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After a quick & successful vaccine rollout, this is the second most thing I want to see in 2021 – po
After a quick & successful vaccine rollout, this is the second most thing I want to see in 2021 – politicalbetting.com
Dominic Cummings is ready to testify that Boris rejected his advice to lock down, says Robert Peston https://t.co/pWCZ0S2TWY
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That’s not a joke, just a statement of fact.
One of these processes likely causes a civil war among the nationalists, the other likely causes them to band together behind their leader.
IF this story is true, then I would agree, there are serious questions for Sunak and the PM to answer.
Blaming the advisers for poor decisions is standard fare. Since Cummings left, the PR has improved.
However, the decision making hasn't. On/off Christmas and schools for two.
when at university (psychology) one of the most interesting snippets of info I learned was of a study in the late 80s or early 90s. Homophobes opposed increased gay rights (marriage, next of kin status, adoption rights etc). But, when told gay people didn't want those rights, homophobes approved of them.
It wasn't about the rights, it was about being seen to disagree with 'the gays'.
If disagreeing with the arch-imbecile means agreeing with his erstwhile Grand Vizier, I suspect those ideologically opposed to the Conservatives (or possibly just the PM individually) will be content to do so.
Edited extra bit: relevant*, even.
We do actually have a test case of implementing a two-week firebreak, in Wales. It achieved the square root of nothing.
On the other hand, should house prices collapse...
The Union once lost cannot be restored, you can win another general election however
Then you get people like me, who think he's bit of a shit, who thinks he can wing it, so don't really get worked up about the revelation that he's a bit of a shit who thinks he can wing it.
Is it just me, or was it a very deliberate use of Clint Eastwood's voice of The Man With No Name by Mando?
Point of order, the SCons lost charismatic leader is currently leader in Holyrood to not much effect. The 'Why does Nicola Sturgeon hate Arbroath Smokies?' moment was good though.
The ultimate measure will be "Did we vaccinate at least as quick as other countries?" If so, then by the time of the next election, no great political price. "Did we vaccinate markedly quicker than other countries? " Big political prize.....
But as usual you think you know better.
No-one knows how the next couple of years will pan out. The SNP could indeed descend into civil war over tactics. They may not. Indy support could rise or fall. Others may think Scotland can declare UDI, take no debt or deficit and find life outside the union is amazingly simple. All opinions.
What would be nice is if people could have an argument without it descending into mud slinging on here.
What is more likely to be damaging is if Cummings confirms publicly the incompetence, dysfunctionality and bluster at the heart of government.
These were difficult decisions seeking to balance a death toll against economic damage. Anyone who pretends otherwise or suggests that the government could go to one extreme or the other really isn't worth listening to and won't be listened to by the vast majority.
Do you foresee a natural bouncing back for Labour, if only due to SNP fatigue (and not counting on black swans like independence followed by SNP fragmentation or suchlike)?
Deep down, everyone knows that Boris wings it and deeper down, that's no way to run a country.
At some point, something trivial is going to make Boris's hard brittle support shatter.
The fact is, this is his third chance to get ahead of the Covid game, and he's fluffed it in exactly the same way he did in March and September. If twice begins to look like carelessness, what is three times?
(And then there's the What If that would give me nightmares. Had there been half as much Covid in circulation in SE England in the autumn, there would have been half the chance that a random spike in a random virus had mutated. Sleep well, Boris. Sleep well, Rishi.)
https://twitter.com/AngusMacNeilSNP/status/1301600379520659456
I mean - England vs Scotland - who cares?
Put that against the Coronation Stakes and there's only one winner.
In any case wavering Unionists would only switch from SNP to Labour, barely any of them would ever consider voting Tory, only diehard Unionists in Scotland vote Conservative
On topic, there are 4 nations in the UK following somewhat different strategies.
I think Boris/Rishi would be in serious trouble if England suffered demonstrably worse in the pandemic than Scotland, or Wales or N. Ireland.
It is not obvious to me at the moment that such is the case.
All 4 countries seem to have performed much the same (within margin of error). And all 4 seem to be pretty typical of performance generally in Western Europe.
Of course Wendy Alexander (remember her? About 10 SLAB leaders back, one loses count) actually argued for the UK Gmt imposing a referendum. She got the sack (can't remember whether it was mostly from her own SLAB colleagues or her bosses in London, but I don't suppose Mr Alexander D. wanted to lose his chance to play with the London train set).
If you grant an independence referendum where at best there is only a 50% chance of No winning that is far more of a threat to the Union however than respecting the once in a generation 2014 vote and refusing to grant one at all until that generation has elapsed
Oh, and HYUFD could be right for all I know.
I would not like it either but that would be a possible outcome we could not ignore
Trouble is, the cast of characters includes a number of accomplished liars.
But getting political buy in for a lockdown in September, when cases were few, would have been very difficult.
Simpler and more effective, would probably have been proper quarantines for incoming travellers. Which - somehow - is never on the government agenda, despite the fact that almost who has successfully controlled CV19 has them.
We are not yet even at the first ‘if’, we are a long way to go before we get close to Spain - and continual mention of “Scotland is like Spain” sends more votes to the nationalists at the upcoming election.
Anyway, I'm sure his testimony could clear all that up. Though how unfortunate it is that so many people devoted so much time and energy to annihilating Cummings' credibility on the subject of lockdowns...
There is a massive, massive weekend effect doing on - zero cases for days in some jurisdictions. So Tuesday and Wednesday will be massive next week in Reporting Day numbers
That’s really astonishing.
Today
Yesterday
Doing a Dom has now become standard lingo for breaking the rules in some way or other.
We shouldn't forget Thatcher, Cameron and May all resigned while in office rather than via a General Election while Major survived a challenge in office and lost at a GE so statistically Johnson is more likely to be "jabbed" by his own backbenchers than by the voters.
I expect there will be a Covid weariness or ennui by the time we get to any public enquiry. There's a clear desire to forget the whole thing happened and concentrate on the future so any attempt to rake over the coals of decisions past will get short shrift from the public - that'll be the hope of those supportive of the Government.
I suspect the political manifestation will be a "refresh" of the Government in the autumn (just before the Conservative Party Conference) with a raft of "new faces" promoted to give the Government a new look - I'm sure there will be plenty of discussion as to which "bright young things" need to move up the ladder. My early hat tip is Julia Lopez.
That being said, the path of accountability and scrutiny is going to be a rocky one. Simply saying "we've done better than country x or y" isn't what it's about - we aren't responsible for whatever measures France, Italy or Bolivia or wherever decided to impose. Decisions on closing or not closing the borders and actions taken with regard to care homes are two areas where I think the Government has explanations to provide, evidence to produce and questions to answer - that's wholly reasonable.
As the header suggests, it sounds as though similar questions will need to be asked about decisions made in July, August and September.
I think if you look at performance by country (in W Europe, excluding Sweden), then number of infections and deaths are highly correlated with two factors:
1) Number of single person households - those with many, like Norway or Denmark, have done best
and
2) Number of intergenerational households - those with many, like Italy and Spain, have done worst
It's not as if we go on about Spanish fly, Spanish omelettes, sauce espagnole, Harriers in the [modern] Armada, etc.
There is definitely a deficit of Spain-ness here. Apart from those of us who live there, and have interesting comments on it.
From case data
From hospital data
Captain Hindsight, Foresight, or statement of the bleeding obvious?
One small bellwether is the ex MP for my constituency 2017-19, Paul Sweeney. He's standing as a list candidate for Glasgow in the May election (not sure how high on that list he is for SLab, that will have some bearing) . Obviously personal rep has a lot less meaning in list elections but if he's elected it might be a sign of tiny shoots of recovery for SLab. Personally I find him a self-publicising, ambitious wee snot, but he's not stupid and these characteristics often seem to work for aspiring pols of all parties.
He was involved in the stushie about the SCon MP Ross Thomson being accused of assault which now appears to be without foundation; that may depress any tactical voting by Cons if they're paying attention.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/former-labour-mp-lodges-appeal-23153724
It’s worth remembering that I was pessimistic about the chances of getting schools through to Christmas without formal closures. OK, so at various times 25% of children were off, and for a rough guess around half had to isolate at one time or another, but I was wrong. We did just about get to Christmas.
With hindsight, that was deeply unfortunate as if we had closed on the 9th this variant would likely be a lot less widespread and we wouldn’t now be wondering exactly when schools were going to reopen.
Similarly, with hindsight we should have acted faster in September. But speaking as one of the government’s fiercest critics, it was an understandable misjudgement and it was if anything to their credit that they didn’t want to jump straight to the authoritarian and economically damaging option.
And incidentally, if Cummings had been in favour of a lockdown that would have prejudiced me against it as well given his judgement is truly shocking.