against disliked figures from both the Tory and the Labour past, to great electoral effect.
No one but no one is pining to have May back.
Rather missing the point. This is not about May and her record. It is about a very valid question, namely, if expertise is so important, why is the country’s security - that is the security of every man, woman and child in the country - being put in the hands of someone with no experience or expertise in it?
Attacking the messenger is what people, regrettably quite a lot of them here, do when they have no answer to the message. Or, in this case, the question.
Because Frost is every bit as qualified as his predecessors. Prior representatives to the EU (which is effectively what Frost is) have held the role.
Just out of interest, does anyone still give any credence to those supposedly brilliant "maverick scientists" who claimed that received wisdom was wrong, and that after an initial wave infecting a small percentage of the population (which varied wildly from country to country) the virus would magically fade away and not come back again?
Hello from Teesside. I saw the hungry the fed up and the desperate turn out in numbers I could hardly believe to the ballot box last December to vote for Shagger. And they are going to be brutally and callously left disappointed. Set aside that there never was a silver bullet to cure all ills, they aren't even going to see the gun to shoot the Bad Things they were promised.
Great MP they elected too. Matt Vickers ran a great social media campaign of "I went to school here, had my first pint here" etc vs the well spoken Dr Williams. And since the election he went to Thailand. Then isolation for ages. Then popped up volunteering at the hospital. And according to his register of interests declaration is working 20 hours a week as a Stockton Borough Councillor. 20 hours a week councilling plus shifts down the hospital means he does three parts of sweet fanny wotzit as an MP. But he won. Because Brexit.
It was Scotland all over again: "It's really scary outside the EU. Do you want to risk it?"
It was a terrible strategy in Scotland (where it nearly lost), and it was a terrible strategy in the EU referendum.
That being said, @LadyG is correct that "take back control" was a brilliant slogan. Because it managed to unite those who felt the EU was too protectionist, with those who felt it was not protectionist enough. The Leave campaign was also very smart with regards to £350m, because Remain (bless their cotton socks) spent most of the time saying "it's not really £350m, it's *only* £250m".
I have a friend with an unusually bright son, interested in politics, who was twelve years old at the time of the referendum.
The boy was Remain all the way, until he heard the slogan "Take Back Control". He immediately switched. Who wouldn't want to Take Back Control?
It's a genius slogan. As was "Get Brexit Done". Brilliant sizzle.
But where's the sausage?
As it stands, there are two ways of looking at Boris's Premiership. One is that he is just the medicine the Conservative Party needs, and we needn't enquire too closely into the extent that Dr Boris is the one who caused it to need the medicine. The other is that he's given the Party the sort of drug that might make it feel good for a while, but is probably going to kill it.
The jury is out on that one, as Sir Keir might put it.
Mr. xP, you give too much praise to Boris Johnson and not enough censure for the pro-EU campaign.
A positive campaign on economics would've swayed enough people. Instead they developed a bus fixation and tried arguing that we don't give Ultramegabucks to the EU, but only Hypermegabucks.
People are there to be persuaded, that's the point of democracy. The fearful approach taken by Remain proved their undoing. Boris Johnson wasn't some sort of incredible pied piper. He was a plus for the Leave campaign, but we should not forget the campaign overall was dreadful.
It's just that Remain managed to be even worse.
I disagree. The Leave campaign was better than I expected while the Remain campaign was worse than expected.
Prior to the Referendum it was expected that Leave would campaign on immigration and Remain on the economy. Instead Leave took the battle onto what was perceived to be Remains ground and the economy debate became a question of how much money we pay the EU each year.
It was a tactical and strategic masterstroke. Had Leave been led by Farage and his ilk it'd have been immigration day in, day out and would have lost.
Leave was led by Farage and his ilk.
Nope wrong again.
You wish it were not so. You wish "Leave" was lead by sophisticated scholars of sovereignty all debating the merits or otherwise of Droite de Suite or the much prized ability to reduce VAT on home energy bills. But the reality is that it was absolutely lead by Farage and his ilk with their racist posters and message on immigration.
An honest leaver would accept that and note that it was worth hitching their wagon to such people for the greater good of sovereignty.
You seem to have a problem with basic comprehension and facts. No wonder you voted Remain.
Leave was led by Vote Leave. Farage was explicitly excluded and even threatened law suits when his lot were not declared the official campaign.
You want it all to have been down to Farage because that suits your warped and quite deluded world view. You simply cannot accept that your side were beaten by a better campaign that did not rely upon xenophobia.
LOL. Such a fine distinction: "Vote Leave"..."Leave EU"... @Philip_Thompson meanwhile just said "Leave" which is absolutely right to use. They were all the same.
If you had just one functioning brain cell (which I appreciate you don't) you would see what anyone with a pulse could: the "Leave" effort was lead by Farage.
You want to have aligned yourself with the cerebral Leavers (LOL) but you actually aligned yourself with the racists.
Vote Leave was the official Leave campaign and headlined the televised debates and outspent the other lot by about 10:1.
Yes Vote Leave led the Leave campaign. Farage was like a yapping bulldog trying to get attention on the side.
As I said, if it makes you feel better to ignore what was transparently obvious then and now who am I to rub the truth in your face.
But to say that Farage was not front and centre of the Leave campaign is just mind-bogglingly idiotic. And of all things, you are not an idiot. Tyndall, yes, an idiot. You, no you are not.
Mr. xP, you give too much praise to Boris Johnson and not enough censure for the pro-EU campaign.
A positive campaign on economics would've swayed enough people. Instead they developed a bus fixation and tried arguing that we don't give Ultramegabucks to the EU, but only Hypermegabucks.
People are there to be persuaded, that's the point of democracy. The fearful approach taken by Remain proved their undoing. Boris Johnson wasn't some sort of incredible pied piper. He was a plus for the Leave campaign, but we should not forget the campaign overall was dreadful.
It's just that Remain managed to be even worse.
I disagree. The Leave campaign was better than I expected while the Remain campaign was worse than expected.
Prior to the Referendum it was expected that Leave would campaign on immigration and Remain on the economy. Instead Leave took the battle onto what was perceived to be Remains ground and the economy debate became a question of how much money we pay the EU each year.
It was a tactical and strategic masterstroke. Had Leave been led by Farage and his ilk it'd have been immigration day in, day out and would have lost.
Leave was led by Farage and his ilk.
Nope wrong again.
You wish it were not so. You wish "Leave" was lead by sophisticated scholars of sovereignty all debating the merits or otherwise of Droite de Suite or the much prized ability to reduce VAT on home energy bills. But the reality is that it was absolutely lead by Farage and his ilk with their racist posters and message on immigration.
An honest leaver would accept that and note that it was worth hitching their wagon to such people for the greater good of sovereignty.
You seem to have a problem with basic comprehension and facts. No wonder you voted Remain.
Leave was led by Vote Leave. Farage was explicitly excluded and even threatened law suits when his lot were not declared the official campaign.
You want it all to have been down to Farage because that suits your warped and quite deluded world view. You simply cannot accept that your side were beaten by a better campaign that did not rely upon xenophobia.
LOL. Such a fine distinction: "Vote Leave"..."Leave EU"... @Philip_Thompson meanwhile just said "Leave" which is absolutely right to use. They were all the same.
If you had just one functioning brain cell (which I appreciate you don't) you would see what anyone with a pulse could: the "Leave" effort was lead by Farage.
You want to have aligned yourself with the cerebral Leavers (LOL) but you actually aligned yourself with the racists.
Vote Leave was the official Leave campaign and headlined the televised debates and outspent the other lot by about 10:1.
Yes Vote Leave led the Leave campaign. Farage was like a yapping bulldog trying to get attention on the side.
Well, if that's the case, Farage was getting a hell of a lot more bang for his buck than the official campaign was for their ten.
I'm very far from being a fan of the bloke, but if he was spending just a tenth as much as Cummings, it certainly didn't look like it as a member of the public.
Mr. xP, you give too much praise to Boris Johnson and not enough censure for the pro-EU campaign.
A positive campaign on economics would've swayed enough people. Instead they developed a bus fixation and tried arguing that we don't give Ultramegabucks to the EU, but only Hypermegabucks.
People are there to be persuaded, that's the point of democracy. The fearful approach taken by Remain proved their undoing. Boris Johnson wasn't some sort of incredible pied piper. He was a plus for the Leave campaign, but we should not forget the campaign overall was dreadful.
It's just that Remain managed to be even worse.
I disagree. The Leave campaign was better than I expected while the Remain campaign was worse than expected.
Prior to the Referendum it was expected that Leave would campaign on immigration and Remain on the economy. Instead Leave took the battle onto what was perceived to be Remains ground and the economy debate became a question of how much money we pay the EU each year.
It was a tactical and strategic masterstroke. Had Leave been led by Farage and his ilk it'd have been immigration day in, day out and would have lost.
Leave was led by Farage and his ilk.
Nope wrong again.
You wish it were not so. You wish "Leave" was lead by sophisticated scholars of sovereignty all debating the merits or otherwise of Droite de Suite or the much prized ability to reduce VAT on home energy bills. But the reality is that it was absolutely lead by Farage and his ilk with their racist posters and message on immigration.
An honest leaver would accept that and note that it was worth hitching their wagon to such people for the greater good of sovereignty.
You seem to have a problem with basic comprehension and facts. No wonder you voted Remain.
Leave was led by Vote Leave. Farage was explicitly excluded and even threatened law suits when his lot were not declared the official campaign.
You want it all to have been down to Farage because that suits your warped and quite deluded world view. You simply cannot accept that your side were beaten by a better campaign that did not rely upon xenophobia.
LOL. Such a fine distinction: "Vote Leave"..."Leave EU"... @Philip_Thompson meanwhile just said "Leave" which is absolutely right to use. They were all the same.
If you had just one functioning brain cell (which I appreciate you don't) you would see what anyone with a pulse could: the "Leave" effort was lead by Farage.
You want to have aligned yourself with the cerebral Leavers (LOL) but you actually aligned yourself with the racists.
Vote Leave was the official Leave campaign and headlined the televised debates and outspent the other lot by about 10:1.
Yes Vote Leave led the Leave campaign. Farage was like a yapping bulldog trying to get attention on the side.
Well, if that's the case, Farage was getting a hell of a lot more bang for his buck than the official campaign was for their ten.
I'm very far from being a fan of the bloke, but if he was spending just a tenth as much as Cummings, it certainly didn't look like it as a member of the public.
The level of denial from Tyndall and Philip is extraordinary.
Just have the balls to say "we supported the racists in their aim because we wanted to achieve a greater good on sovereignty".
Indeed. To say Remain was really bad, you have to believe it was led by clueless people. It was not. Cameron and Osborne have their faults, but they are far from stupid.
The main sin of Remain was probably complacency (always a problem with Cameron). They thought they were going to be facing a campaign led by Nigel Farage, Bill Cash and John Redwood, which would indeed have been a walkover; Instead they got Dom Cummings, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson.
They didn't readjust quickly enough. They didn't anticipate problems.
It wasn't complacency, Cameron worked his socks off. However, he was trying to ensure that the Conservative Party didn't destroy itself in the process, so he countermanded some of the attacks on Boris, Gove etc which the Remain campaign wanted to run. An admirable scruple, but unfortunately as it turned out a foolish one, helping both to lose the referendum and ultimately to destroy the very thing he was trying to preserve.
Tim Shipman's book on this really is a masterpiece of political instant history.
The Conservative Party wasn't destroyed. He preserved the Conservative Party, though May nearly destroyed it.
Who could have thought that Cameron would have managed to lose a referendum, his successor would have become a laughing stock and we'd end the decade with a Tory majority of 80?
The party of Cameron, Hague, Thatcher, Macmillan hasn't survived. It has transformed into a mindless cult, having lost much of its top talent because they had the temerity to point out some uncomfortable truths. We are now watching the slow-motion car crash as it hits reality.
[...]
The Conservative Party is now in essence UKIP/Brexit Party minus Farage. All the things that you might think the Conservative Party stood for have gone: Preserving the Union; support for business; respect for institutions; what works instead of ideology; avoiding change for the sake of it; free trade.
I listened to TM's outburst but to be honest I doubt it will feature much going forward. It is clear she dislikes Cummings, and no doubt Boris and David Frost, but if David Frost (and it is a big if) manages a deal with the EU the rest is chip paper
Boris was good today, but he is as many say of him (showman) and is running the Country as a CEO, while others get on with it. He is rattling an awful lot of people as evidenced on here, but will it matter in the end ?
He is there for 4 more years if he wants to be and has no need to consider polls.
The problem he will have is if his rhetoric falls short over the next 6 months and just how Brexit is or is not resolved
And before the usual posters come on and accuse me of being a 'Boris cheerleader' I would be far more comfortable if he were to stand down and pass on the baton, most likely into the new year and after our EU exit.
Frost has already got a deal with the EU that could get through Parliament, something Theresa May and her appointments never achieved.
Diplomats have previously held this role. Frost seems every bit as experienced a diplomat as his predecessors, more experienced than some of them.
Mr. xP, you give too much praise to Boris Johnson and not enough censure for the pro-EU campaign.
A positive campaign on economics would've swayed enough people. Instead they developed a bus fixation and tried arguing that we don't give Ultramegabucks to the EU, but only Hypermegabucks.
People are there to be persuaded, that's the point of democracy. The fearful approach taken by Remain proved their undoing. Boris Johnson wasn't some sort of incredible pied piper. He was a plus for the Leave campaign, but we should not forget the campaign overall was dreadful.
It's just that Remain managed to be even worse.
Couldn't agree more. Leave's campaign was only brilliant in comparison to Remain.
Do you think if Leave had campaigned on immigration like Farage wanted instead of changing the battle onto extra money for the NHS etc that the Leave campaign would have been better or worse?
Farage and his immigration focus was a necessary but not sufficient condition of the Leave win.
Yes but it was there no matter what.
Farage would have been screaming about immigration no matter what. The likes of @isam here would have been voting for it no matter what.
Gove/Cummings/Johnson managed to get me and many other voters like me to switch from Remain to Leave. That wouldn't have happened with a focus on immigration.
Same thing, different words. Or yet another way to put it -
Leave could not have won with its core (anti-immigration) vote alone. It needed a patina of respectability to draw in sufficient additional voters - e.g. you - to get over the line. Johnson and Gove were instrumental (as frontmen) in making this happen.
Cummings? Simply about winning at all costs. "Turkey" remember, he was happy to play that card for all it was worth. He was happy to play ANY card. He is ruthless. He is (thus far) a winner. He is "Dom" - until the time comes (and I sense it coming quite soon) when he isn't.
Indeed. To say Remain was really bad, you have to believe it was led by clueless people. It was not. Cameron and Osborne have their faults, but they are far from stupid.
The main sin of Remain was probably complacency (always a problem with Cameron). They thought they were going to be facing a campaign led by Nigel Farage, Bill Cash and John Redwood, which would indeed have been a walkover; Instead they got Dom Cummings, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson.
They didn't readjust quickly enough. They didn't anticipate problems.
It wasn't complacency, Cameron worked his socks off. However, he was trying to ensure that the Conservative Party didn't destroy itself in the process, so he countermanded some of the attacks on Boris, Gove etc which the Remain campaign wanted to run. An admirable scruple, but unfortunately as it turned out a foolish one, helping both to lose the referendum and ultimately to destroy the very thing he was trying to preserve.
Tim Shipman's book on this really is a masterpiece of political instant history.
The Conservative Party wasn't destroyed. He preserved the Conservative Party, though May nearly destroyed it.
Who could have thought that Cameron would have managed to lose a referendum, his successor would have become a laughing stock and we'd end the decade with a Tory majority of 80?
The party of Cameron, Hague, Thatcher, Macmillan hasn't survived. It has transformed into a mindless cult, having lost much of its top talent because they had the temerity to point out some uncomfortable truths. We are now watching the slow-motion car crash as it hits reality.
[...]
The Conservative Party is now in essence UKIP/Brexit Party minus Farage. All the things that you might think the Conservative Party stood for have gone: Preserving the Union; support for business; respect for institutions; what works instead of ideology; avoiding change for the sake of it; free trade.
No doubt Thatcher's critics said the same thing.
Sometimes things have to change. Especially when the public is voting for change.
That Johnson and Thatcher were both interested in achieving change and both got landslides seems an interesting point.
As I said, if it makes you feel better to ignore what was transparently obvious then and now who am I to rub the truth in your face.
But to say that Farage was not front and centre of the Leave campaign is just mind-bogglingly idiotic. And of all things, you are not an idiot. Tyndall, yes, an idiot. You, no you are not.
"Without Boris, Farage would have been a much more prominent face on TV during the crucial final weeks, probably the most prominent face. (We had to use Boris as leverage with the BBC to keep Farage off and even then they nearly screwed us as ITV did.) It is extremely plausible that this would have lost us over 600,000 vital middle class votes."
"Farage put off millions of (middle class in particular) voters who wanted to leave the EU but who were very clear in market research that a major obstacle to voting Leave was ‘I don’t want to vote for Farage, I’m not like that’. He also put off many prominent business people from supporting us. Over and over they would say ‘I agree with you the EU is a disaster and we should get out but I just cannot be on the same side as a guy who makes comments about people with HIV’."
Case data, Regional England, Pillar1, by specimen date.
Taken the last month, highlighted anything over 5.
Very interesting. We're using the same data. I've only looked at England as a whole, London and Leicester. Your chart clearly shows some other problem areas. It's not just Leicester.
It was Scotland all over again: "It's really scary outside the EU. Do you want to risk it?"
It was a terrible strategy in Scotland (where it nearly lost), and it was a terrible strategy in the EU referendum.
That being said, @LadyG is correct that "take back control" was a brilliant slogan. Because it managed to unite those who felt the EU was too protectionist, with those who felt it was not protectionist enough. The Leave campaign was also very smart with regards to £350m, because Remain (bless their cotton socks) spent most of the time saying "it's not really £350m, it's *only* £250m".
I have a friend with an unusually bright son, interested in politics, who was twelve years old at the time of the referendum.
The boy was Remain all the way, until he heard the slogan "Take Back Control". He immediately switched. Who wouldn't want to Take Back Control?
Maybe Remain would have been better to be unashamedly Euronationalist.
Building a community of nations. Working together to solve our common problems. Europe is stronger when it works together. Continuing the work of Churchill. Etc.
Ultimately, Remain was scared to put forward a positive vision, and saw Project Fear as the best way forward. Who wants to lose their job, after all? The truth is that Project Fear barely worked in Scotland. It was arrogant beyond belief to think it would be enough in the UK.
I agree. Remain lost because it led a negative campaign based on fear of leaving, rather than the joy of staying, in the EU. Nobody made a really good case of why the EU was a force for good; in fact, nobody really tried (and don't both replying that's because there's nothing good about the EU).
A year earlier, the same thing had happened in the Labour Party. Corbyn won the leadership primarily because Burnham, Cooper and Kendall ran safe, uninspiring and negative campaigns. They were all dreadful, and on that basis Corbyn deserved, tragically, to win.
Perhaps if Burnham or Cooper had won, the Labour Party would have done enough in 2016 to push remain over the line. Who knows?
Just back from Morrisons. Lady on the till coughing her guts up. Hmm.
And update on the £6.75 half bottle of scotch scenario. On the label it says "at least 3 years old" and then "manufactured in Scotland". And that's pretty much it.
Not keen on that "manufactured" word. It doesn't sound quite right for a drink.
That's the legal minimum. You can't sell Scotch whisky that isn't made and bottled in Scotland and aged for three years in barrel. If it doesn't say "single malt" or "blended malt" it will be a blended whisky, which is mostly a standard and tasteless grain whisky blended with a number of more expensive malt whiskies for flavour.
Right. Makes sense then. I am about to glug some. Let it take me away from this rather heavy feeling afternoon in North London.
I should say blended whisky isn't necessarily bad whisky. The flavours are less powerful than malts. There is a lot of snobbishness about malts. They cost a lot more.
Alternatively, Remain wasn't pants, it was a standard issue campaign with some good moments and decent performers - like Ruth Davidson in the debates - it was just confronted with an unexpectedly brilliant opponent, who out-thought them
eg TAKE BACK CONTROL
That is electioneering genius. Very hard to refute or deny, without sounding mad or boring
Yes, that's probably fair. The Remain side weren't very nimble, though, they just worked through their grid (excluding the rather important bits which Corbyn and Seumas Milne sabotaged). In particular they fell straight into Cummings' trap on the £350m a week lie, trying to correct it to 'only' £250m a week and thereby giving it extra legs - not just once but repeatedly.
Indeed. To say Remain was really bad, you have to believe it was led by clueless people. It was not. Cameron and Osborne have their faults, but they are far from stupid.
The main sin of Remain was probably complacency (always a problem with Cameron). They thought they were going to be facing a campaign led by Nigel Farage, Bill Cash and John Redwood, which would indeed have been a walkover; Instead they got Dom Cummings, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson.
They didn't readjust quickly enough. They didn't anticipate problems.
What is overlooked about the referendum, probably because Leave won, is that Remain had the backing of all three parties of government that decade, and lost. The public disagreed with the establishment on a massive issue, and without the referendum we would never have known. People on here would have been quoting opinion polls telling us we were wrong.
I sometimes wish Remain had narrowly won, as there would have been less chaos, and change would have come through the ballot box at the following GE. Also I reckon remainers would have respected the views of those they surprisingly only narrowly defeated more than those who defeated them. All the bitterness since flows from Remain losing authority at the ref, while leave would have seen a narrow defeat as an opportunity to win seats next GE a la SNP post Indy
But Leave weren't a party - so I suppose you mean Farage and UKIP.
A point I make about the Ref which I sense you will agree with. Leave won 52/48 despite all main parties being Remain, business and the unions being Remain, most opinion formers in all fields being Remain, and the lower risk status quo (which attracts the agnostics and undecideds) being Remain.
So, yes, 52/48. But the mood of the country was far more Leave than that. 60/40 minimum. It was not truly close. In England it was a "mood" landslide. We were then - and we are now - Leave Nation.
Case data, Regional England, Pillar1, by specimen date.
Taken the last month, highlighted anything over 5.
Very interesting. We're using the same data. I've only looked at England as a whole, London and Leicester. Your chart clearly shows some other problem areas. It's not just Leicester.
As I said, if it makes you feel better to ignore what was transparently obvious then and now who am I to rub the truth in your face.
But to say that Farage was not front and centre of the Leave campaign is just mind-bogglingly idiotic. And of all things, you are not an idiot. Tyndall, yes, an idiot. You, no you are not.
"Without Boris, Farage would have been a much more prominent face on TV during the crucial final weeks, probably the most prominent face. (We had to use Boris as leverage with the BBC to keep Farage off and even then they nearly screwed us as ITV did.) It is extremely plausible that this would have lost us over 600,000 vital middle class votes."
"Farage put off millions of (middle class in particular) voters who wanted to leave the EU but who were very clear in market research that a major obstacle to voting Leave was ‘I don’t want to vote for Farage, I’m not like that’. He also put off many prominent business people from supporting us. Over and over they would say ‘I agree with you the EU is a disaster and we should get out but I just cannot be on the same side as a guy who makes comments about people with HIV’."
"from the horse's mouth"??
LOL. The voting public are the horse's mouth. Not big bad Dom.
Dom Cummings in I don't want people to know I'm relying on a racist shock.
Retained his marbles to the end... ...he remained active on social media, and one of his final posts castigated Trump as “a bankrupted and corrupt businessman who had no qualifications to be the leader of any country in the civilized world”...
Case data, Regional England, Pillar1, by specimen date.
Taken the last month, highlighted anything over 5.
Very interesting. We're using the same data. I've only looked at England as a whole, London and Leicester. Your chart clearly shows some other problem areas. It's not just Leicester.
It looks like just Leicester to me.
A week ago you might have said Bedford and a few others too and you may get some daily flare ups but the consistent trouble is Leicester.
Case data, Regional England, Pillar1, by specimen date.
Taken the last month, highlighted anything over 5.
Very interesting. We're using the same data. I've only looked at England as a whole, London and Leicester. Your chart clearly shows some other problem areas. It's not just Leicester.
Doncaster not looking very good.
Doncaster had a spike in Pillar 1 cases on 22nd and 23rd, then dropped back.
That would strongly suggest that it was an incident, which is now contained.
Leicester, on the other hand was still above 5 when it went into the weekend reporting shadow.
Case data, Regional England, Pillar1, by specimen date.
Taken the last month, highlighted anything over 5.
Very interesting. We're using the same data. I've only looked at England as a whole, London and Leicester. Your chart clearly shows some other problem areas. It's not just Leicester.
What do those numbers signify, deaths or infections?
It's far too early to judge Johnson. On the plus side, he's obviously better at elections than anyone since Blair. ...
One election. Against Corbyn. On a false prospectus.
We can be pretty damned sure that it won't go so well next time.
Well, one election as PM. Plus 2 elections as Mayor and a masterful election campaign to capture the leadership of the Conservative party despite huge hostility by the incumbent and her placemen. Boris frames the argument to his advantage. Corbyn and getting Brexit done were 2019 but it is a mistake to think him a one trick pony.
But he is such an obviously malign and disreputable human being - even before contemplating the stench of corruption that increasingly hangs over this Government.
It's far too early to judge Johnson. On the plus side, he's obviously better at elections than anyone since Blair. On the down side, he's obviously not good at managing pandemics.
1/2 of his opponents were the remain side that fought on (And with constant trickery) to try and stop Brexit way past what the average person thought was reasonable and the other half of the opposition was Jeremy Corbyn and his followers.
2019 was about as perfect a circumstance you could ever have for the Tories.
It is amazing how often Boris suddenly finds himself in the perfect circumstances: twice in London, once at a Ge...
Perhaps you could define the perfect circumstance which allowed him to win an apparently unwinnable referendum?
He's an excellent campaigner. I rate Cummings very very highly too. Still should have gone mind.
The pandemic is a real test of governance and leadership, not campaigning though.
Yes, that's what I think. Boris has now won enough campaigns for us to say he is very good at elections. The best since Blair.
AS a PM it is too soon to tell. Especially as he faces probably the sternest tests, as a prime minister, since Winston Churchill: he has to steer us through a global pandemic, a great recession, and Brexit, in the next four years.
He has a great record against anti-semites. As might a donkey have.
Against normal opponents we have yet to see.
By that standard, Theresa May performed worse than a donkey...
Compared to the incumbent I would have Mrs May back in a heartbeat. Mrs May is to the Johnsonian right, what Blair was to the Corbynista left.
Interesting - Fauci testifying that in the US even where states have managed lockdown well and are gradually opening up have had the problem of people going from 100% lockdown to 0% lockdown - with the young in particular acting like they are invulnerable (even if some of them aren't, and all of them are potentially lethal vectors).
Yep.
That's the kicker. You need to gradually relax lockdowns over months, not allow people to head straight down to the local nightclub.
That's what we've done but I don't see (short of eliminating the virus NZ style) how the nightclubs can reopen in the future.
If you keep gradually loosening while keeping R below 1 you'll eventually reach a point surely where you can't loosen any further without raising it back above 1 - which is probably nightclubs.
And gyms. I think they are screwed until there is a vaccine.
I think it could depend on the gym.
eg Class-based gyms or those with established and regular membership could bubble - just like schools.
Open gym would need careful management, but can be practically managed via booking and spacing.
Many Crossfit or imitation Crossfit gyms could do that if they have reasonable space.
We have fewer than 150 members, classes of up to 20, and 3500 sqft of open exercise mat out of 7000sqft total indoor space, plus miles of running trails on the doorstep.
It will be tricky for those where business models are for massed ranks of strangers, or built on treatments and a TV bar.
I like the idea of class-based gyms.
Let's get @kinabalu on to tell us who's allowed in which one.
- everything is class based, Topping, as those without blinkers know.
Case data, Regional England, Pillar1, by specimen date.
Taken the last month, highlighted anything over 5.
Very interesting. We're using the same data. I've only looked at England as a whole, London and Leicester. Your chart clearly shows some other problem areas. It's not just Leicester.
What do those numbers signify, deaths or infections?
Comments
what about off the top of my head:
attacking Obamacare
massive tax giveaways to the superrich - with a big increase in govt to pay for it
massive boosts to fossil fuels and going for global suicide via overheating
stripping anti-pollution and environmental laws
nepotism
support for white supremacists
appointing loads of ultra-conservative judiciary
separation of families
open racism
besides, it's not just "shouting at some female leaders" it's about trashing US alliances and sucking up to dictators.
Now, these might all be things you approve of, but they are also things that Trump is criticised for which are actually matters of policy rather than manner.
And Leave pushed and pushed in the three or four years before.Cameron didn't mind too much because it was taking the pressure off the Governments economic policy. Then, having shafted the pro-EU LibDems in the 2015 election (although they didn't help themselves) he found himself short of allies.
Heck the Mayor of Teesside is promising to bring steel back to Teesside https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-7975339/Hes-reopened-airport-Tory-mayor-insists-bring-steel-Teesside.html
Wear a bloody mask.
Appointing loads of ultra-conservative judges who.....er......recently made a number of high profile rulings against the administration for example.
On the Scunthorpe Telegraph.
The main difference between the two at the moment is Trump has had 4 more years to demonstrate how useless he is. My money is on things looking pretty similar here by 2024
https://twitter.com/PpollingNumbers/status/1277982703531499520
The main sin of Remain was probably complacency (always a problem with Cameron). They thought they were going to be facing a campaign led by Nigel Farage, Bill Cash and John Redwood, which would indeed have been a walkover; Instead they got Dom Cummings, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson.
They didn't readjust quickly enough. They didn't anticipate problems.
eg Class-based gyms or those with established and regular membership could bubble - just like schools.
Open gym would need careful management, but can be practically managed via booking and spacing.
Many Crossfit or imitation Crossfit gyms could do that if they have reasonable space.
We have fewer than 150 members, classes of up to 20, and 3500 sqft of open exercise mat out of 7000sqft total indoor space, plus miles of running trails on the doorstep.
It will be tricky for those where business models are for massed ranks of strangers, or built on treatments and a TV bar.
Tim Shipman's book on this really is a masterpiece of political instant history.
Amateurs. Anyone think Cummins would have made that mistake?
An honest leaver would accept that and note that it was worth hitching their wagon to such people for the greater good of sovereignty.
Boris is a bad leader in other ways.
His key problem is he is desperate to be liked. An admirable trait in a puppy; questionable in a leader. It can get him elected, but not help him when he's there. And he's instinctively lazy and thinks he can get away with a good one-liner instead of doing the detail.
He likes to think of himself as Churchillian. But Churchill could convey bad news and do it in such a way that he reached in through your ears to your balls and pulled them up.
No "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat" from Boris. he;d have been more, "Crikey, I know it looks bad, but I'm sure we'll be okay, right? Just need to think positively!"
And instead of "Action This Day" on things like Integrated Air Defence, it would have been, "Well, I think we should believe in Britain rather than putting it down," with no actual useful instructions attached.
He's not consistent or sufficiently tough with his subordinates - Jenrick would have been gone the same day his dodginess was uncovered; Cummings would have gone (and Churchill wouldn't have had such a total dependency on any one person in the first place).
He needs to be able to give out bad news. He needs to be able to cover the detail. He needs to be consistent and firm. But nothing in his career has prepared him for this - he's been the class Clown for so long and got so much acceptance and popularity from that that he's become a mask he put on back at Eton.
For good times when all is going well, he'd be an okay leader. He's absolutely the wrong one for today.
1. It's another candidate on the left of the Democratic Party who fails to win a Primary. This makes it harder for the Republicans to say they're all like AOC, etc
2. While Kentucky has not suddenly become competitive, Mitch is probably slightly more worried about re-election today than he was yesterday. Money that could have been spent on Trump nationally will now get spent on McConnell locally.
Johnson is in it for himself.
Let's get @kinabalu on to tell us who's allowed in which one.
I sometimes wish Remain had narrowly won, as there would have been less chaos, and change would have come through the ballot box at the following GE. Also I reckon remainers would have respected the views of those they surprisingly only narrowly defeated more than those who defeated them. All the bitterness since flows from Remain losing authority at the ref, while leave would have seen a narrow defeat as an opportunity to win seats next GE a la SNP post Indy
Farage would have been screaming about immigration no matter what. The likes of @isam here would have been voting for it no matter what.
Gove/Cummings/Johnson managed to get me and many other voters like me to switch from Remain to Leave. That wouldn't have happened with a focus on immigration.
Or the leadership of the Labour Party.
I believe the wilier Osborne warned Cameron to wait a lot longer to hold the referendum. That would have been sensible. But Cameron breezily thought he would easily win, as he won indyref (forgetting that indyref was surprisingly close). Recall that Cameron reassured Merkel the vote was in the bag.
Tsk. Too late now. I wonder if Cameron is quietly pleased there is a pandemic (I don't mean that cruelly, I am sure he doesn't want death and disaster). Coronavirus has completely overshadowed Brexit. His catastrophic mistake seems less salient.
Now I really MUST work. I shall take a look at that Shipman book. Thanks for the tip.
Who could have thought that Cameron would have managed to lose a referendum, his successor would have become a laughing stock and we'd end the decade with a Tory majority of 80?
As ever, the last 3-5 day of all data is subject to reporting issues and will be heavily updated later.
Last 5 days of data included for completeness
Mileage may vary. All wrongs reserved. This product may contain nuts. This product may contain nutters. This product may contain trained marxist nutters.
According to Shipman, that's what Cummings thought Remain should have gone with.
Of course, you can't make predictions about economic growth and household income if you do go with that.
It was Scotland all over again: "It's really scary outside the EU. Do you want to risk it?"
It was a terrible strategy in Scotland (where it nearly lost), and it was a terrible strategy in the EU referendum.
That being said, @LadyG is correct that "take back control" was a brilliant slogan. Because it managed to unite those who felt the EU was too protectionist, with those who felt it was not protectionist enough. The Leave campaign was also very smart with regards to £350m, because Remain (bless their cotton socks) spent most of the time saying "it's not really £350m, it's *only* £250m".
Here's the latest example. One of dozens each week, all slowly building up (see also the latest on the Dover customs checks):
https://twitter.com/JenniferMerode/status/1277976726920814593
Latest one I searched up this morning, whiich iirc relates to 27/6, had almost perfect symmetry of 5 pairs of neighbouring authorities with highest daily new case rates per 100k namely:
Ashford & Folkestone (Kent locations have been prominent whenever I've looked for 3-4 weeks, Swale and Medway have featured too)
S Staffs & Moorlands
K&C & H&F
Tameside & High Peak
Leicester & Oadby (coming in at 9th and 10th)
All these are between 2-4 cases per 100k per week, which is undoubtably a long way off peaks on the worst days, perhaps even locally in these places.
Leave was led by Vote Leave. Farage was explicitly excluded and even threatened law suits when his lot were not declared the official campaign.
You want it all to have been down to Farage because that suits your warped and quite deluded world view. You simply cannot accept that your side were beaten by a better campaign that did not rely upon xenophobia.
The boy was Remain all the way, until he heard the slogan "Take Back Control". He immediately switched. Who wouldn't want to Take Back Control?
In that time he's successfully negotiated a revised deal to replace Theresa May's (something which was said to be impossible at the time) which has successfully been ratified by Parliament (something May catastrophically failed to do).
Prior representatives to Europe have become NSA chief, Frost is not only on a par with that he has comprehensively succeeded where May so comprehensively failed.
To see May criticise the man who succeeded in renegotiating her abysmal deal is utterly absurd. It would be one thing if diplomats had never held the role before but they have consistently done so and he is top of his class where that is concerned.
Instead remain issued threats without evidence.
Overall England seems to be steadily reducing reported cases (R=0.69) at a low level (3 cases per day per million)
Cases in London are now increasing (R=1.53) though from a low level (3 cases per day per million).
However the incidence of cases varies widely across the 33 boroughs.
There are seven hotspots:
Brent
Ealing
Hammersmith
Hounslow
Kensington and Chelsea
Waltham Forest
Westminster
Hammersmith for instance I calculate has an R of 3.3 and an incidence of 12 cases per day per million. (NB Small numbers so R can be very erratic)
For comparison, I calculate that Leicester has an R of 0.90 (+0.03) i.e. slowly declining but from a very high daily incidence of 17 cases per million.
If a tightening of regulations is needed in London, I reckon it will be by borough. It would be unmanagable and unnecessary to restrict the whole of London.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2020/06/30/0c4cf/2?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=daily_questions&utm_campaign=question_2
If you had just one functioning brain cell (which I appreciate you don't) you would see what anyone with a pulse could: the "Leave" effort was lead by Farage.
You want to have aligned yourself with the cerebral Leavers (LOL) but you actually aligned yourself with the racists.
Building a community of nations. Working together to solve our common problems. Europe is stronger when it works together. Continuing the work of Churchill. Etc.
Ultimately, Remain was scared to put forward a positive vision, and saw Project Fear as the best way forward. Who wants to lose their job, after all? The truth is that Project Fear barely worked in Scotland. It was arrogant beyond belief to think it would be enough in the UK.
Yes Vote Leave led the Leave campaign. Farage was like a yapping bulldog trying to get attention on the side.
Attacking the messenger is what people, regrettably quite a lot of them here, do when they have no answer to the message. Or, in this case, the question.
Boris was good today, but he is as many say of him (showman) and is running the Country as a CEO, while others get on with it. He is rattling an awful lot of people as evidenced on here, but will it matter in the end ?
He is there for 4 more years if he wants to be and has no need to consider polls.
The problem he will have is if his rhetoric falls short over the next 6 months and just how Brexit is or is not resolved
And before the usual posters come on and accuse me of being a 'Boris cheerleader' I would be far more comfortable if he were to stand down and pass on the baton, most likely into the new year and after our EU exit.
Taken the last month, highlighted anything over 5.
Great MP they elected too. Matt Vickers ran a great social media campaign of "I went to school here, had my first pint here" etc vs the well spoken Dr Williams. And since the election he went to Thailand. Then isolation for ages. Then popped up volunteering at the hospital. And according to his register of interests declaration is working 20 hours a week as a Stockton Borough Councillor. 20 hours a week councilling plus shifts down the hospital means he does three parts of sweet fanny wotzit as an MP. But he won. Because Brexit.
You can see why Leicester is the lockdown.
But where's the sausage?
As it stands, there are two ways of looking at Boris's Premiership. One is that he is just the medicine the Conservative Party needs, and we needn't enquire too closely into the extent that Dr Boris is the one who caused it to need the medicine. The other is that he's given the Party the sort of drug that might make it feel good for a while, but is probably going to kill it.
The jury is out on that one, as Sir Keir might put it.
But to say that Farage was not front and centre of the Leave campaign is just mind-bogglingly idiotic. And of all things, you are not an idiot. Tyndall, yes, an idiot. You, no you are not.
I'm very far from being a fan of the bloke, but if he was spending just a tenth as much as Cummings, it certainly didn't look like it as a member of the public.
Just have the balls to say "we supported the racists in their aim because we wanted to achieve a greater good on sovereignty".
Diplomats have previously held this role. Frost seems every bit as experienced a diplomat as his predecessors, more experienced than some of them.
Leave could not have won with its core (anti-immigration) vote alone. It needed a patina of respectability to draw in sufficient additional voters - e.g. you - to get over the line. Johnson and Gove were instrumental (as frontmen) in making this happen.
Cummings? Simply about winning at all costs. "Turkey" remember, he was happy to play that card for all it was worth. He was happy to play ANY card. He is ruthless. He is (thus far) a winner. He is "Dom" - until the time comes (and I sense it coming quite soon) when he isn't.
Sometimes things have to change. Especially when the public is voting for change.
That Johnson and Thatcher were both interested in achieving change and both got landslides seems an interesting point.
"Without Boris, Farage would have been a much more prominent face on TV during the crucial final weeks, probably the most prominent face. (We had to use Boris as leverage with the BBC to keep Farage off and even then they nearly screwed us as ITV did.) It is extremely plausible that this would have lost us over 600,000 vital middle class votes."
"Farage put off millions of (middle class in particular) voters who wanted to leave the EU but who were very clear in market research that a major obstacle to voting Leave was ‘I don’t want to vote for Farage, I’m not like that’. He also put off many prominent business people from supporting us. Over and over they would say ‘I agree with you the EU is a disaster and we should get out but I just cannot be on the same side as a guy who makes comments about people with HIV’."
A year earlier, the same thing had happened in the Labour Party. Corbyn won the leadership primarily because Burnham, Cooper and Kendall ran safe, uninspiring and negative campaigns. They were all dreadful, and on that basis Corbyn deserved, tragically, to win.
Perhaps if Burnham or Cooper had won, the Labour Party would have done enough in 2016 to push remain over the line. Who knows?
A point I make about the Ref which I sense you will agree with. Leave won 52/48 despite all main parties being Remain, business and the unions being Remain, most opinion formers in all fields being Remain, and the lower risk status quo (which attracts the agnostics and undecideds) being Remain.
So, yes, 52/48. But the mood of the country was far more Leave than that. 60/40 minimum. It was not truly close. In England it was a "mood" landslide. We were then - and we are now - Leave Nation.
LOL. The voting public are the horse's mouth. Not big bad Dom.
Dom Cummings in I don't want people to know I'm relying on a racist shock.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/jun/30/hollywood-comedy-legend-carl-reiner-dies-aged-98
Retained his marbles to the end...
...he remained active on social media, and one of his final posts castigated Trump as “a bankrupted and corrupt businessman who had no qualifications to be the leader of any country in the civilized world”...
A week ago you might have said Bedford and a few others too and you may get some daily flare ups but the consistent trouble is Leicester.
That would strongly suggest that it was an incident, which is now contained.
Leicester, on the other hand was still above 5 when it went into the weekend reporting shadow.