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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Winter is coming: the reckoning
Time was when Conservative governments stood for law and order; they didn’t wantonly break law themselves. Time was when Conservative governments stood for the Union; they didn’t sign up to first sell out Ulster unionists and then U-turn and enrage nationalists (which is at least even-handed). Time was when Conservative governments valued a stable economy, sound money and a low deficit. Time was when Conservative governments were pro-business and anti-red tape. Time was when Conservative governments simply aimed to deliver competent government, could state what their objectives were and explain to the public how their policies would deliver on them and why any initial pain was temporary, necessary and would ultimately be worthwhile. That time is not now.
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After a week in which the government has promised to break the law while dramatically limiting the nation’s freedom by statute, it’s a fair question.
Downing Street has found itself fighting its backbenchers on two fronts, Brexit and Covid, in recent days. Even Boris Johnson’s efforts to rally Conservative MPs on a Zoom call last night flirted with farce after a break in the signal that left them staring into the void.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/tories-beg-for-answers-as-boris-johnson-s-zoom-rally-turns-farcical-8b6dqrzcm
15 months feels like a very long time in politics ATM. Johnson 5/2 to go in 2021 looks a better bet to me.
https://lobsteranywhere.com/holidays-celebrations/national-lobster-day/
This is obv extremely silly, but so is the point being made about it. It is a 10 minute procedure.
This is the correct response even when the laughing takes longer than the stupid thing.
The fact that they do this stupid thing every year doesn't make it less stupid, quite the opposite.
Also to be more optimistic about the outlook:
1) We mostly know how to handle the rona nowadays, it's just a question of how far you're prepared to turn various dials, and even if the government just sits there fiddling with itself people mostly turn the dials spontaneously as the risk increases, because they don't want to die.
2) The moonshot idea doesn't strike me as obviously bonkers, and if it works the people involved will look very good. It costs lot of money, but most of it is probably only paid if it's actually going ahead and producing tests, and if it's going ahead and producing tests then it's also saving an ungodly amount of money by solving the virus problem.
3) I don't think a deal is obviously off; The EU's whole thing is to cut deals to defuse crises or postpone them until they go away of their own accord and they do this even when they find the situation quite exasperating. The only reason to think there won't be one is because the British Prime Minister is acting like a total and utter fucking maniac, but acting like a total and utter fucking maniac seemed to be the technique he used last time to prepare his fellow maniacs for a deal. And if we're describing a situation where the PM wrecks the country and loses his job, that seems like the kind of thing the PM would want to avoid.
https://www.gazettenet.com/Maine-s-lobster-catch-value-grew-last-year-officials-say-23855439
I am guessing that someone in Maine thinks that moving Lobster Day each year benefits the industry enough to be worth the effort, and his senator thinks so too. Seems reasonable to me. Lobster fishing is incredibly hard, dangerous and poorly paid work btw, this is not - I would imagine - a move purely for the benefit of the fatcats at Big Lobster.
He doesn't see it as am impediment to future success
Maybe they were just trying to claim this chaos had been the plan all along, and falling for that human tendency to claim to be on the inside even when you’re not? Or, if true, there is more to this story than simply Johnson not doing his homework?
There is some evidence that some MPs believed or were told that the WA could be changed later and voted for it on that basis without really understanding what it said and its implications. Utterly cynical and contemptuous of voters.
But that does not help matters now.
I see very few grounds for optimism.
Of course we then know that the HYUFDian wing of the party will then start to blame the voters for being workshy or feckless or all the usual bollocks. In the old days that was Labour voters they were besmirching. Now its Tory voters.
But it’s not nearly as stark as the article.
Is there a market on what percentage of the first hundred thousand calls will be asking when Cummings and Jenrick are to be prosecuted?
I don't think there was ever any intention to honour it. I cannot see the point in announcing it now though, it could have been done after the Trade talks finished.
I think that forcing the EU to apply customs on a land border was the plan all along, and the WDA was just a way to postpone No Deal for a year, and more importantly an election. An explicit No Deal policy in Autumn 2019 would have been unlikely to have resulted in a Tory majority, and quite possibly would have been the end of Brexit too.
The WDA achieved what it was intended to, to get a Tory majority, and can be discarded now. Johnson never thinks of the consequences of his seducing, and Cummings cares nothing for the Conservative party. He just wants 4 years of revolutionary power so that he can smash as many British institutions as he can. He wants Humpty Dumpty to have a great fall.
F1: no tip but some brief discussion of how the circuit and tyres are looking which might be of interest:
https://enormo-haddock.blogspot.com/2020/09/tuscany-pre-qualifying-2020.html
I 'agree' with what they have posted, but I don't 'like' the prospects they envisage for me and most* of mine.
* Some of 'mine' have left the UK so may well be better off than those who are staying here.
The puzzling thing to me is the government’s messaging. It’s all wrong. You might convince even me that the current wave of authoritarianism is ok if you are defining a near term end date with high probability.
Instead they talk about spending £100bn a year on testing as though the crisis is here forever. They speak only vaguely in highly caveated terms about a vaccine. They keep everyone in a state of constant fear about the “second wave”. An emotive and ill defined term that has entered our lexicon so suddenly that almost no one stops to think what it actually means.
The government have to get better at spelling out the temporary nature of this event, that without doubt we’ve already passed through the abyss and the brighter tomorrow is right around the corner.
Boris Johnson might not have died in that hospital room but the optimistic libertarian in him surely did.
As for the No Deal Brexit, it’s hard to see through the layers of bluff on both sides to see what’s really happening. Either way at this moment it looks less likely than evens he’ll fight the next election.
LOL. That I have 'Liked'!
If you add to that a no-deal Brexit in January, the resulting disruption and job losses, and the end of the furlough scheme, you have the ingredients for a financial and economic crisis.
There is a good chance that people will blame the government for all this.
If he needed someone to say "time to go, love", who would it be?
For many leading Brexiters, and many of the big Tory donors the WHOLE POINT of Brexit is scrapping things like environmental regulations, workers' rights, anything that gets in the way of making a fast buck in the most destructive way. Johnson is absolutely with these guys.
And so with Cummings’ record in government. He seems to suffer from a sort of inverse dysmorphia. Instead of looking in the mirror and seeing the reality of the latest clusterfuck staring back, he sees a Steve Jobs or a Warren Buffett, or even a guy who remembers that the label is meant to go on the inside of his pants. As recently as January, Cummings was claiming there are “trillion dollar bills lying on the street” if you just knew how to run government properly. Has he found one yet? I bet you a trillion dollars he never does.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/11/tories-trick-cock-up-dominic-cummings
I think that this is what the government is aiming for.
If we then have empty shelves/big price rises from January accompanied by headlines that this is linked to “NO Deal” then they are going to wonder what the f*ck is going on. Amongst all the background noise they will have gathered that the Government ITSELF (ie. NOT the EU) broke the law to effectively collapse the WA (/deal). And admitted that they broke the law. For something abstract about Northern Ireland.
In this situation it’s going to be quite difficult for the Government to blame what’s happening on anything other than themselves.
The Tory MPs will be judged on pork belly results - create jobs and make things look better and they will be re-elected. Fail and they will be voted out.
But no one is getting out the violins for Johnson and more.
And don't all political leaders, or certainly most of them, treat other people as disposable?
Johnson's utterings in his fanzine today are a dangerous fiction. To play fast and loose with Northern Ireland politics is either malign or stupid. Johnson's behaviour through the pandemic suggests he is probably both. An expensive education does not guarantee common sense.
I would avoid the character trait comparison with Hitler, but it seems we have our very own Idi Amin in the making. So not even a world beating totalitarian, more the pound shop version.
And yes, politicians- successful ones, anyway- tend to run on ambition. But pure untempered ambition is BoJo's USP.
The other half is that he wants to be loved but people eventually tire of him.
- That Johnson is a lazy, dissembling buffoon, not remotely acquainted with the details, let alone on top of them.
- That the EU has "weaponised" Ulster as a way of controlling the UK by "making stuff up" about the Belfast Agreement and "protecting the integrity of the single market" of a border which accounts for ±0.2% of the EU's trade in goods (and would rapidly become obvious if this were to increase markedly).
It's a mystery why Remainer Brandon Lewis used such incendiary language in the HoC......
I'm not that convinced personally, I agree with David we are in a bad place, but I don't buy this wonderful Tory party of 'yore stuff. Boris to me seems very in keeping with a strand of Conservative tradition.
Your commonal garden bully is less smooth and deceptive.
Political leaders in my experience are generally not as you describe. Well the successful ones aren’t.
https://twitter.com/EmmaLBentley/status/1304676706574315520
We can pretty easily work out what has happened.
You can already see how he is fingering the Red Wall morons and getting them wet for it with phrases straight out of the Putin script like "foreign powers".
The extreme Brexit elements would not be happy with the consequential influence of ECJ over UK trade, but you're not going to build an election winning anti-EU coalition on the back of plans to not rejoin the EU.
"We had a deal, we ditched it ("for Northern Ireland"*)". What's that you say? Brexit WASN'T sorted on February 1st last year?
(*also their claim that they had to break the law to protect the GFA won't look good if Northern Ireland explodes as a result...)
"I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times."
I`m no Boris fan but I`d never write something like that.
It will be "why have you torpedoed our Brexit where is the economic boost we expected why are the supermarkets empty". Combined with their new Tory MP saying that due to the sharp downturn in the economy they have regrettably just voted through a cut in local services but its really Labour's fault somehow.
Classic emperor’s new clothes.
LDs who show remorse for tuition fees but not that vote have their sense of priorities completely the wrong way around.
The way they are going about it seems pretty bonkers to me. Granted there’s very little detail available about the plan, but the ludicrous cost is one piece.
This is another:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/11/uk-health-screening-advisers-not-involved-in-moonshot-covid-plan-mass-testing-coronavirus
I'm an optimistic libertarian as well but I don't see the point in spinning a cheerful message about how the end to the virus is just around the corner when nobody has the faintest idea how long it's going to take to get an end to the virus. People need to make plans for what's actually going to happen, and what's actually going to happen won't necessarily be what we want to happen.
Nor has he learnt that there are consequences from lying as he has previously always managed to do well out of the fall out.