Politics in Britain has always been largely tribal, certainly at UK general rather than European or local or Scottish elections, indeed even in 1997 the Tories retained 3/4 of their 1992 voters and even in 2010 Labour retained 80% of its 2005 voters so there is nothing really new there.
On the morning after an Opinium poll which had the Tories down 4% on GE19 and Labour up 8% it also seems rather dated already anyway
You put your right leg in, your right leg out, in, out, in, out, you shake it all about...
A Government drive to encourage millions of people working at home to go back to the office has been put on ice over concerns of a spike in coronavirus cases, the Telegraph can disclose.
Amid signs of confusion at the heart of Cabinet, ministers are understood to have rowed back on plans to launch a major campaign to urge office workers to return to their desks and start commuting again.
They fear any mass return could send infections soaring, and threaten the planned return of thousands of children to school over the next few weeks.
Trying to get people back to offices in a hurry was always going to be a silly idea, especially before the schools went back - and when MPs and thousands of civil servants are still working from home. The bigger issue is safety on overcrowded public transport, which no-one is trying to address first.
We are about to witness some fun* when it comes to schools transport. To maintain spacing the capacity of a bus is far less than the number of seats. Which means instead of 1 bus in a morning 2 or 3 will be needed. These buses don't sit idly by in a yard awaiting call up for Covid school shuttling duties...
Yes, school transport is going to be very difficult. I guess almost every spare bus in the country is going to be put to use, at a considerable cost, until there’s much more of an understanding around transmission vectors in children.
"Government guidance for England states that social distancing will not be required on dedicated school buses, which often carry the same group of children daily, although it should be in place wherever possible." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53894312
There will be chaos outside schools, as the proportion of parents choosing to chauffeur their little darlings to school rises exponentially. There has always been gridlock in the morning outside many schools as parents insist on parking at the school gates regardless of restrictions; this will get much worse. A minor feature, I know, but may get some (adverse) publicity.
That at least should be ameliorated by staggered start times for different year groups. Besides which, if congestion around schools is that bad then the idiot parents will eventually learn to dump older kids, at any rate, a couple of streets away.
Is "breaking social distancing behind the bike sheds" going to become the modern day equivalent of "smoking behind the bike sheds"?
What are actually the theoretical enforcement mechanisms for defying mask rules in schools? Presumably not fines?
The same as the enforcement mechanisms for going around with your shirt not tucked in...
You put your right leg in, your right leg out, in, out, in, out, you shake it all about...
A Government drive to encourage millions of people working at home to go back to the office has been put on ice over concerns of a spike in coronavirus cases, the Telegraph can disclose.
Amid signs of confusion at the heart of Cabinet, ministers are understood to have rowed back on plans to launch a major campaign to urge office workers to return to their desks and start commuting again.
They fear any mass return could send infections soaring, and threaten the planned return of thousands of children to school over the next few weeks.
Trying to get people back to offices in a hurry was always going to be a silly idea, especially before the schools went back - and when MPs and thousands of civil servants are still working from home. The bigger issue is safety on overcrowded public transport, which no-one is trying to address first.
We are about to witness some fun* when it comes to schools transport. To maintain spacing the capacity of a bus is far less than the number of seats. Which means instead of 1 bus in a morning 2 or 3 will be needed. These buses don't sit idly by in a yard awaiting call up for Covid school shuttling duties...
Yes, school transport is going to be very difficult. I guess almost every spare bus in the country is going to be put to use, at a considerable cost, until there’s much more of an understanding around transmission vectors in children.
"Government guidance for England states that social distancing will not be required on dedicated school buses, which often carry the same group of children daily, although it should be in place wherever possible." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53894312
There will be chaos outside schools, as the proportion of parents choosing to chauffeur their little darlings to school rises exponentially. There has always been gridlock in the morning outside many schools as parents insist on parking at the school gates regardless of restrictions; this will get much worse. A minor feature, I know, but may get some (adverse) publicity.
Hundreds of cars outside schools will be much less of a problem than a hundred pedestrian parents chattering.
This would be the Michael Gove who has already flopped twice in leadership contests? Still, third time lucky worked for Joe Biden (subject to confirmation in a few weeks' time).
I do feel sorry for Gove, some of whose instincts are in the right place but he is just awfully bad at politics. For instance, he is the only senior politician to have been felled by drugs, even in a leadership contest where all his rivals admitted to some indulgence or other, and where two of the last three Prime Ministers have been content with non-denial denials and where a former Chancellor was photographed in close proximity to a powder that *checks notes* "might have been icing sugar".
At education he managed to start from a position of support from teachers, for reforms whose aims might even be regarded as left-wing, to alienating the whole profession.
You put your right leg in, your right leg out, in, out, in, out, you shake it all about...
A Government drive to encourage millions of people working at home to go back to the office has been put on ice over concerns of a spike in coronavirus cases, the Telegraph can disclose.
Amid signs of confusion at the heart of Cabinet, ministers are understood to have rowed back on plans to launch a major campaign to urge office workers to return to their desks and start commuting again.
They fear any mass return could send infections soaring, and threaten the planned return of thousands of children to school over the next few weeks.
Trying to get people back to offices in a hurry was always going to be a silly idea, especially before the schools went back - and when MPs and thousands of civil servants are still working from home. The bigger issue is safety on overcrowded public transport, which no-one is trying to address first.
We are about to witness some fun* when it comes to schools transport. To maintain spacing the capacity of a bus is far less than the number of seats. Which means instead of 1 bus in a morning 2 or 3 will be needed. These buses don't sit idly by in a yard awaiting call up for Covid school shuttling duties...
Yes, school transport is going to be very difficult. I guess almost every spare bus in the country is going to be put to use, at a considerable cost, until there’s much more of an understanding around transmission vectors in children.
"Government guidance for England states that social distancing will not be required on dedicated school buses, which often carry the same group of children daily, although it should be in place wherever possible." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53894312
There will be chaos outside schools, as the proportion of parents choosing to chauffeur their little darlings to school rises exponentially. There has always been gridlock in the morning outside many schools as parents insist on parking at the school gates regardless of restrictions; this will get much worse. A minor feature, I know, but may get some (adverse) publicity.
Hundreds of cars outside schools will be much less of a problem than a hundred pedestrian parents chattering.
It will massively increase the chances of someone getting run over.
You put your right leg in, your right leg out, in, out, in, out, you shake it all about...
A Government drive to encourage millions of people working at home to go back to the office has been put on ice over concerns of a spike in coronavirus cases, the Telegraph can disclose.
Amid signs of confusion at the heart of Cabinet, ministers are understood to have rowed back on plans to launch a major campaign to urge office workers to return to their desks and start commuting again.
They fear any mass return could send infections soaring, and threaten the planned return of thousands of children to school over the next few weeks.
Trying to get people back to offices in a hurry was always going to be a silly idea, especially before the schools went back - and when MPs and thousands of civil servants are still working from home. The bigger issue is safety on overcrowded public transport, which no-one is trying to address first.
We are about to witness some fun* when it comes to schools transport. To maintain spacing the capacity of a bus is far less than the number of seats. Which means instead of 1 bus in a morning 2 or 3 will be needed. These buses don't sit idly by in a yard awaiting call up for Covid school shuttling duties...
Yes, school transport is going to be very difficult. I guess almost every spare bus in the country is going to be put to use, at a considerable cost, until there’s much more of an understanding around transmission vectors in children.
"Government guidance for England states that social distancing will not be required on dedicated school buses, which often carry the same group of children daily, although it should be in place wherever possible." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53894312
There will be chaos outside schools, as the proportion of parents choosing to chauffeur their little darlings to school rises exponentially. There has always been gridlock in the morning outside many schools as parents insist on parking at the school gates regardless of restrictions; this will get much worse. A minor feature, I know, but may get some (adverse) publicity.
That at least should be ameliorated by staggered start times for different year groups. Besides which, if congestion around schools is that bad then the idiot parents will eventually learn to dump older kids, at any rate, a couple of streets away.
I think you overestimate the ability of parents to learn...
LOL! Quite possibly correct.
It just occurred to me, if secondary schools are going to ban contact sports, or quite possibly all PE, because Covid, then that will leave PE teachers with a lot of time on their hands. Could we not equip them with sniper rifles and train them to shoot any parents who get too close to the gates? That might solve the problem.
You put your right leg in, your right leg out, in, out, in, out, you shake it all about...
A Government drive to encourage millions of people working at home to go back to the office has been put on ice over concerns of a spike in coronavirus cases, the Telegraph can disclose.
Amid signs of confusion at the heart of Cabinet, ministers are understood to have rowed back on plans to launch a major campaign to urge office workers to return to their desks and start commuting again.
They fear any mass return could send infections soaring, and threaten the planned return of thousands of children to school over the next few weeks.
Trying to get people back to offices in a hurry was always going to be a silly idea, especially before the schools went back - and when MPs and thousands of civil servants are still working from home. The bigger issue is safety on overcrowded public transport, which no-one is trying to address first.
We are about to witness some fun* when it comes to schools transport. To maintain spacing the capacity of a bus is far less than the number of seats. Which means instead of 1 bus in a morning 2 or 3 will be needed. These buses don't sit idly by in a yard awaiting call up for Covid school shuttling duties...
Yes, school transport is going to be very difficult. I guess almost every spare bus in the country is going to be put to use, at a considerable cost, until there’s much more of an understanding around transmission vectors in children.
"Government guidance for England states that social distancing will not be required on dedicated school buses, which often carry the same group of children daily, although it should be in place wherever possible." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53894312
There will be chaos outside schools, as the proportion of parents choosing to chauffeur their little darlings to school rises exponentially. There has always been gridlock in the morning outside many schools as parents insist on parking at the school gates regardless of restrictions; this will get much worse. A minor feature, I know, but may get some (adverse) publicity.
That at least should be ameliorated by staggered start times for different year groups. Besides which, if congestion around schools is that bad then the idiot parents will eventually learn to dump older kids, at any rate, a couple of streets away.
Dropping off children is not the problem. Collecting them after school involves hanging about in large groups at the school gates for half an hour.
It's almost as if newspaper editors were second home owners.
I still remember a BBC presenter being taken apart by an economist "But this will hit the typical second home owner" "There's nothing "typical" about a second home owner." Under 4% of the population have a second home - but they appear to be disproportionately represented in the commentariat
Same thing when newspapers portray attacks on private schooling as an attack on the middle classes.
If Labour can be as divided, unpatriotic and offering only “hindsight” opposition and poll 40% that means some people obviously really want a change.
Whether it holds is another story but I do think this again brings up the question of how much of GE19 was Corbyn losing it.
I say that because in effect Labour is returning to its polling when Corbyn wasn’t hated, i.e. just after GE17. I think there Labour got as high as 45%?
One for the polling experts I suppose: when parties have been ahead before (say 5 points or more) has either party been at 40 as the lowest? I wonder if we’ll never see massive polling gaps in this parliament as the Tories stay at their base support and Labour stay at their ceiling
Yes, at most elections from 1945 to 1970 the Tories and Labour were both over 40%, only in February 1974 when the Liberals went from 7% in 1970 to 19% under Thorpe did the Tories and Labour both fall under 40%. At election 1959 for instance the Tories got 49% and Labour 43% and in 1966 Labour got 48% and the Tories 41%.
The Liberals never fell under 10% again until 2015, since when the Tories and Labour both got at least 40% in 2017 and seem to be at 40% each on the latest poll.
Unless there is a LD revival that will likely remain the case
So what are people's views on this new TV channel announced by Robbie Gibb to challenge the BBC. Supposedly it will broadcast facts not opinions but the fact that it refers to the BCC as woke and wet and has approached Julia Hartley Brewer and I am guessing will be funded by advertising I suspect it isn't going to do anything to the BBC but will compete with ITV instead. Also mentioning JHB in the same breath as broadcasting facts not opinions seem an oxymoron.
I've not seen this. Or are you referring to the plans for a new TV news channel? I thought the plan was to take on Sky with that?
Yes it is a new news channel, GB News, so I guess that means it isn't competing directly with ITV as I thought more likely (but that is also true for BBC as well). Brain not in gear. However it is all over the media today all with direct references to the BBC and 'woke wet BBC' is a quote from Gibb himself. I would have thought competition with Sky News was the obvious market as you say, but that is not what has been quoted. Oodles of references to BBC only. Weird.
You put your right leg in, your right leg out, in, out, in, out, you shake it all about...
A Government drive to encourage millions of people working at home to go back to the office has been put on ice over concerns of a spike in coronavirus cases, the Telegraph can disclose.
Amid signs of confusion at the heart of Cabinet, ministers are understood to have rowed back on plans to launch a major campaign to urge office workers to return to their desks and start commuting again.
They fear any mass return could send infections soaring, and threaten the planned return of thousands of children to school over the next few weeks.
Trying to get people back to offices in a hurry was always going to be a silly idea, especially before the schools went back - and when MPs and thousands of civil servants are still working from home. The bigger issue is safety on overcrowded public transport, which no-one is trying to address first.
We are about to witness some fun* when it comes to schools transport. To maintain spacing the capacity of a bus is far less than the number of seats. Which means instead of 1 bus in a morning 2 or 3 will be needed. These buses don't sit idly by in a yard awaiting call up for Covid school shuttling duties...
Yes, school transport is going to be very difficult. I guess almost every spare bus in the country is going to be put to use, at a considerable cost, until there’s much more of an understanding around transmission vectors in children.
"Government guidance for England states that social distancing will not be required on dedicated school buses, which often carry the same group of children daily, although it should be in place wherever possible." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53894312
There will be chaos outside schools, as the proportion of parents choosing to chauffeur their little darlings to school rises exponentially. There has always been gridlock in the morning outside many schools as parents insist on parking at the school gates regardless of restrictions; this will get much worse. A minor feature, I know, but may get some (adverse) publicity.
That at least should be ameliorated by staggered start times for different year groups. Besides which, if congestion around schools is that bad then the idiot parents will eventually learn to dump older kids, at any rate, a couple of streets away.
I think you overestimate the ability of parents to learn...
LOL! Quite possibly correct.
It just occurred to me, if secondary schools are going to ban contact sports, or quite possibly all PE, because Covid, then that will leave PE teachers with a lot of time on their hands. Could we not equip them with sniper rifles and train them to shoot any parents who get too close to the gates? That might solve the problem.
Outdoor games will be happening, though I can’t see inter school fixtures happening for a while.
I’m not sure if all schools have shooting ranges...
Mr Meeks raises an interesting question - why isn't the government doing worse in the polls. But the more I think about it, the more the weakness of the Opposition is the most important factor. Starmer is more appealing personally than Corbyn, but he has failed to oppose most of the decisions the government has made during the pandemic, has flip-flopped throughout, and has a pitifully weak team. He is also tainted by his seat at Corbyn's table and his failed attempted fudge over Brexit at the last election. It was a transparent attempt to straddle two stools, but ended up falling between them. And, finally, he is appealing to middle-class professionals, but has virtually nothing to say to the North or Scotland.
OK, maybe he'll surprise me once he's got the Labour Party under control by emerging as a decisive Blair-like political genius, but I have to say the omens so far aren't very good.
(We can all come up with excuses for why the Labour Party hasn't made hay, like the difficulty of getting media coverage during a pandemic, or the need to deal with the Corbynites in the Party, or whatever, but making excuses can become a way of life).
A 26 point Tory lead with Opinium in March has become level pegging at the end of August. This has happened before most people have engaged with what is about to happen with the economy. If Starmer is as bad as you say he is, the Tories have to be a whole lot worse, don't they?
Clearly the 26-point lead never would have lasted. A much better comparison is with the government's position in the polls in February, or with the average lead at this stage in the electoral cycle.
But yes, the point of the thread was that the Conservatives, or at least the Johnson government, is indeed bad, though it doesn't explicitly say that it is worse than the Opposition. And that the Conservatives should be doing worse than they are. And I'm saying that a reason why they're not is the weakness of the Opposition. And you haven't disagreed with any of the points I made, that I can see.
I have merely observed tat when Starmer became Labour leader, the Tories had a 26 point lead with Opinium. They now have no lead at all. That represents a 13 point swing in less than six months. For me, that's pretty decent going. Still a lot more to do and I suspect that opinium is probably overstating the labour positions, but from where I sit Labour is making good progress - and the serious shite has not even begun yet.
It is going to be a horrible, horrible, horrible Autumn for Johnson, and every second of it is deserved.
can he survive? Maybe the party will let him steer brexit through. Beyond that, I think its doubtful.
And suddenly Sunak's hopes look a bit dented too. Soak this rich taxes? Lol, he won;t get to be leader on the back of those.
Graham Brady is going to reap a whirlwind this week.
We cannot get through this crisis without immense pain. The public and therefore to some degree Tory members and mps will accept that and therefore some level if unpalatable options may turn out to be palatable after all.
Nevertheless it is pain and yes that means the public will turn on Boris and the party, but government makes that inevitable sometimes. Incompetence will accelerate that but a reckoning was coming as a consequence of events even without it. Acting stunned that they will become unpopular or pretending it could be avoided forever in a crisis like this is just silly.
Johnsonism - if it exists - is based on the denial that pain exists. It is cakeism. It will be interesting to see how things develop.
I'm sure, as per HYUFD, that Boris will seek to avoid any difficult decision on taxes or spending as long as humanly possible. I dont know how long it can be, but probably longer than we think.
Dealing with the aftermath, financially at least, will presumably take decades. I assume Boris will seek to push as much of it as possible on to the future. PMs usually last 3-5 years, he can probably defer the hard choices that long.
He might resign at the end of the year on the grounds of ill health leaving a hospital pass for his successor. Labour get a 10% lead. Then he rides to the rescue of the Tory party in early 2024 to take on the leadership again to do what he can do best - a successful GE campaign.
Nope. The waters will close quickly over his head when he stands down.
So what are people's views on this new TV channel announced by Robbie Gibb to challenge the BBC. Supposedly it will broadcast facts not opinions but the fact that it refers to the BCC as woke and wet and has approached Julia Hartley Brewer and I am guessing will be funded by advertising I suspect it isn't going to do anything to the BBC but will compete with ITV instead. Also mentioning JHB in the same breath as broadcasting facts not opinions seem an oxymoron.
I've not seen this. Or are you referring to the plans for a new TV news channel? I thought the plan was to take on Sky with that?
Yes it is a new news channel, GB News, so I guess that means it isn't competing directly with ITV as I thought more likely (but that is also true for BBC as well). Brain not in gear. However it is all over the media today all with direct references to the BBC and 'woke wet BBC' is a quote from Gibb himself. I would have thought competition with Sky News was the obvious market as you say, but that is not what has been quoted. Oodles of references to BBC only. Weird.
OK brain finally cranking up to full speed. This is just a publicity stunt isn't it to get it into the media and I have just done my little bit to aid it following the BBC stupidly putting it all over their news. Hook, line and sinker.
Mr Meeks raises an interesting question - why isn't the government doing worse in the polls. But the more I think about it, the more the weakness of the Opposition is the most important factor. Starmer is more appealing personally than Corbyn, but he has failed to oppose most of the decisions the government has made during the pandemic, has flip-flopped throughout, and has a pitifully weak team. He is also tainted by his seat at Corbyn's table and his failed attempted fudge over Brexit at the last election. It was a transparent attempt to straddle two stools, but ended up falling between them. And, finally, he is appealing to middle-class professionals, but has virtually nothing to say to the North or Scotland.
OK, maybe he'll surprise me once he's got the Labour Party under control by emerging as a decisive Blair-like political genius, but I have to say the omens so far aren't very good.
(We can all come up with excuses for why the Labour Party hasn't made hay, like the difficulty of getting media coverage during a pandemic, or the need to deal with the Corbynites in the Party, or whatever, but making excuses can become a way of life).
A 26 point Tory lead with Opinium in March has become level pegging at the end of August. This has happened before most people have engaged with what is about to happen with the economy. If Starmer is as bad as you say he is, the Tories have to be a whole lot worse, don't they?
Clearly the 26-point lead never would have lasted. A much better comparison is with the government's position in the polls in February, or with the average lead at this stage in the electoral cycle.
But yes, the point of the thread was that the Conservatives, or at least the Johnson government, is indeed bad, though it doesn't explicitly say that it is worse than the Opposition. And that the Conservatives should be doing worse than they are. And I'm saying that a reason why they're not is the weakness of the Opposition. And you haven't disagreed with any of the points I made, that I can see.
I have merely observed tat when Starmer became Labour leader, the Tories had a 26 point lead with Opinium. They now have no lead at all. That represents a 13 point swing in less than six months. For me, that's pretty decent going. Still a lot more to do and I suspect that opinium is probably overstating the labour positions, but from where I sit Labour is making good progress - and the serious shite has not even begun yet.
I’d be amazed if Labour don’t have significant and consistent leads next year.
How much of a guide to a 2024 election that will be I have no idea, but expect to to be little. Growing up in the eighties I was used to large Labour leads in the polls most of the time.
Mr Meeks raises an interesting question - why isn't the government doing worse in the polls. But the more I think about it, the more the weakness of the Opposition is the most important factor. Starmer is more appealing personally than Corbyn, but he has failed to oppose most of the decisions the government has made during the pandemic, has flip-flopped throughout, and has a pitifully weak team. He is also tainted by his seat at Corbyn's table and his failed attempted fudge over Brexit at the last election. It was a transparent attempt to straddle two stools, but ended up falling between them. And, finally, he is appealing to middle-class professionals, but has virtually nothing to say to the North or Scotland.
OK, maybe he'll surprise me once he's got the Labour Party under control by emerging as a decisive Blair-like political genius, but I have to say the omens so far aren't very good.
(We can all come up with excuses for why the Labour Party hasn't made hay, like the difficulty of getting media coverage during a pandemic, or the need to deal with the Corbynites in the Party, or whatever, but making excuses can become a way of life).
A 26 point Tory lead with Opinium in March has become level pegging at the end of August. This has happened before most people have engaged with what is about to happen with the economy. If Starmer is as bad as you say he is, the Tories have to be a whole lot worse, don't they?
Clearly the 26-point lead never would have lasted. A much better comparison is with the government's position in the polls in February, or with the average lead at this stage in the electoral cycle.
But yes, the point of the thread was that the Conservatives, or at least the Johnson government, is indeed bad, though it doesn't explicitly say that it is worse than the Opposition. And that the Conservatives should be doing worse than they are. And I'm saying that a reason why they're not is the weakness of the Opposition. And you haven't disagreed with any of the points I made, that I can see.
I have merely observed tat when Starmer became Labour leader, the Tories had a 26 point lead with Opinium. They now have no lead at all. That represents a 13 point swing in less than six months. For me, that's pretty decent going. Still a lot more to do and I suspect that opinium is probably overstating the labour positions, but from where I sit Labour is making good progress - and the serious shite has not even begun yet.
Starmer has made great progress. The Labour Party, not so much - but most of the Corbyn damage should have unwound by 2024....
This was the one that Boris f**ked up right at the beginning, with that rambling incoherent television address so memorably lampooned by Matt Lucas, which included announcing the supposedly clear new five-stage national alert system, and then saying we were currently at level three-and-a-half.
It never got off the runway.
The new system is: watch what Scotland is doing; wait a week during which ministers can build the suspense by denying or trashing the Scottish approach; do the same.
The difference is absolute discipline inside the SNP administration whilst the UK one airs its debates and dirty laundry in public first and Johnson is lazy, so this gets a head of steam before he makes up his mind.
They're actually both getting very similar advice and doing pretty similar things. But the SNP are far better at leaking and acting on it first and at the politics, like making wedge issues out of it.
Just a lot smarter and much more interested in looking after their constituents.
This crisis is an interesting test of Dominic Cummings' nirvana versus the civil service. So far, neither comes out well.
Remember Cummings told us Whitehall is not fit for purpose and should be replaced by central control from a Number 10 "war room" receiving real time data updates from, well, everywhere. All this to be augmented by superforecasters and weirdos with physics degrees running unspecified algorithms.
Cummings seems to have been right about Whitehall and wrong about central control.
These three things can all be true at once:
1The pre-Dom Civil Service model is barely up to the job of running a modern complex state. 2 The pre-Dom Civil Service does pretty well under the circumstances. 3 Dom's Vision is likely to make things far worse.
It is going to be a horrible, horrible, horrible Autumn for Johnson, and every second of it is deserved.
can he survive? Maybe the party will let him steer brexit through. Beyond that, I think its doubtful.
And suddenly Sunak's hopes look a bit dented too. Soak this rich taxes? Lol, he won;t get to be leader on the back of those.
Graham Brady is going to reap a whirlwind this week.
We cannot get through this crisis without immense pain. The public and therefore to some degree Tory members and mps will accept that and therefore some level if unpalatable options may turn out to be palatable after all.
Nevertheless it is pain and yes that means the public will turn on Boris and the party, but government makes that inevitable sometimes. Incompetence will accelerate that but a reckoning was coming as a consequence of events even without it. Acting stunned that they will become unpopular or pretending it could be avoided forever in a crisis like this is just silly.
Johnsonism - if it exists - is based on the denial that pain exists. It is cakeism. It will be interesting to see how things develop.
I'm sure, as per HYUFD, that Boris will seek to avoid any difficult decision on taxes or spending as long as humanly possible. I dont know how long it can be, but probably longer than we think.
Dealing with the aftermath, financially at least, will presumably take decades. I assume Boris will seek to push as much of it as possible on to the future. PMs usually last 3-5 years, he can probably defer the hard choices that long.
Maybe. Thing is, long term interest rates are starting to move up a bit. Higher debt servicing costs could be on the way. And the BoE is not going to bankroll Johnson any more.
The government's huge policy mistakes are coming home to roost.
Johnson and Cummings are undoubtedly great campaigners. But in government? sheeesh.
You can fool some of the people.......
Or rather, when you’re in government you get fact checked by reality.
You put your right leg in, your right leg out, in, out, in, out, you shake it all about...
A Government drive to encourage millions of people working at home to go back to the office has been put on ice over concerns of a spike in coronavirus cases, the Telegraph can disclose.
Amid signs of confusion at the heart of Cabinet, ministers are understood to have rowed back on plans to launch a major campaign to urge office workers to return to their desks and start commuting again.
They fear any mass return could send infections soaring, and threaten the planned return of thousands of children to school over the next few weeks.
Trying to get people back to offices in a hurry was always going to be a silly idea, especially before the schools went back - and when MPs and thousands of civil servants are still working from home. The bigger issue is safety on overcrowded public transport, which no-one is trying to address first.
We are about to witness some fun* when it comes to schools transport. To maintain spacing the capacity of a bus is far less than the number of seats. Which means instead of 1 bus in a morning 2 or 3 will be needed. These buses don't sit idly by in a yard awaiting call up for Covid school shuttling duties...
We didn't have a school bus in my day, we used a regular service....and we ran about a lot on the top deck. Conductors..... it was that long ago ......... used to shout at us sometimes but it didn't make a long term difference.
We walked to school, as did everybody regardless of distance apart for children living on farms.
Anyway - on other "difficult to explain" decisions that are quite possibly imminent - reversing the quarantine status of Portugal could be, er, interesting.
It's absolutely farcical that the quarantine situation seems to be based, as far as anyone can ascertain, to be based on country's reaching a self reported case level of 20 per 100,000 people. Quite how this level was determined, or how it takes account of the fact that it is hugely dependent on levels and targeting of testing, remains a bit of a mystery. Not to mention the still ignored issue of reported numbers often not aligning with people (eg. 4 positive tests for one person equals, er 4 reported cases). In the UK anyway - who knows about elsewhere.
Indeed. Portugal has already been put into quarantine twice and taken out twice. I've been flagging the Austrian situation, where the country was put into quarantine the same day as Portugal was released, for reasons that were flaky at the time, and have been followed by a series of relatively good statistics.
I see today's Austrian new case number is out already, at +181. Recent performance suggests Portugal's is likely to be worse.
This all stems from the inexplicable refusal simply to tell people to do without their sunshine holidays this year. If the Foreign Office advice to avoid all non-essential journeys outside of the Common Travel Area had remained in place then all of these problems would've been avoided.
Incidentally, has anybody seen Dominic Raab recently? I'm thinking perhaps he dissented from the change in travel advice, and has been spending the last couple of months tied to a chair in the basement of No.10?
To be fair, he is having to oversee a massive departmental merger at the heart of Whitehall. Obviously what the Govt needed with so much else on its plate.
To be fair, the merger is somewhere between utterly pointless and downright stupid.
You put your right leg in, your right leg out, in, out, in, out, you shake it all about...
A Government drive to encourage millions of people working at home to go back to the office has been put on ice over concerns of a spike in coronavirus cases, the Telegraph can disclose.
Amid signs of confusion at the heart of Cabinet, ministers are understood to have rowed back on plans to launch a major campaign to urge office workers to return to their desks and start commuting again.
They fear any mass return could send infections soaring, and threaten the planned return of thousands of children to school over the next few weeks.
Trying to get people back to offices in a hurry was always going to be a silly idea, especially before the schools went back - and when MPs and thousands of civil servants are still working from home. The bigger issue is safety on overcrowded public transport, which no-one is trying to address first.
We are about to witness some fun* when it comes to schools transport. To maintain spacing the capacity of a bus is far less than the number of seats. Which means instead of 1 bus in a morning 2 or 3 will be needed. These buses don't sit idly by in a yard awaiting call up for Covid school shuttling duties...
We didn't have a school bus in my day, we used a regular service....and we ran about a lot on the top deck. Conductors..... it was that long ago ......... used to shout at us sometimes but it didn't make a long term difference.
We walked to school, as did everybody regardless of distance apart for children living on farms.
Walking to school died when parents got to choose schools. In aggregate, the same number of children go to the same number of schools but no longer the nearest ones so now journeys are greatly extended.
Mr Meeks raises an interesting question - why isn't the government doing worse in the polls. But the more I think about it, the more the weakness of the Opposition is the most important factor. Starmer is more appealing personally than Corbyn, but he has failed to oppose most of the decisions the government has made during the pandemic, has flip-flopped throughout, and has a pitifully weak team. He is also tainted by his seat at Corbyn's table and his failed attempted fudge over Brexit at the last election. It was a transparent attempt to straddle two stools, but ended up falling between them. And, finally, he is appealing to middle-class professionals, but has virtually nothing to say to the North or Scotland.
OK, maybe he'll surprise me once he's got the Labour Party under control by emerging as a decisive Blair-like political genius, but I have to say the omens so far aren't very good.
(We can all come up with excuses for why the Labour Party hasn't made hay, like the difficulty of getting media coverage during a pandemic, or the need to deal with the Corbynites in the Party, or whatever, but making excuses can become a way of life).
A 26 point Tory lead with Opinium in March has become level pegging at the end of August. This has happened before most people have engaged with what is about to happen with the economy. If Starmer is as bad as you say he is, the Tories have to be a whole lot worse, don't they?
Clearly the 26-point lead never would have lasted. A much better comparison is with the government's position in the polls in February, or with the average lead at this stage in the electoral cycle.
But yes, the point of the thread was that the Conservatives, or at least the Johnson government, is indeed bad, though it doesn't explicitly say that it is worse than the Opposition. And that the Conservatives should be doing worse than they are. And I'm saying that a reason why they're not is the weakness of the Opposition. And you haven't disagreed with any of the points I made, that I can see.
I have merely observed tat when Starmer became Labour leader, the Tories had a 26 point lead with Opinium. They now have no lead at all. That represents a 13 point swing in less than six months. For me, that's pretty decent going. Still a lot more to do and I suspect that opinium is probably overstating the labour positions, but from where I sit Labour is making good progress - and the serious shite has not even begun yet.
I’d be amazed if Labour don’t have significant and consistent leads next year.
How much of a guide to a 2024 election that will be I have no idea, but expect to to be little. Growing up in the eighties I was used to large Labour leads in the polls most of the time.
Without Scotland that is unlikely eg add up the Labour and SNP shares on Opinium and you get to 45% however Labour alone is only on 40% ie tied with the Tories.
It is also a myth Labour had large leads through most of the 80s, apart from 1980 and 1981 and 1989 and 1990 when Labour did have large leads, Thatcher's Tories led or were at most tied with Labour most of the time
You put your right leg in, your right leg out, in, out, in, out, you shake it all about...
A Government drive to encourage millions of people working at home to go back to the office has been put on ice over concerns of a spike in coronavirus cases, the Telegraph can disclose.
Amid signs of confusion at the heart of Cabinet, ministers are understood to have rowed back on plans to launch a major campaign to urge office workers to return to their desks and start commuting again.
They fear any mass return could send infections soaring, and threaten the planned return of thousands of children to school over the next few weeks.
Trying to get people back to offices in a hurry was always going to be a silly idea, especially before the schools went back - and when MPs and thousands of civil servants are still working from home. The bigger issue is safety on overcrowded public transport, which no-one is trying to address first.
We are about to witness some fun* when it comes to schools transport. To maintain spacing the capacity of a bus is far less than the number of seats. Which means instead of 1 bus in a morning 2 or 3 will be needed. These buses don't sit idly by in a yard awaiting call up for Covid school shuttling duties...
We didn't have a school bus in my day, we used a regular service....and we ran about a lot on the top deck. Conductors..... it was that long ago ......... used to shout at us sometimes but it didn't make a long term difference.
We walked to school, as did everybody regardless of distance apart for children living on farms.
Walking to school died when parents got to choose schools. In aggregate, the same number of children go to the same number of schools but no longer the nearest ones so now journeys are greatly extended.
Mr Meeks raises an interesting question - why isn't the government doing worse in the polls. But the more I think about it, the more the weakness of the Opposition is the most important factor. Starmer is more appealing personally than Corbyn, but he has failed to oppose most of the decisions the government has made during the pandemic, has flip-flopped throughout, and has a pitifully weak team. He is also tainted by his seat at Corbyn's table and his failed attempted fudge over Brexit at the last election. It was a transparent attempt to straddle two stools, but ended up falling between them. And, finally, he is appealing to middle-class professionals, but has virtually nothing to say to the North or Scotland.
OK, maybe he'll surprise me once he's got the Labour Party under control by emerging as a decisive Blair-like political genius, but I have to say the omens so far aren't very good.
(We can all come up with excuses for why the Labour Party hasn't made hay, like the difficulty of getting media coverage during a pandemic, or the need to deal with the Corbynites in the Party, or whatever, but making excuses can become a way of life).
A lot of party members are quietly dissatisfied - a recent Labour List poll (of self-selected readers, but they get a broad readership) showed a slim majority felt that way. For better or worse, though, he's playing the long game. Stage 1 is to establish himself and his team as sensible people - a work in progress, but it's getting there. Stage 2 will be to handle the ECHR report when it comes out next month. I don't expect it to attack individuals, but to be scathing about the party's handling of the issue:- a lot of people will judge him by how he responds. Nobody in the party wants a mass purge but swift acceptance and implementation of the findings without quibbles will be important.
I think those had to happen first before he offered a single piece of new policy. Stage 3 is the virtual party conference, which I suspect will focus on the virus and Brexit with the general theme of "enough incompetence", but should also produce some hints of policy direction. After that - well, there's over 3 years to develop polcy, and anything right now may look very dated in the world of 2024. I'd like to see some clear direction, but I'm prepared to wait a bit.
This was the one that Boris f**ked up right at the beginning, with that rambling incoherent television address so memorably lampooned by Matt Lucas, which included announcing the supposedly clear new five-stage national alert system, and then saying we were currently at level three-and-a-half.
It never got off the runway.
The new system is: watch what Scotland is doing; wait a week during which ministers can build the suspense by denying or trashing the Scottish approach; do the same.
Yes, Johnson copies Sturgeons homework then hands it in late.
The SNP would not be anywhere near as popular without the Tories as a foil. It has been the cover for a lot of other failures.
It is Johnson's malevolent incompetence, as outlined in the header, that will end the United Kingdom.
The end of Transition is set to be a trainwreck too. What else can we expect?
Yesterday’s Briefing Room on R4 is well worth a listen. It included the suggestion that a thin last minute deal might be accompanied by an “implementation period” - during which everything would stay the same as currently. As a way to extend without actually extending.
Yes, there was some discussion on the new border controls the other day, with the new arrangements to start in July 2021. It wasn't clear what happens in the interim.
Briefing Room suggested that the UK's intention was to implement controls and checks after six months, but suggested that in the absence of a deal the EU is likely to start sooner, if not right away.
It seems that the French understand that Brexit means Brexit, but that our government does not...
Brexit means Brexit was a dumb phrase which meant nothing when Brexiteers were using it and it is still dumb and means nothing when people try to turn it around in an attempt to be amusing.
It wasnt a devastating argument ender when used to push Brexit, and isnt a devastating argument ender when used to criticise Brexit.
The notable point here is that the continent seems better prepared than we are.
I'm sure that is true, but people really think they are being clever when they turn around the Brexit means Brexit line, and I find it incredibly infuritating as it was rightly attacked for meaning nothing, and now pretty much the same people try to use it themselves as a critique. I'm sure it is usually meant to be used ironically, but a dumb thing doesn't get less dumb depending on who uses it.
I always assumed that the meaning behind the original phrase from May of "Brexit means Brexit" was misinterpreted and tied her into a corner she never meant to go.
I thought it meant "Brexit means Brexit - no more, no less" - essentially it was intended to mean simply that the UK would leave the EU, but with no preconditions of the terms. ie. it could mean anything from a hard no deal Brexit to an extremely soft version. But very quickly it came to be interpreted as simply ruling out any sort of "BINO" deal.
That's not quite correct. May made ending free movement a red line when she launched her leadership bid.
To be fair, he is having to oversee a massive departmental merger at the heart of Whitehall. Obviously what the Govt needed with so much else on its plate.
They appear to suffer from ADHD - they've also decided this autumn is a good moment to institute massive changes in local government (yes, that same local government that is supposed to be taking care of virus tracing). Never a dull moment under Johnson!
On topic a scale of 1-5 for something as complex as this was never going to be much use. What the government has done instead is seek a more granular analysis focusing on "hot spots" and the tracking and tracing of people affected by particular outbreaks such as the chicken factory up the road from me at Coupar Angus (which has given us our first ICU patient in over a month).
By any sensible measure we are now edging down towards 2 with approximately 1000 new cases a day in a country of 65m despite a much more proactive testing regime than we had in the early months where it was reasonable to assume that the true number of cases was a significant multiple of the number found. This, however, would send the wrong message, which is just another illustration of the inadequacy of the scale.
Alastair is right to query the competence of those who ever thought this was a good idea. Similarly, the algorithm for education was just so stupid that the only remarkable thing is not the odd resignation but that so many remain in post.
Our Ministers have not shone in either example but those who retain a delusion that we have a world beating or even competent civil service really need to give themselves a shake. People moan about the number of senior civil servants who are being squeezed out and blame Dom because most things do seem to come back to him eventually but I would rather focus on whether we can change the ethos of the Civil Service to something actual that produces actual results, the quantitative measurement of those results and consequences for failure. Those used to being promoted despite repeated incompetence and finish with a gong and spectacular pension may not like this very much. Welcome to the real world.
The real world where Gavin Williamson is still in post, where Grayling gets repeated promotions and a humongous pension, where Ms Harding gets a Baronetcy, a seat in the legislature for life, 65K pa for 2 days work a week and another prestigious job without having to go through any application process. That real world, you mean?
Why on earth would anyone go for a senior job in the civil service knowing that Ministers will not take responsibility, that they will be ruled by fear and discarded if it is politically useful to the Minister regardless of the actual facts about who took what decisions, on what advice and whether such decisions were executed well.
By all means let’s improve civil service effectiveness. But the way Ministers are behaving: lying, blaming others, more interested in coming up with pithy phrases is not how to improve effectiveness or culture. They’re not genuinely interested in getting an effective civil service. Just one that does what it’s told without question and can be blamed when things go wrong.
By all means let’s improve civil service effectiveness. But the way Ministers are behaving: lying, blaming others, more interested in coming up with pithy phrases is not how to improve effectiveness or culture. They’re not genuinely interested in getting an effective civil service. Just one that does what it’s told without question and can be blamed when things go wrong.
Mr Meeks raises an interesting question - why isn't the government doing worse in the polls. But the more I think about it, the more the weakness of the Opposition is the most important factor. Starmer is more appealing personally than Corbyn, but he has failed to oppose most of the decisions the government has made during the pandemic, has flip-flopped throughout, and has a pitifully weak team. He is also tainted by his seat at Corbyn's table and his failed attempted fudge over Brexit at the last election. It was a transparent attempt to straddle two stools, but ended up falling between them. And, finally, he is appealing to middle-class professionals, but has virtually nothing to say to the North or Scotland.
OK, maybe he'll surprise me once he's got the Labour Party under control by emerging as a decisive Blair-like political genius, but I have to say the omens so far aren't very good.
(We can all come up with excuses for why the Labour Party hasn't made hay, like the difficulty of getting media coverage during a pandemic, or the need to deal with the Corbynites in the Party, or whatever, but making excuses can become a way of life).
A lot of party members are quietly dissatisfied - a recent Labour List poll (of self-selected readers, but they get a broad readership) showed a slim majority felt that way. For better or worse, though, he's playing the long game. Stage 1 is to establish himself and his team as sensible people - a work in progress, but it's getting there. Stage 2 will be to handle the ECHR report when it comes out next month. I don't expect it to attack individuals, but to be scathing about the party's handling of the issue:- a lot of people will judge him by how he responds. Nobody in the party wants a mass purge but swift acceptance and implementation of the findings without quibbles will be important.
I think those had to happen first before he offered a single piece of new policy. Stage 3 is the virtual party conference, which I suspect will focus on the virus and Brexit with the general theme of "enough incompetence", but should also produce some hints of policy direction. After that - well, there's over 3 years to develop polcy, and anything right now may look very dated in the world of 2024. I'd like to see some clear direction, but I'm prepared to wait a bit.
Fishing refers to Starmer as having a "pitifully weak team". Is this in contrast to Boris's Cabinet of all the talents? I suspect the public have a pretty low opinion of Boris's team, with the obvious exception of golden boy Rishi. I certainly wouldn't wish to swap any of Starmer's team for Williamson, Jenrick, Shapps, Sharma, Patel or others...
I am old enough to remember when Pret symbolised everything the right hated about modern, metropolitan Britain - overpriced lattes, sold to preaning millennial cosmopolitans by a foreign workforce. How times change!
So what are people's views on this new TV channel announced by Robbie Gibb to challenge the BBC. Supposedly it will broadcast facts not opinions but the fact that it refers to the BCC as woke and wet and has approached Julia Hartley Brewer and I am guessing will be funded by advertising I suspect it isn't going to do anything to the BBC but will compete with ITV instead. Also mentioning JHB in the same breath as broadcasting facts not opinions seem an oxymoron.
I've not seen this. Or are you referring to the plans for a new TV news channel? I thought the plan was to take on Sky with that?
Yes it is a new news channel, GB News, so I guess that means it isn't competing directly with ITV as I thought more likely (but that is also true for BBC as well). Brain not in gear. However it is all over the media today all with direct references to the BBC and 'woke wet BBC' is a quote from Gibb himself. I would have thought competition with Sky News was the obvious market as you say, but that is not what has been quoted. Oodles of references to BBC only. Weird.
OK brain finally cranking up to full speed. This is just a publicity stunt isn't it to get it into the media and I have just done my little bit to aid it following the BBC stupidly putting it all over their news. Hook, line and sinker.
How long before GB News has morphed into a fully fledged UK version of Fox?
This was the one that Boris f**ked up right at the beginning, with that rambling incoherent television address so memorably lampooned by Matt Lucas, which included announcing the supposedly clear new five-stage national alert system, and then saying we were currently at level three-and-a-half.
It never got off the runway.
The new system is: watch what Scotland is doing; wait a week during which ministers can build the suspense by denying or trashing the Scottish approach; do the same.
Yes, Johnson copies Sturgeons homework then hands it in late.
The SNP would not be anywhere near as popular without the Tories as a foil. It has been the cover for a lot of other failures.
It is Johnson's malevolent incompetence, as outlined in the header, that will end the United Kingdom.
The end of Transition is set to be a trainwreck too. What else can we expect?
Yesterday’s Briefing Room on R4 is well worth a listen. It included the suggestion that a thin last minute deal might be accompanied by an “implementation period” - during which everything would stay the same as currently. As a way to extend without actually extending.
Yes, there was some discussion on the new border controls the other day, with the new arrangements to start in July 2021. It wasn't clear what happens in the interim.
Briefing Room suggested that the UK's intention was to implement controls and checks after six months, but suggested that in the absence of a deal the EU is likely to start sooner, if not right away.
It seems that the French understand that Brexit means Brexit, but that our government does not...
Brexit means Brexit was a dumb phrase which meant nothing when Brexiteers were using it and it is still dumb and means nothing when people try to turn it around in an attempt to be amusing.
It wasnt a devastating argument ender when used to push Brexit, and isnt a devastating argument ender when used to criticise Brexit.
The notable point here is that the continent seems better prepared than we are.
I'm sure that is true, but people really think they are being clever when they turn around the Brexit means Brexit line, and I find it incredibly infuritating as it was rightly attacked for meaning nothing, and now pretty much the same people try to use it themselves as a critique. I'm sure it is usually meant to be used ironically, but a dumb thing doesn't get less dumb depending on who uses it.
I always assumed that the meaning behind the original phrase from May of "Brexit means Brexit" was misinterpreted and tied her into a corner she never meant to go.
I thought it meant "Brexit means Brexit - no more, no less" - essentially it was intended to mean simply that the UK would leave the EU, but with no preconditions of the terms. ie. it could mean anything from a hard no deal Brexit to an extremely soft version. But very quickly it came to be interpreted as simply ruling out any sort of "BINO" deal.
That's not quite correct. May made ending free movement a red line when she launched her leadership bid.
To me her "Brexit means Brexit" came across as -
"Leave won the referendum. No backsliding we're leaving. I'll make sure of that."
It had a Hard Brexit feel to it but did not promise Hard Brexit. And her deal (imo) was Soft Brexit. Which I still expect to happen now - defining that as close alignment with LPF largely accepted.
Mr Meeks raises an interesting question - why isn't the government doing worse in the polls. But the more I think about it, the more the weakness of the Opposition is the most important factor. Starmer is more appealing personally than Corbyn, but he has failed to oppose most of the decisions the government has made during the pandemic, has flip-flopped throughout, and has a pitifully weak team. He is also tainted by his seat at Corbyn's table and his failed attempted fudge over Brexit at the last election. It was a transparent attempt to straddle two stools, but ended up falling between them. And, finally, he is appealing to middle-class professionals, but has virtually nothing to say to the North or Scotland.
OK, maybe he'll surprise me once he's got the Labour Party under control by emerging as a decisive Blair-like political genius, but I have to say the omens so far aren't very good.
(We can all come up with excuses for why the Labour Party hasn't made hay, like the difficulty of getting media coverage during a pandemic, or the need to deal with the Corbynites in the Party, or whatever, but making excuses can become a way of life).
A lot of party members are quietly dissatisfied - a recent Labour List poll (of self-selected readers, but they get a broad readership) showed a slim majority felt that way. For better or worse, though, he's playing the long game. Stage 1 is to establish himself and his team as sensible people - a work in progress, but it's getting there. Stage 2 will be to handle the ECHR report when it comes out next month. I don't expect it to attack individuals, but to be scathing about the party's handling of the issue:- a lot of people will judge him by how he responds. Nobody in the party wants a mass purge but swift acceptance and implementation of the findings without quibbles will be important.
I think those had to happen first before he offered a single piece of new policy. Stage 3 is the virtual party conference, which I suspect will focus on the virus and Brexit with the general theme of "enough incompetence", but should also produce some hints of policy direction. After that - well, there's over 3 years to develop polcy, and anything right now may look very dated in the world of 2024. I'd like to see some clear direction, but I'm prepared to wait a bit.
The Tory position is being artificially inflated by about 15% of die-hard UKIP / Brexiter votes, which Cameron didn't enjoy the benefit of for most of his period. Some of either these or the more commercially-minded Tories will give way after the Brexit date, depending on the deal ; so I think it will then become clear he's doing better than Miliband for most of 2010-15, Brown for most of his period, and Corbyn in his declining period.
This was the one that Boris f**ked up right at the beginning, with that rambling incoherent television address so memorably lampooned by Matt Lucas, which included announcing the supposedly clear new five-stage national alert system, and then saying we were currently at level three-and-a-half.
It never got off the runway.
The new system is: watch what Scotland is doing; wait a week during which ministers can build the suspense by denying or trashing the Scottish approach; do the same.
Yes, Johnson copies Sturgeons homework then hands it in late.
The SNP would not be anywhere near as popular without the Tories as a foil. It has been the cover for a lot of other failures.
It is Johnson's malevolent incompetence, as outlined in the header, that will end the United Kingdom.
The end of Transition is set to be a trainwreck too. What else can we expect?
Yesterday’s Briefing Room on R4 is well worth a listen. It included the suggestion that a thin last minute deal might be accompanied by an “implementation period” - during which everything would stay the same as currently. As a way to extend without actually extending.
Yes, there was some discussion on the new border controls the other day, with the new arrangements to start in July 2021. It wasn't clear what happens in the interim.
Briefing Room suggested that the UK's intention was to implement controls and checks after six months, but suggested that in the absence of a deal the EU is likely to start sooner, if not right away.
It seems that the French understand that Brexit means Brexit, but that our government does not...
Brexit means Brexit was a dumb phrase which meant nothing when Brexiteers were using it and it is still dumb and means nothing when people try to turn it around in an attempt to be amusing.
It wasnt a devastating argument ender when used to push Brexit, and isnt a devastating argument ender when used to criticise Brexit.
The notable point here is that the continent seems better prepared than we are.
I'm sure that is true, but people really think they are being clever when they turn around the Brexit means Brexit line, and I find it incredibly infuritating as it was rightly attacked for meaning nothing, and now pretty much the same people try to use it themselves as a critique. I'm sure it is usually meant to be used ironically, but a dumb thing doesn't get less dumb depending on who uses it.
I always assumed that the meaning behind the original phrase from May of "Brexit means Brexit" was misinterpreted and tied her into a corner she never meant to go.
I thought it meant "Brexit means Brexit - no more, no less" - essentially it was intended to mean simply that the UK would leave the EU, but with no preconditions of the terms. ie. it could mean anything from a hard no deal Brexit to an extremely soft version. But very quickly it came to be interpreted as simply ruling out any sort of "BINO" deal.
That's not quite correct. May made ending free movement a red line when she launched her leadership bid.
To me her "Brexit means Brexit" came across as -
"Leave won the referendum. No backsliding we're leaving. I'll make sure of that."
It had a Hard Brexit feel to it but did not promise Hard Brexit. And her deal (imo) was Soft Brexit. Which I still expect to happen now - defining that as close alignment with LPF largely accepted.
It's largely forgotten now but in the first few days after the vote, Boris Johnson wrote a column implying he would back a soft Brexit. May was trying to back him into a corner to make sure she won the leadership.
On topic a scale of 1-5 for something as complex as this was never going to be much use. What the government has done instead is seek a more granular analysis focusing on "hot spots" and the tracking and tracing of people affected by particular outbreaks such as the chicken factory up the road from me at Coupar Angus (which has given us our first ICU patient in over a month).
By any sensible measure we are now edging down towards 2 with approximately 1000 new cases a day in a country of 65m despite a much more proactive testing regime than we had in the early months where it was reasonable to assume that the true number of cases was a significant multiple of the number found. This, however, would send the wrong message, which is just another illustration of the inadequacy of the scale.
Alastair is right to query the competence of those who ever thought this was a good idea. Similarly, the algorithm for education was just so stupid that the only remarkable thing is not the odd resignation but that so many remain in post.
Our Ministers have not shone in either example but those who retain a delusion that we have a world beating or even competent civil service really need to give themselves a shake. People moan about the number of senior civil servants who are being squeezed out and blame Dom because most things do seem to come back to him eventually but I would rather focus on whether we can change the ethos of the Civil Service to something actual that produces actual results, the quantitative measurement of those results and consequences for failure. Those used to being promoted despite repeated incompetence and finish with a gong and spectacular pension may not like this very much. Welcome to the real world.
The real world where Gavin Williamson is still in post, where Grayling gets repeated promotions and a humongous pension, where Ms Harding gets a Baronetcy, a seat in the legislature for life, 65K pa for 2 days work a week and another prestigious job without having to go through any application process. That real world, you mean?
Why on earth would anyone go for a senior job in the civil service knowing that Ministers will not take responsibility, that they will be ruled by fear and discarded if it is politically useful to the Minister regardless of the actual facts about who took what decisions, on what advice and whether such decisions were executed well.
By all means let’s improve civil service effectiveness. But the way Ministers are behaving: lying, blaming others, more interested in coming up with pithy phrases is not how to improve effectiveness or culture. They’re not genuinely interested in getting an effective civil service. Just one that does what it’s told without question and can be blamed when things go wrong.
The view that they are seeking to undermine neutrality depends on your starting point. If your starting point is that the civil service has acted as a deliberate drag on implementing beneficial policies, and has taken political stances in its response to them, you probably think they're restoring civil service neutrality.
Back to Corona :-) This is something I have been cogitating for the last couple of weeks, and would like the opinion of NigelB or Foxy or anyone else with a better biology background than me.
In the last couple of months we have seen big increases in the number of cases of SARS-COV2 in some countries, but the level of severe illness is much lower than expected, as measured by hospitalisations and deaths. There was speculation in the spring that the virus would not spread as quickly in summer as colds and flu are strongly seasonal. But it seems that the spread of the SARS-COV2 virus has little to do with the season.
Is it at all plausible though, that these seasonal illness viruses still spread at a similar rate but less frequently appears as an illness? It is possible that the human body is under less stress in summer and more stress in winter, due to lots of reasons: not moving from cold to warm environments several times a day, not inhailing air under 10 degrees, generally getting more exercise, sunlight and fresh air etc. If the body or in particular the immune system is under more stress then an onslaught from a virus is more likely to develop into illness.
Is it plausible that catching the virus is just as easy in summer, but this developing into a serious disease is much lower in summer and higher in winter? For most other Rhino/Corona/Flu viruses there is as good as no testing of the prevelance of the virus in the general population, so we do not really appreciate how widley cold viruses are spread in summer, and only if the immune system is under some other kind of stress does this develop into a "summer cold" which are ususally not as heavy as a winter cold.
Mr Meeks raises an interesting question - why isn't the government doing worse in the polls. But the more I think about it, the more the weakness of the Opposition is the most important factor. Starmer is more appealing personally than Corbyn, but he has failed to oppose most of the decisions the government has made during the pandemic, has flip-flopped throughout, and has a pitifully weak team. He is also tainted by his seat at Corbyn's table and his failed attempted fudge over Brexit at the last election. It was a transparent attempt to straddle two stools, but ended up falling between them. And, finally, he is appealing to middle-class professionals, but has virtually nothing to say to the North or Scotland.
OK, maybe he'll surprise me once he's got the Labour Party under control by emerging as a decisive Blair-like political genius, but I have to say the omens so far aren't very good.
(We can all come up with excuses for why the Labour Party hasn't made hay, like the difficulty of getting media coverage during a pandemic, or the need to deal with the Corbynites in the Party, or whatever, but making excuses can become a way of life).
A lot of party members are quietly dissatisfied - a recent Labour List poll (of self-selected readers, but they get a broad readership) showed a slim majority felt that way. For better or worse, though, he's playing the long game. Stage 1 is to establish himself and his team as sensible people - a work in progress, but it's getting there. Stage 2 will be to handle the ECHR report when it comes out next month. I don't expect it to attack individuals, but to be scathing about the party's handling of the issue:- a lot of people will judge him by how he responds. Nobody in the party wants a mass purge but swift acceptance and implementation of the findings without quibbles will be important.
I think those had to happen first before he offered a single piece of new policy. Stage 3 is the virtual party conference, which I suspect will focus on the virus and Brexit with the general theme of "enough incompetence", but should also produce some hints of policy direction. After that - well, there's over 3 years to develop polcy, and anything right now may look very dated in the world of 2024. I'd like to see some clear direction, but I'm prepared to wait a bit.
Fishing refers to Starmer as having a "pitifully weak team". Is this in contrast to Boris's Cabinet of all the talents? I suspect the public have a pretty low opinion of Boris's team, with the obvious exception of golden boy Rishi. I certainly wouldn't wish to swap any of Starmer's team for Williamson, Jenrick, Shapps, Sharma, Patel or others...
I would certainly rather have Sunak than Dodds or Raab than Nandy or Hancock than Ashworth or even Williamson over Rayner, though maybe Thomas-Symonds edges Patel.
Anyway - on other "difficult to explain" decisions that are quite possibly imminent - reversing the quarantine status of Portugal could be, er, interesting.
It's absolutely farcical that the quarantine situation seems to be based, as far as anyone can ascertain, to be based on country's reaching a self reported case level of 20 per 100,000 people. Quite how this level was determined, or how it takes account of the fact that it is hugely dependent on levels and targeting of testing, remains a bit of a mystery. Not to mention the still ignored issue of reported numbers often not aligning with people (eg. 4 positive tests for one person equals, er 4 reported cases). In the UK anyway - who knows about elsewhere.
Indeed. Portugal has already been put into quarantine twice and taken out twice. I've been flagging the Austrian situation, where the country was put into quarantine the same day as Portugal was released, for reasons that were flaky at the time, and have been followed by a series of relatively good statistics.
I see today's Austrian new case number is out already, at +181. Recent performance suggests Portugal's is likely to be worse.
This all stems from the inexplicable refusal simply to tell people to do without their sunshine holidays this year. If the Foreign Office advice to avoid all non-essential journeys outside of the Common Travel Area had remained in place then all of these problems would've been avoided.
Incidentally, has anybody seen Dominic Raab recently? I'm thinking perhaps he dissented from the change in travel advice, and has been spending the last couple of months tied to a chair in the basement of No.10?
Foreign holidays might not be essential but for many people they are something worse - an obsession.
For such people the focus of their life is the next foreign holiday.
So what are people's views on this new TV channel announced by Robbie Gibb to challenge the BBC. Supposedly it will broadcast facts not opinions but the fact that it refers to the BCC as woke and wet and has approached Julia Hartley Brewer and I am guessing will be funded by advertising I suspect it isn't going to do anything to the BBC but will compete with ITV instead. Also mentioning JHB in the same breath as broadcasting facts not opinions seem an oxymoron.
I've not seen this. Or are you referring to the plans for a new TV news channel? I thought the plan was to take on Sky with that?
Yes it is a new news channel, GB News, so I guess that means it isn't competing directly with ITV as I thought more likely (but that is also true for BBC as well). Brain not in gear. However it is all over the media today all with direct references to the BBC and 'woke wet BBC' is a quote from Gibb himself. I would have thought competition with Sky News was the obvious market as you say, but that is not what has been quoted. Oodles of references to BBC only. Weird.
OK brain finally cranking up to full speed. This is just a publicity stunt isn't it to get it into the media and I have just done my little bit to aid it following the BBC stupidly putting it all over their news. Hook, line and sinker.
How long before GB News has morphed into a fully fledged UK version of Fox?
"The challenge both projects face is the UK’s strict broadcast rules on due impartiality, enforced by the media regulator. One possible route around them is to follow the lead of the radio station LBC, which has achieved record audiences by realising that the rules can be interpreted to allow strongly opinionated presenters, so long as they are balanced out elsewhere in the schedule with alternative viewpoints."
(Guardian)
How long before Cummings has had the impartial rules watered down to homeopathic levels?
Mr Meeks raises an interesting question - why isn't the government doing worse in the polls. But the more I think about it, the more the weakness of the Opposition is the most important factor. Starmer is more appealing personally than Corbyn, but he has failed to oppose most of the decisions the government has made during the pandemic, has flip-flopped throughout, and has a pitifully weak team. He is also tainted by his seat at Corbyn's table and his failed attempted fudge over Brexit at the last election. It was a transparent attempt to straddle two stools, but ended up falling between them. And, finally, he is appealing to middle-class professionals, but has virtually nothing to say to the North or Scotland.
OK, maybe he'll surprise me once he's got the Labour Party under control by emerging as a decisive Blair-like political genius, but I have to say the omens so far aren't very good.
(We can all come up with excuses for why the Labour Party hasn't made hay, like the difficulty of getting media coverage during a pandemic, or the need to deal with the Corbynites in the Party, or whatever, but making excuses can become a way of life).
A lot of party members are quietly dissatisfied - a recent Labour List poll (of self-selected readers, but they get a broad readership) showed a slim majority felt that way. For better or worse, though, he's playing the long game. Stage 1 is to establish himself and his team as sensible people - a work in progress, but it's getting there. Stage 2 will be to handle the ECHR report when it comes out next month. I don't expect it to attack individuals, but to be scathing about the party's handling of the issue:- a lot of people will judge him by how he responds. Nobody in the party wants a mass purge but swift acceptance and implementation of the findings without quibbles will be important.
I think those had to happen first before he offered a single piece of new policy. Stage 3 is the virtual party conference, which I suspect will focus on the virus and Brexit with the general theme of "enough incompetence", but should also produce some hints of policy direction. After that - well, there's over 3 years to develop polcy, and anything right now may look very dated in the world of 2024. I'd like to see some clear direction, but I'm prepared to wait a bit.
Labour Lists "broad readership" had Rebecca Long-Bailey winning the leadership election, so they're definitely skewed left. If that poll was shared on one of the Corbyn outrider twitter feeds, which seem to share as much anti-Starmer stuff than Anti-Tory, then it gets skewed even further.
I agree with your analysis of what happens next though - And the leadership seem to be aware that's not getting through to all members - There have been articles in the Guardian, Labour List, New Statesman recently, all explaining why Starmer isn't coming up with new policies constantly, or calling for people to be sacked. Surely not a coincidence.
I'd add the enquiry into Labour Leaks in with the EHRC report. That's not going to please anyone involved, but I suspect there will be expulsions on both sides (although I doubt anyone will walk away quietly), and hopefully that will cut through, and people will see it's now Starmer's party.
Mr Meeks raises an interesting question - why isn't the government doing worse in the polls. But the more I think about it, the more the weakness of the Opposition is the most important factor. Starmer is more appealing personally than Corbyn, but he has failed to oppose most of the decisions the government has made during the pandemic, has flip-flopped throughout, and has a pitifully weak team. He is also tainted by his seat at Corbyn's table and his failed attempted fudge over Brexit at the last election. It was a transparent attempt to straddle two stools, but ended up falling between them. And, finally, he is appealing to middle-class professionals, but has virtually nothing to say to the North or Scotland.
OK, maybe he'll surprise me once he's got the Labour Party under control by emerging as a decisive Blair-like political genius, but I have to say the omens so far aren't very good.
(We can all come up with excuses for why the Labour Party hasn't made hay, like the difficulty of getting media coverage during a pandemic, or the need to deal with the Corbynites in the Party, or whatever, but making excuses can become a way of life).
A lot of party members are quietly dissatisfied - a recent Labour List poll (of self-selected readers, but they get a broad readership) showed a slim majority felt that way. For better or worse, though, he's playing the long game. Stage 1 is to establish himself and his team as sensible people - a work in progress, but it's getting there. Stage 2 will be to handle the ECHR report when it comes out next month. I don't expect it to attack individuals, but to be scathing about the party's handling of the issue:- a lot of people will judge him by how he responds. Nobody in the party wants a mass purge but swift acceptance and implementation of the findings without quibbles will be important.
I think those had to happen first before he offered a single piece of new policy. Stage 3 is the virtual party conference, which I suspect will focus on the virus and Brexit with the general theme of "enough incompetence", but should also produce some hints of policy direction. After that - well, there's over 3 years to develop polcy, and anything right now may look very dated in the world of 2024. I'd like to see some clear direction, but I'm prepared to wait a bit.
To be fair, Nick, Labour List polling had Rebecca Long Bailey winning the leadership! It is read mainly on the left of the party. There is no doubt that a part of the left is extremely unhappy Starmer is taking the party in directions Corbyn never would have contemplated. Whether that is equivalent to "a lot of party members" is a different thing entirely. What we do know, though, is that the last internal Momentum election managed to attract a total electorate of 8,500 people.
So what are people's views on this new TV channel announced by Robbie Gibb to challenge the BBC. Supposedly it will broadcast facts not opinions but the fact that it refers to the BCC as woke and wet and has approached Julia Hartley Brewer and I am guessing will be funded by advertising I suspect it isn't going to do anything to the BBC but will compete with ITV instead. Also mentioning JHB in the same breath as broadcasting facts not opinions seem an oxymoron.
I've not seen this. Or are you referring to the plans for a new TV news channel? I thought the plan was to take on Sky with that?
Yes it is a new news channel, GB News, so I guess that means it isn't competing directly with ITV as I thought more likely (but that is also true for BBC as well). Brain not in gear. However it is all over the media today all with direct references to the BBC and 'woke wet BBC' is a quote from Gibb himself. I would have thought competition with Sky News was the obvious market as you say, but that is not what has been quoted. Oodles of references to BBC only. Weird.
OK brain finally cranking up to full speed. This is just a publicity stunt isn't it to get it into the media and I have just done my little bit to aid it following the BBC stupidly putting it all over their news. Hook, line and sinker.
How long before GB News has morphed into a fully fledged UK version of Fox?
"The challenge both projects face is the UK’s strict broadcast rules on due impartiality, enforced by the media regulator. One possible route around them is to follow the lead of the radio station LBC, which has achieved record audiences by realising that the rules can be interpreted to allow strongly opinionated presenters, so long as they are balanced out elsewhere in the schedule with alternative viewpoints."
(Guardian)
How long before Cummings has had the impartial rules watered down to homeopathic levels?
"Thank you for that expert, informed and nuanced opinion. And now, for balance, let's hear from an ignorant blowhard."
Morning Consult from a couple of days back (I think post-Trump-speech, unlike YouGov) showing a similarly-sized TRUMP SURGE
USC Dornsife tracking poll that just got updated (7-day average) not feeling it though - they've got Biden on 53.5 which I think is their highest so far: https://election.usc.edu/
Anyway - on other "difficult to explain" decisions that are quite possibly imminent - reversing the quarantine status of Portugal could be, er, interesting.
It's absolutely farcical that the quarantine situation seems to be based, as far as anyone can ascertain, to be based on country's reaching a self reported case level of 20 per 100,000 people. Quite how this level was determined, or how it takes account of the fact that it is hugely dependent on levels and targeting of testing, remains a bit of a mystery. Not to mention the still ignored issue of reported numbers often not aligning with people (eg. 4 positive tests for one person equals, er 4 reported cases). In the UK anyway - who knows about elsewhere.
Indeed. Portugal has already been put into quarantine twice and taken out twice. I've been flagging the Austrian situation, where the country was put into quarantine the same day as Portugal was released, for reasons that were flaky at the time, and have been followed by a series of relatively good statistics.
I see today's Austrian new case number is out already, at +181. Recent performance suggests Portugal's is likely to be worse.
This all stems from the inexplicable refusal simply to tell people to do without their sunshine holidays this year. If the Foreign Office advice to avoid all non-essential journeys outside of the Common Travel Area had remained in place then all of these problems would've been avoided.
Incidentally, has anybody seen Dominic Raab recently? I'm thinking perhaps he dissented from the change in travel advice, and has been spending the last couple of months tied to a chair in the basement of No.10?
Foreign holidays might not be essential but for many people they are something worse - an obsession.
For such people the focus of their life is the next foreign holiday.
To be fair Dorset was packed when I went earlier this month and Devon and Cornwall have never had as many visitors as they had this summer so plenty are staycationing.
While France and Spain and Florida may be off this summer you can still go to Italy without quarantine, Italy has fewer new cases than we do
Morning Consult from a couple of days back (I think post-Trump-speech, unlike YouGov) showing a similarly-sized TRUMP SURGE
USC Dornsife tracking poll that just got updated (7-day average) not feeling it though - they've got Biden on 53.5 which I think is their highest so far: https://election.usc.edu/
USC is a largely old poll, covers a full 6 days and much of it pre RNC convention, as a tracking poll it will take several more days for the convention bounce to come through
Morning Consult from a couple of days back (I think post-Trump-speech, unlike YouGov) showing a similarly-sized TRUMP SURGE
USC Dornsife tracking poll that just got updated (7-day average) not feeling it though - they've got Biden on 53.5 which I think is their highest so far: https://election.usc.edu/
USC is a largely old poll, covers about 6 days and much of it pre RNC convention
On topic a scale of 1-5 for something as complex as this was never going to be much use. What the government has done instead is seek a more granular analysis focusing on "hot spots" and the tracking and tracing of people affected by particular outbreaks such as the chicken factory up the road from me at Coupar Angus (which has given us our first ICU patient in over a month).
By any sensible measure we are now edging down towards 2 with approximately 1000 new cases a day in a country of 65m despite a much more proactive testing regime than we had in the early months where it was reasonable to assume that the true number of cases was a significant multiple of the number found. This, however, would send the wrong message, which is just another illustration of the inadequacy of the scale.
Alastair is right to query the competence of those who ever thought this was a good idea. Similarly, the algorithm for education was just so stupid that the only remarkable thing is not the odd resignation but that so many remain in post.
Our Ministers have not shone in either example but those who retain a delusion that we have a world beating or even competent civil service really need to give themselves a shake. People moan about the number of senior civil servants who are being squeezed out and blame Dom because most things do seem to come back to him eventually but I would rather focus on whether we can change the ethos of the Civil Service to something actual that produces actual results, the quantitative measurement of those results and consequences for failure. Those used to being promoted despite repeated incompetence and finish with a gong and spectacular pension may not like this very much. Welcome to the real world.
The real world where Gavin Williamson is still in post, where Grayling gets repeated promotions and a humongous pension, where Ms Harding gets a Baronetcy, a seat in the legislature for life, 65K pa for 2 days work a week and another prestigious job without having to go through any application process. That real world, you mean?
Why on earth would anyone go for a senior job in the civil service knowing that Ministers will not take responsibility, that they will be ruled by fear and discarded if it is politically useful to the Minister regardless of the actual facts about who took what decisions, on what advice and whether such decisions were executed well.
By all means let’s improve civil service effectiveness. But the way Ministers are behaving: lying, blaming others, more interested in coming up with pithy phrases is not how to improve effectiveness or culture. They’re not genuinely interested in getting an effective civil service. Just one that does what it’s told without question and can be blamed when things go wrong.
An excellent summary. The impartiality of the civil service is being undermined, quite willfully, by a culture of fear. Senior civil servants with impeccable records of giving sound advice are being replaced by a combination of yes-men and women, and absurd algorithms. Meanwhile, constant policy shifts and u-turns make the dispensation of objective and timely advice increasingly difficult.
It is going to be a horrible, horrible, horrible Autumn for Johnson, and every second of it is deserved.
can he survive? Maybe the party will let him steer brexit through. Beyond that, I think its doubtful.
And suddenly Sunak's hopes look a bit dented too. Soak this rich taxes? Lol, he won;t get to be leader on the back of those.
Graham Brady is going to reap a whirlwind this week.
TBF when you read the Sunday Times article it is hugely overstated. Few are going to see harmonising capital gains tax with income tax as a massive tax hike. The way the article is written you'd think he was planning to add 5% to the rate of income tax.
One of my ambitions in life is to pay CGT. Not happened so far.
Morning Consult from a couple of days back (I think post-Trump-speech, unlike YouGov) showing a similarly-sized TRUMP SURGE
USC Dornsife tracking poll that just got updated (7-day average) not feeling it though - they've got Biden on 53.5 which I think is their highest so far: https://election.usc.edu/
USC is a largely old poll, covers about 6 days and much of it pre RNC convention
Right, so watch the changes.
Hang on, not right - the RNC was 24th to 27th, and the current USC/Dornsife should be 22nd to 29th, so not much of it is pre-RNC.
This was the one that Boris f**ked up right at the beginning, with that rambling incoherent television address so memorably lampooned by Matt Lucas, which included announcing the supposedly clear new five-stage national alert system, and then saying we were currently at level three-and-a-half.
It never got off the runway.
The new system is: watch what Scotland is doing; wait a week during which ministers can build the suspense by denying or trashing the Scottish approach; do the same.
Yes, Johnson copies Sturgeons homework then hands it in late.
The SNP would not be anywhere near as popular without the Tories as a foil. It has been the cover for a lot of other failures.
It is Johnson's malevolent incompetence, as outlined in the header, that will end the United Kingdom.
The end of Transition is set to be a trainwreck too. What else can we expect?
Yesterday’s Briefing Room on R4 is well worth a listen. It included the suggestion that a thin last minute deal might be accompanied by an “implementation period” - during which everything would stay the same as currently. As a way to extend without actually extending.
He’ll be out of the door as quickly as Theresa May was, if he tries that one.
But who would they replace him with?
Rishi (= Disraeli)?????? Traditionally the Tories love a winner. And that goes above anything else.
Looks like Rishi plans to copy Corbyns 2019 manifesto on tax. The cycle of copying Labours manifesto is accelerating.
If they ramp up IHT or lower the thresholds then I'll be surprised - in a good way. But I doubt that they will. Going after estates enrages both stickbangers and their heirs in a way almost nothing else will, and is political nuclear death (as Theresa May discovered with the dementia tax.)
The Government won't want to go after income tax, NI and VAT - too controversial, too obvious - with the caveat that they might scrap the preferential NI rate currently enjoyed by the self-employed, which is something that Sunak has hinted at in the past. They daren't touch the stickbangers, of course, so we are stuck with the wretched triple lock for the foreseeable. Hiking corporation tax at the same time as trying to get us through Brexit might be considered brave, in the Sir Humphrey sense.
Thus, the most obvious targets are tax reliefs enjoyed by the working age population. The prime candidate is a big Brown-style raid on pensions, this time normalising reliefs at the basic rate for all contributions. The FT was suggesting earlier in the year that CGT might be rounded up to a flat rate of 28% for all assets, and my husband was also speculating just yesterday that the annual contribution limit for ISAs might be cut in half.
Of course, the most radical measure would be to go all out with a wealth tax and pocket a one-off levy on all assets - savings, pensions, shares, property, the lot - which could potentially recoup the cost of all the extra borrowing taken out during the Plague. But I think it really would take a Corbyn Government to dare to try something like that!
The Sunday Times is reporting this differently - with all pensions relief given at 30% thus higher than the basic rate but lower than the higher rate thus avoiding the obvious headlines of either.
I think something like that is likely.
Some interesting ideas.
But they need to stop ignoring the elephant in the room, which is the £25bn+ spent on the main residence relief CGT loophole.
That is worth more than all the rest put together.
Careful Matt, I brought this up a few weeks ago and got absolutely minced.
CGT on primary residence would end Sunak's chances of being elected Tory leader within about five seconds.
Also replying to @contrarian who basically posted the same.
You are probably right.
Can anyone remember the impact of removing Mortgage Tax Relief which I would have thought even more dramatic.
Lawson salami sliced it and at a time of rapidly rising house prices (which the government was seeking to cool) it had minimal impact.
Anyway - on other "difficult to explain" decisions that are quite possibly imminent - reversing the quarantine status of Portugal could be, er, interesting.
It's absolutely farcical that the quarantine situation seems to be based, as far as anyone can ascertain, to be based on country's reaching a self reported case level of 20 per 100,000 people. Quite how this level was determined, or how it takes account of the fact that it is hugely dependent on levels and targeting of testing, remains a bit of a mystery. Not to mention the still ignored issue of reported numbers often not aligning with people (eg. 4 positive tests for one person equals, er 4 reported cases). In the UK anyway - who knows about elsewhere.
Indeed. Portugal has already been put into quarantine twice and taken out twice. I've been flagging the Austrian situation, where the country was put into quarantine the same day as Portugal was released, for reasons that were flaky at the time, and have been followed by a series of relatively good statistics.
I see today's Austrian new case number is out already, at +181. Recent performance suggests Portugal's is likely to be worse.
This all stems from the inexplicable refusal simply to tell people to do without their sunshine holidays this year. If the Foreign Office advice to avoid all non-essential journeys outside of the Common Travel Area had remained in place then all of these problems would've been avoided.
Incidentally, has anybody seen Dominic Raab recently? I'm thinking perhaps he dissented from the change in travel advice, and has been spending the last couple of months tied to a chair in the basement of No.10?
Foreign holidays might not be essential but for many people they are something worse - an obsession.
For such people the focus of their life is the next foreign holiday.
To be fair Dorset was packed when I went earlier this month and Devon and Cornwall have never had as many visitors as they had this summer so plenty are staycationing.
While France and Spain and Florida may be off this summer you can still go to Italy without quarantine, Italy has fewer new cases than we do
A staycation (a portmanteau of "stay" and "vacation"), or holistay (a portmanteau of "holiday" and "stay"), is a period in which an individual or family stays home and participates in leisure activities within day trip distance of their home and does not require overnight accommodation.
...
In British English the term has increasingly come to mean taking a holiday in one's own country as opposed to travelling abroad (domestic tourism).
That the meaning of staycation has morphed into taking a holiday in the UK shows how deep the obsession with foreign holidays is in this country.
This was the one that Boris f**ked up right at the beginning, with that rambling incoherent television address so memorably lampooned by Matt Lucas, which included announcing the supposedly clear new five-stage national alert system, and then saying we were currently at level three-and-a-half.
It never got off the runway.
The new system is: watch what Scotland is doing; wait a week during which ministers can build the suspense by denying or trashing the Scottish approach; do the same.
Yes, Johnson copies Sturgeons homework then hands it in late.
The SNP would not be anywhere near as popular without the Tories as a foil. It has been the cover for a lot of other failures.
It is Johnson's malevolent incompetence, as outlined in the header, that will end the United Kingdom.
The end of Transition is set to be a trainwreck too. What else can we expect?
Yesterday’s Briefing Room on R4 is well worth a listen. It included the suggestion that a thin last minute deal might be accompanied by an “implementation period” - during which everything would stay the same as currently. As a way to extend without actually extending.
He’ll be out of the door as quickly as Theresa May was, if he tries that one.
But who would they replace him with?
Rishi (= Disraeli)?????? Traditionally the Tories love a winner. And that goes above anything else.
Looks like Rishi plans to copy Corbyns 2019 manifesto on tax. The cycle of copying Labours manifesto is accelerating.
If they ramp up IHT or lower the thresholds then I'll be surprised - in a good way. But I doubt that they will. Going after estates enrages both stickbangers and their heirs in a way almost nothing else will, and is political nuclear death (as Theresa May discovered with the dementia tax.)
The Government won't want to go after income tax, NI and VAT - too controversial, too obvious - with the caveat that they might scrap the preferential NI rate currently enjoyed by the self-employed, which is something that Sunak has hinted at in the past. They daren't touch the stickbangers, of course, so we are stuck with the wretched triple lock for the foreseeable. Hiking corporation tax at the same time as trying to get us through Brexit might be considered brave, in the Sir Humphrey sense.
Thus, the most obvious targets are tax reliefs enjoyed by the working age population. The prime candidate is a big Brown-style raid on pensions, this time normalising reliefs at the basic rate for all contributions. The FT was suggesting earlier in the year that CGT might be rounded up to a flat rate of 28% for all assets, and my husband was also speculating just yesterday that the annual contribution limit for ISAs might be cut in half.
Of course, the most radical measure would be to go all out with a wealth tax and pocket a one-off levy on all assets - savings, pensions, shares, property, the lot - which could potentially recoup the cost of all the extra borrowing taken out during the Plague. But I think it really would take a Corbyn Government to dare to try something like that!
The Sunday Times is reporting this differently - with all pensions relief given at 30% thus higher than the basic rate but lower than the higher rate thus avoiding the obvious headlines of either.
I think something like that is likely.
Some interesting ideas.
But they need to stop ignoring the elephant in the room, which is the £25bn+ spent on the main residence relief CGT loophole.
That is worth more than all the rest put together.
Careful Matt, I brought this up a few weeks ago and got absolutely minced.
CGT on primary residence would end Sunak's chances of being elected Tory leader within about five seconds.
Also replying to @contrarian who basically posted the same.
You are probably right.
Can anyone remember the impact of removing Mortgage Tax Relief which I would have thought even more dramatic.
Lawson salami sliced it and at a time of rapidly rising house prices (which the government was seeking to cool) it had minimal impact.
He preannounced it which accelerated the boom and then caused a subsequent bust.
Anyway - on other "difficult to explain" decisions that are quite possibly imminent - reversing the quarantine status of Portugal could be, er, interesting.
It's absolutely farcical that the quarantine situation seems to be based, as far as anyone can ascertain, to be based on country's reaching a self reported case level of 20 per 100,000 people. Quite how this level was determined, or how it takes account of the fact that it is hugely dependent on levels and targeting of testing, remains a bit of a mystery. Not to mention the still ignored issue of reported numbers often not aligning with people (eg. 4 positive tests for one person equals, er 4 reported cases). In the UK anyway - who knows about elsewhere.
Indeed. Portugal has already been put into quarantine twice and taken out twice. I've been flagging the Austrian situation, where the country was put into quarantine the same day as Portugal was released, for reasons that were flaky at the time, and have been followed by a series of relatively good statistics.
I see today's Austrian new case number is out already, at +181. Recent performance suggests Portugal's is likely to be worse.
This all stems from the inexplicable refusal simply to tell people to do without their sunshine holidays this year. If the Foreign Office advice to avoid all non-essential journeys outside of the Common Travel Area had remained in place then all of these problems would've been avoided.
Incidentally, has anybody seen Dominic Raab recently? I'm thinking perhaps he dissented from the change in travel advice, and has been spending the last couple of months tied to a chair in the basement of No.10?
Foreign holidays might not be essential but for many people they are something worse - an obsession.
For such people the focus of their life is the next foreign holiday.
To be fair Dorset was packed when I went earlier this month and Devon and Cornwall have never had as many visitors as they had this summer so plenty are staycationing.
While France and Spain and Florida may be off this summer you can still go to Italy without quarantine, Italy has fewer new cases than we do
Indeed. I am off to Italy, overland, next week. I shall be as careful as I am at home and since my home has been full of British holidaymakers for most of the summer I don’t feel guilty about wanting a few weeks away.
The International Telegraph was my sole weekly guide to news from the UK in 90s Taiwan. (We didn't even receive World Service). It was a good read. How things change.
Morning Consult from a couple of days back (I think post-Trump-speech, unlike YouGov) showing a similarly-sized TRUMP SURGE
USC Dornsife tracking poll that just got updated (7-day average) not feeling it though - they've got Biden on 53.5 which I think is their highest so far: https://election.usc.edu/
USC is a largely old poll, covers about 6 days and much of it pre RNC convention
Right, so watch the changes.
Hang on, not right - the RNC was 24th to 27th, and the current USC/Dornsife should be 22nd to 29th, so not much of it is pre-RNC.
No absolutely right, the first polling to incorporate the RNC will not come in until 25th so that means at least 3 days of the USC poll are pre RNC effect and only 2 days will it incorporate post Trump speech.
By contrast the Yougov and Morning Consult polls are far more up to date, Yougov taken on 27th and 28th and Morning Consult on 29th
On topic a scale of 1-5 for something as complex as this was never going to be much use. What the government has done instead is seek a more granular analysis focusing on "hot spots" and the tracking and tracing of people affected by particular outbreaks such as the chicken factory up the road from me at Coupar Angus (which has given us our first ICU patient in over a month).
By any sensible measure we are now edging down towards 2 with approximately 1000 new cases a day in a country of 65m despite a much more proactive testing regime than we had in the early months where it was reasonable to assume that the true number of cases was a significant multiple of the number found. This, however, would send the wrong message, which is just another illustration of the inadequacy of the scale.
Alastair is right to query the competence of those who ever thought this was a good idea. Similarly, the algorithm for education was just so stupid that the only remarkable thing is not the odd resignation but that so many remain in post.
Our Ministers have not shone in either example but those who retain a delusion that we have a world beating or even competent civil service really need to give themselves a shake. People moan about the number of senior civil servants who are being squeezed out and blame Dom because most things do seem to come back to him eventually but I would rather focus on whether we can change the ethos of the Civil Service to something actual that produces actual results, the quantitative measurement of those results and consequences for failure. Those used to being promoted despite repeated incompetence and finish with a gong and spectacular pension may not like this very much. Welcome to the real world.
The real world where Gavin Williamson is still in post, where Grayling gets repeated promotions and a humongous pension, where Ms Harding gets a Baronetcy, a seat in the legislature for life, 65K pa for 2 days work a week and another prestigious job without having to go through any application process. That real world, you mean?
Why on earth would anyone go for a senior job in the civil service knowing that Ministers will not take responsibility, that they will be ruled by fear and discarded if it is politically useful to the Minister regardless of the actual facts about who took what decisions, on what advice and whether such decisions were executed well.
By all means let’s improve civil service effectiveness. But the way Ministers are behaving: lying, blaming others, more interested in coming up with pithy phrases is not how to improve effectiveness or culture. They’re not genuinely interested in getting an effective civil service. Just one that does what it’s told without question and can be blamed when things go wrong.
I do not seek to excuse Ministers at all in my post. The fact that Williamson was too stupid to immediately see that the algorithm proposed was idiotic and unfair with politically damaging consequences means that he is not fit for office. Obviously. But he didn't come up with that as the preferred option, he simply followed stupid advice because he is incapable of critical thought. As are his officials, apparently.
LOL, more bollox , 65B sent to London , 32B sent back , London squander an absolute fortune and pretend it was spent on Scotland and try to say they owe us 15B. Unionists will need to do a little bit better than that when it comes to the referendum.. They are either robbing lairs or could not run a bath, unlike the Scottish Government which manages to run with ZERO deficit year after year, is it any wonder 70% believe they would do a better job than London crooks.
To all those English PBers who have come round to giving the idea of Scottish indy a hearing, or at least thinking that it's a matter for people living in Scotland to decide, you have now been 'categorised' by a prominent Unionist.
On topic a scale of 1-5 for something as complex as this was never going to be much use. What the government has done instead is seek a more granular analysis focusing on "hot spots" and the tracking and tracing of people affected by particular outbreaks such as the chicken factory up the road from me at Coupar Angus (which has given us our first ICU patient in over a month).
By any sensible measure we are now edging down towards 2 with approximately 1000 new cases a day in a country of 65m despite a much more proactive testing regime than we had in the early months where it was reasonable to assume that the true number of cases was a significant multiple of the number found. This, however, would send the wrong message, which is just another illustration of the inadequacy of the scale.
Alastair is right to query the competence of those who ever thought this was a good idea. Similarly, the algorithm for education was just so stupid that the only remarkable thing is not the odd resignation but that so many remain in post.
Our Ministers have not shone in either example but those who retain a delusion that we have a world beating or even competent civil service really need to give themselves a shake. People moan about the number of senior civil servants who are being squeezed out and blame Dom because most things do seem to come back to him eventually but I would rather focus on whether we can change the ethos of the Civil Service to something actual that produces actual results, the quantitative measurement of those results and consequences for failure. Those used to being promoted despite repeated incompetence and finish with a gong and spectacular pension may not like this very much. Welcome to the real world.
The real world where Gavin Williamson is still in post, where Grayling gets repeated promotions and a humongous pension, where Ms Harding gets a Baronetcy, a seat in the legislature for life, 65K pa for 2 days work a week and another prestigious job without having to go through any application process. That real world, you mean?
Why on earth would anyone go for a senior job in the civil service knowing that Ministers will not take responsibility, that they will be ruled by fear and discarded if it is politically useful to the Minister regardless of the actual facts about who took what decisions, on what advice and whether such decisions were executed well.
By all means let’s improve civil service effectiveness. But the way Ministers are behaving: lying, blaming others, more interested in coming up with pithy phrases is not how to improve effectiveness or culture. They’re not genuinely interested in getting an effective civil service. Just one that does what it’s told without question and can be blamed when things go wrong.
I do not seek to excuse Ministers at all in my post. The fact that Williamson was too stupid to immediately see that the algorithm proposed was idiotic and unfair with politically damaging consequences means that he is not fit for office. Obviously. But he didn't come up with that as the preferred option, he simply followed stupid advice because he is incapable of critical thought. As are his officials, apparently.
It seems that nobody involved in any of the four countries thought that grades should be reduced by no more than one level.
Anyway - on other "difficult to explain" decisions that are quite possibly imminent - reversing the quarantine status of Portugal could be, er, interesting.
It's absolutely farcical that the quarantine situation seems to be based, as far as anyone can ascertain, to be based on country's reaching a self reported case level of 20 per 100,000 people. Quite how this level was determined, or how it takes account of the fact that it is hugely dependent on levels and targeting of testing, remains a bit of a mystery. Not to mention the still ignored issue of reported numbers often not aligning with people (eg. 4 positive tests for one person equals, er 4 reported cases). In the UK anyway - who knows about elsewhere.
Indeed. Portugal has already been put into quarantine twice and taken out twice. I've been flagging the Austrian situation, where the country was put into quarantine the same day as Portugal was released, for reasons that were flaky at the time, and have been followed by a series of relatively good statistics.
I see today's Austrian new case number is out already, at +181. Recent performance suggests Portugal's is likely to be worse.
This all stems from the inexplicable refusal simply to tell people to do without their sunshine holidays this year. If the Foreign Office advice to avoid all non-essential journeys outside of the Common Travel Area had remained in place then all of these problems would've been avoided.
Incidentally, has anybody seen Dominic Raab recently? I'm thinking perhaps he dissented from the change in travel advice, and has been spending the last couple of months tied to a chair in the basement of No.10?
Foreign holidays might not be essential but for many people they are something worse - an obsession.
For such people the focus of their life is the next foreign holiday.
On topic a scale of 1-5 for something as complex as this was never going to be much use. What the government has done instead is seek a more granular analysis focusing on "hot spots" and the tracking and tracing of people affected by particular outbreaks such as the chicken factory up the road from me at Coupar Angus (which has given us our first ICU patient in over a month).
By any sensible measure we are now edging down towards 2 with approximately 1000 new cases a day in a country of 65m despite a much more proactive testing regime than we had in the early months where it was reasonable to assume that the true number of cases was a significant multiple of the number found. This, however, would send the wrong message, which is just another illustration of the inadequacy of the scale.
Alastair is right to query the competence of those who ever thought this was a good idea. Similarly, the algorithm for education was just so stupid that the only remarkable thing is not the odd resignation but that so many remain in post.
Our Ministers have not shone in either example but those who retain a delusion that we have a world beating or even competent civil service really need to give themselves a shake. People moan about the number of senior civil servants who are being squeezed out and blame Dom because most things do seem to come back to him eventually but I would rather focus on whether we can change the ethos of the Civil Service to something actual that produces actual results, the quantitative measurement of those results and consequences for failure. Those used to being promoted despite repeated incompetence and finish with a gong and spectacular pension may not like this very much. Welcome to the real world.
The real world where Gavin Williamson is still in post, where Grayling gets repeated promotions and a humongous pension, where Ms Harding gets a Baronetcy, a seat in the legislature for life, 65K pa for 2 days work a week and another prestigious job without having to go through any application process. That real world, you mean?
Why on earth would anyone go for a senior job in the civil service knowing that Ministers will not take responsibility, that they will be ruled by fear and discarded if it is politically useful to the Minister regardless of the actual facts about who took what decisions, on what advice and whether such decisions were executed well.
By all means let’s improve civil service effectiveness. But the way Ministers are behaving: lying, blaming others, more interested in coming up with pithy phrases is not how to improve effectiveness or culture. They’re not genuinely interested in getting an effective civil service. Just one that does what it’s told without question and can be blamed when things go wrong.
I do not seek to excuse Ministers at all in my post. The fact that Williamson was too stupid to immediately see that the algorithm proposed was idiotic and unfair with politically damaging consequences means that he is not fit for office. Obviously. But he didn't come up with that as the preferred option, he simply followed stupid advice because he is incapable of critical thought. As are his officials, apparently.
The art of being a good politician as far as dealing with your officials is concerned is mostly about asking the right questions. Williamson asked for an algorithm that only had one job, and in that it succeeded.
To all those English PBers who have come round to giving the idea of Scottish indy a hearing, or at least thinking that it's a matter for people living in Scotland to decide, you have now been 'categorised' by a prominent Unionist.
There's about 400,000 people in care homes, all of them having already got most out of life of what they are going to get. A million 18 year olds is an infinitely bigger deal.
My son is going to Hull Uni in 2 weeks time, and the reams of information we've already received suggests the Uni's planning is comprehensive and well thought through. Grady's scaremongering has not done much for his already heightened anxiety about leaving home for the first time.
On topic a scale of 1-5 for something as complex as this was never going to be much use. What the government has done instead is seek a more granular analysis focusing on "hot spots" and the tracking and tracing of people affected by particular outbreaks such as the chicken factory up the road from me at Coupar Angus (which has given us our first ICU patient in over a month).
By any sensible measure we are now edging down towards 2 with approximately 1000 new cases a day in a country of 65m despite a much more proactive testing regime than we had in the early months where it was reasonable to assume that the true number of cases was a significant multiple of the number found. This, however, would send the wrong message, which is just another illustration of the inadequacy of the scale.
Alastair is right to query the competence of those who ever thought this was a good idea. Similarly, the algorithm for education was just so stupid that the only remarkable thing is not the odd resignation but that so many remain in post.
Our Ministers have not shone in either example but those who retain a delusion that we have a world beating or even competent civil service really need to give themselves a shake. People moan about the number of senior civil servants who are being squeezed out and blame Dom because most things do seem to come back to him eventually but I would rather focus on whether we can change the ethos of the Civil Service to something actual that produces actual results, the quantitative measurement of those results and consequences for failure. Those used to being promoted despite repeated incompetence and finish with a gong and spectacular pension may not like this very much. Welcome to the real world.
The real world where Gavin Williamson is still in post, where Grayling gets repeated promotions and a humongous pension, where Ms Harding gets a Baronetcy, a seat in the legislature for life, 65K pa for 2 days work a week and another prestigious job without having to go through any application process. That real world, you mean?
Why on earth would anyone go for a senior job in the civil service knowing that Ministers will not take responsibility, that they will be ruled by fear and discarded if it is politically useful to the Minister regardless of the actual facts about who took what decisions, on what advice and whether such decisions were executed well.
By all means let’s improve civil service effectiveness. But the way Ministers are behaving: lying, blaming others, more interested in coming up with pithy phrases is not how to improve effectiveness or culture. They’re not genuinely interested in getting an effective civil service. Just one that does what it’s told without question and can be blamed when things go wrong.
An excellent summary. The impartiality of the civil service is being undermined, quite willfully, by a culture of fear. Senior civil servants with impeccable records of giving sound advice are being replaced by a combination of yes-men and women, and absurd algorithms. Meanwhile, constant policy shifts and u-turns make the dispensation of objective and timely advice increasingly difficult.
Where on earth are these senior civil servants "with impeccable records of giving sound advice"? Maybe that fool in the Home Office who is suing Patel because she was allegedly not very nice to him? Or the ones who seem to start preparing for obvious consequences of the Brexit negotiations about 10 minutes before they come into effect? Or the ones whose bizarre method of collating deaths from Covid gave such a distorted picture and fought tooth and nail to keep it?
Let's face it this government is not exactly overloaded with competence. It needs to be helped but more often than not it seems to be hindered.
There's about 400,000 people in care homes, all of them having already got most out of life of what they are going to get. A million 18 year olds is an infinitely bigger deal.
And yet if they don't already have any major health issues the risk is minimal to themselves.
Comments
On the morning after an Opinium poll which had the Tories down 4% on GE19 and Labour up 8% it also seems rather dated already anyway
I do feel sorry for Gove, some of whose instincts are in the right place but he is just awfully bad at politics. For instance, he is the only senior politician to have been felled by drugs, even in a leadership contest where all his rivals admitted to some indulgence or other, and where two of the last three Prime Ministers have been content with non-denial denials and where a former Chancellor was photographed in close proximity to a powder that *checks notes* "might have been icing sugar".
At education he managed to start from a position of support from teachers, for reforms whose aims might even be regarded as left-wing, to alienating the whole profession.
Sorry Michael.
It just occurred to me, if secondary schools are going to ban contact sports, or quite possibly all PE, because Covid, then that will leave PE teachers with a lot of time on their hands. Could we not equip them with sniper rifles and train them to shoot any parents who get too close to the gates? That might solve the problem.
The Liberals never fell under 10% again until 2015, since when the Tories and Labour both got at least 40% in 2017 and seem to be at 40% each on the latest poll.
Unless there is a LD revival that will likely remain the case
I’m not sure if all schools have shooting ranges...
How much of a guide to a 2024 election that will be I have no idea, but expect to to be little. Growing up in the eighties I was used to large Labour leads in the polls most of the time.
https://twitter.com/ukinpoland/status/1299723519383736321?s=20
1The pre-Dom Civil Service model is barely up to the job of running a modern complex state.
2 The pre-Dom Civil Service does pretty well under the circumstances.
3 Dom's Vision is likely to make things far worse.
It is also a myth Labour had large leads through most of the 80s, apart from 1980 and 1981 and 1989 and 1990 when Labour did have large leads, Thatcher's Tories led or were at most tied with Labour most of the time
I think those had to happen first before he offered a single piece of new policy. Stage 3 is the virtual party conference, which I suspect will focus on the virus and Brexit with the general theme of "enough incompetence", but should also produce some hints of policy direction. After that - well, there's over 3 years to develop polcy, and anything right now may look very dated in the world of 2024. I'd like to see some clear direction, but I'm prepared to wait a bit.
https://twitter.com/notcapnamerica/status/1294768057055948811
Why on earth would anyone go for a senior job in the civil service knowing that Ministers will not take responsibility, that they will be ruled by fear and discarded if it is politically useful to the Minister regardless of the actual facts about who took what decisions, on what advice and whether such decisions were executed well.
By all means let’s improve civil service effectiveness. But the way Ministers are behaving: lying, blaming others, more interested in coming up with pithy phrases is not how to improve effectiveness or culture. They’re not genuinely interested in getting an effective civil service. Just one that does what it’s told without question and can be blamed when things go wrong.
https://twitter.com/Janiete/status/1300005660831211521
"Leave won the referendum. No backsliding we're leaving. I'll make sure of that."
It had a Hard Brexit feel to it but did not promise Hard Brexit. And her deal (imo) was Soft Brexit. Which I still expect to happen now - defining that as close alignment with LPF largely accepted.
https://twitter.com/UKGovScotland/status/1299741349030359043?s=20
https://twitter.com/UKGovScotland/status/1300013642872569857?s=20
For such people the focus of their life is the next foreign holiday.
Don't follow Dan, sorry...
(Guardian)
How long before Cummings has had the impartial rules watered down to homeopathic levels?
Now what are the hospitalisation comparisons ?
I agree with your analysis of what happens next though - And the leadership seem to be aware that's not getting through to all members - There have been articles in the Guardian, Labour List, New Statesman recently, all explaining why Starmer isn't coming up with new policies constantly, or calling for people to be sacked. Surely not a coincidence.
I'd add the enquiry into Labour Leaks in with the EHRC report. That's not going to please anyone involved, but I suspect there will be expulsions on both sides (although I doubt anyone will walk away quietly), and hopefully that will cut through, and people will see it's now Starmer's party.
And now, for balance, let's hear from an ignorant blowhard."
USC Dornsife tracking poll that just got updated (7-day average) not feeling it though - they've got Biden on 53.5 which I think is their highest so far:
https://election.usc.edu/
But it's a good poll for Trump because the last YouGov was 9 pts.
While France and Spain and Florida may be off this summer you can still go to Italy without quarantine, Italy has fewer new cases than we do
Just don't let the kids come home.
https://twitter.com/gavinesler/status/1299769016890916864
https://www.quora.com/Is-Britain-the-most-advanced-country-in-Europe/answer/Garcia-Calavera?ch=10&share=3cce3836&srid=OOpa
He does come over like that.
https://twitter.com/RupertMyers/status/1300010972711710720?s=20
Back then the lecturers were in their 30s, 40s and 50s.
Back then the parents of students were in their 40s and 50s.
Perhaps you'd like to see what the fatality rate among those age groups are.
...
In British English the term has increasingly come to mean taking a holiday in one's own country as opposed to travelling abroad (domestic tourism).
That the meaning of staycation has morphed into taking a holiday in the UK shows how deep the obsession with foreign holidays is in this country.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1300019849540886528?s=20
https://twitter.com/ReutersUK/status/1300019216616230912?s=20
It was a good read.
How things change.
By contrast the Yougov and Morning Consult polls are far more up to date, Yougov taken on 27th and 28th and Morning Consult on 29th
Unionists will need to do a little bit better than that when it comes to the referendum.. They are either robbing lairs or could not run a bath, unlike the Scottish Government which manages to run with ZERO deficit year after year, is it any wonder 70% believe they would do a better job than London crooks.
I await Agent Pish being deployed.
https://twitter.com/colken16/status/1300007175323029504?s=20
Can’t see it ending well for anyone though.
Let's face it this government is not exactly overloaded with competence. It needs to be helped but more often than not it seems to be hindered.