Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
Britons will be slaves, it seems.
I’ve been amazed at the collective reflex to defer to authority figures over the last year. I was always under the impression that the British cultural norm was instinctive distrust of authority. I can only assume it’s because they’ve put up on stage a doctor and a “scientist”, for whom the normal rules go out the window.
Nonsense. People think lockdown is the right way to go, so they go with it. Like driving on the left. Am I deferring to authority figures, failing to show enough distrust for authority etc when I stop at red lights, put a seatbelt on and so on? This "look at the sheeple" stuff aims for sophistication and actually sounds like Rik Mayall in the Young Ones.
Of course it’s been deferring to authority. We STILL have not received anything resembling a cost benefit analysis of the measures taken, either individually or in totality.
Cyclefree has repeatedly pointed out some of the contradictions and absurdities in the measures. And we should not forget that as many as 40% of the country ended up catching this virus inside one year anyway. So it is very reasonable to ask whether it was necessary or effective to do x,y and z, without trite comparisons to wearing a seatbelt, for which there is excellent supporting evidence by the way.
The EU are 2 months behind us, possibly slightly more but then their takeup levels will be lower. So if they don't fully open up until the end of the summer and have a daily death rate 5, maybe 10 times higher than the UK I don't think anyone will be looking across the Channel and easily forgetting the UK's success.
Vaccine rates or not....the UK still has an unenviable mortality rate compared to many of our European friends....
The big European nations look like theyll all be in the same ballpark - UK, Spain, Italy, France, Poland, with only Germany's stats appreciably better. Eastern Europe will look much worse and the rest of the smaller ones look variable with some worse some better.
I doubt there will be agreement long term on most appropriate measure to look at, excess deaths etc, and other factors will be relevant, but mortality rate is not one I think European leaders will do well by seeking comparisons with one another.
It seems that Johnson's approval ratings have been impacted by the sleaze allegations, however this has not changed the headline voting figures.
Therefore, it seems to me that Labour is not doing enough on the other side for people to switch. They need to get some policies into place and also change up their top team.
A good post. The Government is riding high on a well-oiled vaccination programme, the pubs open, and free money (4th stage SSEI grants are being paid as we speak).
Not so much the wallpaper, but I did think the "bodies piled high" allegation would shift opinion. On that score Cummings' fox is shot...unless he has a recording.
"Pubs open" - a reality check is needed.
Some pubs are open: those with beer gardens. The vast majority will still be making a loss or, at best, breaking even. That is unsustainable.
What they and restaurants and other hospitality businesses need are the end of social distancing inside or the requirement for mandatory table service or the rule of 6 etc and the ability for people to stand at the bar, as normal. Then they can start earning and making profits.
Will these requirements be lifted? It is unclear. But until they are we are not back to normal and these businesses will not be back to normal and will - without support - be unviable.
There is an unfairness in how they are being treated. If it is ok to go to a shop it is absurd that one cannot go inside a cafe. If it is ok to be packed together in the tube then it is a nonsense to stop people standing together chatting in a pub.
I am suspicious - as is Daughter - of what the government's real intentions are and what will actually happen. She and her customers are desperate to get back to normal. Until she sees the actual rules she does not believe in this "we are getting back to normal" shtick. And she is right to be suspicious. The government is not to be trusted. It has too often said one thing and done another.
If mandatory social distancing regulations for pubs etc are abolished on 21/6, a return to normal not a "new normal" then will you and your daughter be happy with that?
I think it should be sooner, but I'm begrudgingly OK so long as it happens by then. No later, no ifs, no buts.
What needs to go is social distancing and mandatory table service. If that happens she will be happy and can do business again. She has already booked a very popular local band to come in September and December.
What she does not want is the sort of restrictions there were before the last lockdown which meant that she had all the costs without the customers. She opened last December but it was largely a waste of time, apart from a few days. If the government imposes similar restrictions again, then the business is pointless and she will just give it up.
I hope this won't happen. But when I hear people like Van Tam saying that it is perfectly safe for people who have been vaccinated to meet each other indoors but they shouldn't "because we say so" I wonder what sort of country we are becoming and whether the government really will give up the micro-managing control it seems to love.
I agree with all that.
I want the same thing as you, all the nannying, all the social distancing, all the regulations need to go. Hopefully they do all go and your daughter can have a bumper summer. 👍
I have no idea why Van Tam receives plaudits. He’s unable to give a single presser with some inane half baked metaphor about cricket or trains rather than talking clearly and articulately about the scientific detail. And his statement this week on “don’t meet up indoors even when vaccinated just because” was scary.
The reason we are not allowing fully vaccinated folk to get together inside etc is purely to satisfy the British sense of fair play. It is not based on science. I've not seen any polling on it, but I suspect it is being widely flouted anyway (including by me).
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
Britons will be slaves, it seems.
I’ve been amazed at the collective reflex to defer to authority figures over the last year. I was always under the impression that the British cultural norm was instinctive distrust of authority. I can only assume it’s because they’ve put up on stage a doctor and a “scientist”, for whom the normal rules go out the window.
Nonsense. People think lockdown is the right way to go, so they go with it. Like driving on the left. Am I deferring to authority figures, failing to show enough distrust for authority etc when I stop at red lights, put a seatbelt on and so on? This "look at the sheeple" stuff aims for sophistication and actually sounds like Rik Mayall in the Young Ones.
Is it in normal times a human right to drive a car?
Tory sleaze is not cutting through. Ordinary people are much more interested in other issues. We live in a democracy, and we need to know who is bunging money to the Prime Minister for his curtains. All these things are true.
It's interesting how much overlap there is on my timeline between the Lockdown Deniers and the "no-one cares about who paid for Boris's curtains!!!" brigade. Imagine if it turns out the curtains were paid for by the manufacturer of a Covid Passport app...
The EU are 2 months behind us, possibly slightly more but then their takeup levels will be lower. So if they don't fully open up until the end of the summer and have a daily death rate 5, maybe 10 times higher than the UK I don't think anyone will be looking across the Channel and easily forgetting the UK's success.
Vaccine rates or not....the UK still has an unenviable mortality rate compared to many of our European friends....
Far too high of course, but our death rate will probably end up close to the European average and yet our economy and freedoms will be recovered much quicker.
I really hope you are right..... but that is a massive `probably`.
Mr. Ace, does any major UK party advocate England leaving the UK?
English nationalism isn’t English separatism. The Tory party isn’t an exclusive English nationalist party, but it has become a very comfortable home for them.
There are parallels with Yugoslavia here, as one of my Serbian colleagues keeps reminding me. No, not that anyone in England is planning ethnic cleansing or civil war. But that we have a similar ambiguous attitude to nationality as the Serbs who were comfortable as "Yugoslavia" on the basis they were the dominant partner, but increasingly came to identify as Serbian even while attempting to stop other component parts seceding.
The Yugo parallels are interesting if you put aside the obvious differences in levels of wealth, development and intercommunal hatred. Croatia seems akin to Scotland - a coherent ethnic-national unit that was able to create a new identify fairly easily and embraced EU membership but still suffers from the economic dislocation of the breakup. Wales is more like Montenegro, economically dependent and unsure of its future role. Northern Ireland is quite clearly the Bosnia, riven with communal tensions that are virtually impossible to resolve. We don't have a Slovenia (rich, international, financially better off outside the club) unless you count London.
Anyway, its Friday morning so lets set a nice test of legal and moral right and wrong.
It is only right that an individual should be able to choose which laws apply to them. It is only right that when a complaint is made and an investigation carried out to determine if that individual has broken the strict professional code that directs their behaviour, that the accused is able to discard the findings against them and carry on in role.
Its only fair. Lawyers get to dismiss professional misconduct convictions. Doctors. Bent Coppers. People who steal from work. So it is an outrage for people to think there is something wrong with the Prime Minister being able to simply dismiss the professional misconduct findings that are presented to him about his behaviour.
The Prime Minister should be subject to the same courts as the rest of us. If he receives a criminal conviction at a court of law then of course he should resign.
Anonymous people claiming on social media that he has done something wrong is not a court of law.
I was thinking about this last night.
Does anyone know the financial year in which this work was done? I wonder if the reluctance to reveal who repaid the loan was that it was a bridging loan - ie Boris claimed 2 years worth of the refurbishment allowance (£60k) and used the loan to bridge the gap.
I’ve no idea if that would be in the rules (strikes me as a bit of a grey area) or if it happened but it’s a possibility he might not want to put out there as it is certainly a but cute
Yes that will probably be the next rationalisation tried: bringing forward next year's allowance. It seems to be within the rules to roll allowances forward and this is just the obverse. Give it another six months for Boris and CCHQ to make the required declarations and Bob's your uncle.
Except it does not answer Keir Starmer's question: who initially paid?
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
Britons will be slaves, it seems.
I’ve been amazed at the collective reflex to defer to authority figures over the last year. I was always under the impression that the British cultural norm was instinctive distrust of authority. I can only assume it’s because they’ve put up on stage a doctor and a “scientist”, for whom the normal rules go out the window.
Nonsense. People think lockdown is the right way to go, so they go with it. Like driving on the left. Am I deferring to authority figures, failing to show enough distrust for authority etc when I stop at red lights, put a seatbelt on and so on? This "look at the sheeple" stuff aims for sophistication and actually sounds like Rik Mayall in the Young Ones.
Of course it’s been deferring to authority. We STILL have not received anything resembling a cost benefit analysis of the measures taken, either individually or in totality.
Cyclefree has repeatedly pointed out some of the contradictions and absurdities in the measures. And we should not forget that as many as 40% of the country ended up catching this virus inside one year anyway. So it is very reasonable to ask whether it was necessary or effective to do x,y and z, without trite comparisons to wearing a seatbelt, for which there is excellent supporting evidence by the way.
Operator of the UK’s biggest fishing vessel, currently in dock in Hull, suggests it may have done its last catch, and that all cod will have to be imported now, after failure to secure deals (apart from Svalbard) in waters fished routinely last year https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1387835064554336263
I think the fishing industry can be added alongside the DUP on Boris's list of Brexit expendables. It was helpful to use it for some tub-thumping electioneering, of course, but such is its negligible contribution to the economy it could always be ditched once the political objectives were secured.
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
Britons will be slaves, it seems.
I’ve been amazed at the collective reflex to defer to authority figures over the last year. I was always under the impression that the British cultural norm was instinctive distrust of authority. I can only assume it’s because they’ve put up on stage a doctor and a “scientist”, for whom the normal rules go out the window.
Nonsense. People think lockdown is the right way to go, so they go with it. Like driving on the left. Am I deferring to authority figures, failing to show enough distrust for authority etc when I stop at red lights, put a seatbelt on and so on? This "look at the sheeple" stuff aims for sophistication and actually sounds like Rik Mayall in the Young Ones.
Of course it’s been deferring to authority. We STILL have not received anything resembling a cost benefit analysis of the measures taken, either individually or in totality.
Cyclefree has repeatedly pointed out some of the contradictions and absurdities in the measures. And we should not forget that as many as 40% of the country ended up catching this virus inside one year anyway. So it is very reasonable to ask whether it was necessary or effective to do x,y and z, without trite comparisons to wearing a seatbelt, for which there is excellent supporting evidence by the way.
Operator of the UK’s biggest fishing vessel, currently in dock in Hull, suggests it may have done its last catch, and that all cod will have to be imported now, after failure to secure deals (apart from Svalbard) in waters fished routinely last year https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1387835064554336263
I think the fishing industry can be added alongside the DUP on Boris's list of Brexit expendables. It was helpful to use it for some tub-thumping electioneering, of course, but such is its negligible contribution to the economy it could always be ditched once the political objectives were secured.
I'm sure you, Scott n Paste etc must approve of that considering you were all saying last year how insignificant the fishing industry is to the UK economy. 😂
Fisheries do seem to have been used to bog down Barnier, allowing the UK to secure wins on the big picture issues.
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
Britons will be slaves, it seems.
I’ve been amazed at the collective reflex to defer to authority figures over the last year. I was always under the impression that the British cultural norm was instinctive distrust of authority. I can only assume it’s because they’ve put up on stage a doctor and a “scientist”, for whom the normal rules go out the window.
Nonsense. People think lockdown is the right way to go, so they go with it. Like driving on the left. Am I deferring to authority figures, failing to show enough distrust for authority etc when I stop at red lights, put a seatbelt on and so on? This "look at the sheeple" stuff aims for sophistication and actually sounds like Rik Mayall in the Young Ones.
Is it in normal times a human right to drive a car?
Not sure of the relevance, but no. Perhaps it should be, but in practice only if you're licensed, insured, sober and complying with a million and 1 laws, codes etc.
Operator of the UK’s biggest fishing vessel, currently in dock in Hull, suggests it may have done its last catch, and that all cod will have to be imported now, after failure to secure deals (apart from Svalbard) in waters fished routinely last year https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1387835064554336263
I think the fishing industry can be added alongside the DUP on Boris's list of Brexit expendables. It was helpful to use it for some tub-thumping electioneering, of course, but such is its negligible contribution to the economy it could always be ditched once the political objectives were secured.
I'm sure you, Scott n Paste etc must approve of that considering you were all saying last year how insignificant the fishing industry is to the UK economy. 😂
Fisheries do seem to have been used to bog down Barnier, allowing the UK to secure wins on the big picture issues.
France and the EU not doing too badly.....that'll have Max and Leon crying into their cornflakes
There is a curious strand that thinks people in the UK will be upset that the EU vaccination programme has improved. I see no evidence for that.
Yes, their programme having been slower than ours has been sharply focused upon, it emphasises our good roll out and the European Commission, Macron and the German government leaking were early on quite blatantly trying to turn their dispute with AZ into a dispute with the UK and that rankled.
But the EU having sped up is great news for everyone. Of course once they got supplies and resolved bureaucratic issues they could go very fast indeed, and that's fantastic.
It doesnt mean their vaccine programme failings which will extend the pandemic for them by several months do not exist, just as our earlier vaccine rollout does not mean our own big pandemic failings do not exist.
As has been made clear theoretically any EU nation could have sought supplies outside or not through the shared programme. Whatever positives in supposed fairness exists that has had a negative result of delay and they need to learn lessons, all places have their own lessons to learn.
That doesnt mean people want the situation to be bad.
I think real anger is justified by:
1 - The transparent diversion tactics. 2 - The trashing of a vaccine, creating hesitation in the wider world outside Europe. That will cause people to die.
The EU have revealed themselves to be absolute arseholes on this matter.
But there is still a decent chunk of people looking to use EU failure to justify Brexit (in the absence of sunny uplands). They will be disappointed to see Europe “open up” a month or so after us.
Not in the slightest. Nobody wants to see the EU's population die unnecessarily and it's in the UKs interests to see the virus eliminated there. Plus people will want it to be safe to have holidays etc
But the vaccine difference does justify Brexit. It is proof of concept that shows that taking back control allows the UK to act in a way that suits the UK. It shows that we can hold our decision makers to account now.
We’ll just have to disagree on that.
Malta and Hungary show that an independent vaccine policy was totally available to us.
You've missed the point. Healthcare was never an EU responsibility. Of course we could have had our own vaccine policy in the EU.
But many issues are EU responsibilities. The point here is that having control domestically, rather than control in Brussels, allows better and more accountable decision making.
Do you think there is a magical reason why having domestic control over vaccine decision making allows better and more accountable decision making - but having domestic control over all the other decisions that used to be made in Brussels can't be the same?
This is primary school stuff.
But yes, in order to achieve collective benefits (such as the single market) there is a practical reason to share some powers with other nations.
It’s case by case, although I recognise you don’t “do” nuance.
Actually I do, I have never disputed that. I used to back Remain, I have never claimed leaving the Single Market is cost-free, nor have I claimed there will be no damage to some businesses from Brexit.
But and this is primary school stuff, its about balance. There are two sides to the balance scale not one. I recognise both sides of the balance scale, I recognise both the benefits from Brexit and the cost - you seem determined to see one side of the balance scale alone.
Unless you're prepared to recognise both sides of the balance scale, unless you can do nuance, then you can't judge this properly.
There are costs to Brexit, there are benefits to Brexit, and the responsible thing to do is to balance them against each other. Do you disagree with that?
There are precious few benefits to Brexit that I am aware of.
We have increased our fishing quotas. Perhaps, as someone mentioned upthread, we are more aware of our own puissance.
Well there we go, you're the one blinded to the balance.
The UK has taken back control over swathes of areas that used to be decided by Brussels. Whole areas now controlled by UK governments answerable to a UK Parliament that we elect and we can kick out if they do a bad job.
Just as the UK was better able to do a good job with vaccines (which I acknowledge were a UK competence so we could have done even within the EU), why do you think that lesson can't apply to all the other areas that used to be Brussels competences and are now UK ones?
But i didn’t say that. I said it was “case by case”.
You take several paragraphs to mischaracterise my argument, it’s very dull.
What you said that I was replying to was this:
There are precious few benefits to Brexit that I am aware of.
We have increased our fishing quotas. Perhaps, as someone mentioned upthread, we are more aware of our own puissance.
So do you accept taking back control of our laws as a benefit of Brexit, when it comes to looking at the balance of pros and cons?
No, because “taking back control of our laws” is an both questionable (we had some control, just not the control you wanted) and open-ended (“our laws”).
I see the Corbynites are already laying the groundwork for a leadership challenge.
Diane Abbott - “Tories increase lead over Labour”If this is true it is very worrying".
I would imagine the Labour left will be readying themselves to seieze the narrative if next Friday proves to be a disappointing day for Starmer. If they want to oust a bland steady Eddy leader it's hard to think of many windows of opportunity except straight after an election.
Mr. Ace, does any major UK party advocate England leaving the UK?
English nationalism isn’t English separatism. The Tory party isn’t an exclusive English nationalist party, but it has become a very comfortable home for them.
There are parallels with Yugoslavia here, as one of my Serbian colleagues keeps reminding me. No, not that anyone in England is planning ethnic cleansing or civil war. But that we have a similar ambiguous attitude to nationality as the Serbs who were comfortable as "Yugoslavia" on the basis they were the dominant partner, but increasingly came to identify as Serbian even while attempting to stop other component parts seceding.
The Yugo parallels are interesting if you put aside the obvious differences in levels of wealth, development and intercommunal hatred. Croatia seems akin to Scotland - a coherent ethnic-national unit that was able to create a new identify fairly easily and embraced EU membership but still suffers from the economic dislocation of the breakup. Wales is more like Montenegro, economically dependent and unsure of its future role. Northern Ireland is quite clearly the Bosnia, riven with communal tensions that are virtually impossible to resolve. We don't have a Slovenia (rich, international, financially better off outside the club) unless you count London.
We're nothing whatsoever like Yugoslavia. Canada 30 years ago is a much better analogy.
Tory sleaze is not cutting through. Ordinary people are much more interested in other issues. We live in a democracy, and we need to know who is bunging money to the Prime Minister for his curtains. All these things are true.
It's interesting how much overlap there is on my timeline between the Lockdown Deniers and the "no-one cares about who paid for Boris's curtains!!!" brigade. Imagine if it turns out the curtains were paid for by the manufacturer of a Covid Passport app...
I don't know that there is as much overlap in general as he thinks from his timeline between lockdown deniers and the no one cares people. The former group is small, the latter unfortunately pretty large. So I think hes engaging in the classic linking of one thing we like to another thing we dont like to suggest they are the same, trick.
I see the Corbynites are already laying the groundwork for a leadership challenge.
Diane Abbott - “Tories increase lead over Labour”If this is true it is very worrying".
I would imagine the Labour left will be readying themselves to seieze the narrative if next Friday proves to be a disappointing day for Starmer. If they want to oust a bland steady Eddy leader it's hard to think of many windows of opportunity except straight after an election.
Well I've given up — my membership has lapsed — so I personally wont be participating in any future leadership election.
Operator of the UK’s biggest fishing vessel, currently in dock in Hull, suggests it may have done its last catch, and that all cod will have to be imported now, after failure to secure deals (apart from Svalbard) in waters fished routinely last year https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1387835064554336263
I think the fishing industry can be added alongside the DUP on Boris's list of Brexit expendables. It was helpful to use it for some tub-thumping electioneering, of course, but such is its negligible contribution to the economy it could always be ditched once the political objectives were secured.
I'm sure you, Scott n Paste etc must approve of that considering you were all saying last year how insignificant the fishing industry is to the UK economy. 😂
Fisheries do seem to have been used to bog down Barnier, allowing the UK to secure wins on the big picture issues.
what `wins'....? I cannot see many at the moment.
The UK with the TCA can maintain mostly free trade with Europe, tariff and quota free, while having its own truly independent trade policy.
LPF, tariffs, quotas and governance were all big wins for the UK in the TCA.
Except it does not answer Keir Starmer's question: who initially paid?
And why is BoZo so terrified of revealing it?
How bad can it be?
As I postulated in the last thread, I think Boris has accidentally landed himself in a technical offence, tied up with red tape, and with no clear way out. Every exit so far – charity, trust, donor, party – has sprung a leak and Boris fears he might be holed below the waterline.
Mr. Ace, does any major UK party advocate England leaving the UK?
English nationalism isn’t English separatism. The Tory party isn’t an exclusive English nationalist party, but it has become a very comfortable home for them.
There are parallels with Yugoslavia here, as one of my Serbian colleagues keeps reminding me. No, not that anyone in England is planning ethnic cleansing or civil war. But that we have a similar ambiguous attitude to nationality as the Serbs who were comfortable as "Yugoslavia" on the basis they were the dominant partner, but increasingly came to identify as Serbian even while attempting to stop other component parts seceding.
The Yugo parallels are interesting if you put aside the obvious differences in levels of wealth, development and intercommunal hatred. Croatia seems akin to Scotland - a coherent ethnic-national unit that was able to create a new identify fairly easily and embraced EU membership but still suffers from the economic dislocation of the breakup. Wales is more like Montenegro, economically dependent and unsure of its future role. Northern Ireland is quite clearly the Bosnia, riven with communal tensions that are virtually impossible to resolve. We don't have a Slovenia (rich, international, financially better off outside the club) unless you count London.
Brilliant post.
Of course, Yugoslavia was held together by a dominant ideology (Communism), and repressive internal governance.
Our version of Communism (Empire) petered out in the 50s and 60s.
Mr. Ace, does any major UK party advocate England leaving the UK?
English nationalism isn’t English separatism. The Tory party isn’t an exclusive English nationalist party, but it has become a very comfortable home for them.
There are parallels with Yugoslavia here, as one of my Serbian colleagues keeps reminding me. No, not that anyone in England is planning ethnic cleansing or civil war. But that we have a similar ambiguous attitude to nationality as the Serbs who were comfortable as "Yugoslavia" on the basis they were the dominant partner, but increasingly came to identify as Serbian even while attempting to stop other component parts seceding.
The Yugo parallels are interesting if you put aside the obvious differences in levels of wealth, development and intercommunal hatred. Croatia seems akin to Scotland - a coherent ethnic-national unit that was able to create a new identify fairly easily and embraced EU membership but still suffers from the economic dislocation of the breakup. Wales is more like Montenegro, economically dependent and unsure of its future role. Northern Ireland is quite clearly the Bosnia, riven with communal tensions that are virtually impossible to resolve. We don't have a Slovenia (rich, international, financially better off outside the club) unless you count London.
We're nothing whatsoever like Yugoslavia. Canada 30 years ago is a much better analogy.
There is no equivalent distinction in Canada as English vs British which is the point of the comparison, unless you count "anglophone Canadian" as being the equivalent of English. Canada also doesn't have a province with remotely the history of sectarian and religious violence as Northern Ireland.
As I postulated in the last thread, I think Boris has accidentally landed himself in a technical offence, tied up with red tape, and with no clear way out. Every exit so far – charity, trust, donor, party – has sprung a leak and Boris fears he might be holed below the waterline.
The fanbois have posted the clear way out.
BoZo presides over the investigation, which clears BoZo of any wrongdoing.
France and the EU not doing too badly.....that'll have Max and Leon crying into their cornflakes
There is a curious strand that thinks people in the UK will be upset that the EU vaccination programme has improved. I see no evidence for that.
Yes, their programme having been slower than ours has been sharply focused upon, it emphasises our good roll out and the European Commission, Macron and the German government leaking were early on quite blatantly trying to turn their dispute with AZ into a dispute with the UK and that rankled.
But the EU having sped up is great news for everyone. Of course once they got supplies and resolved bureaucratic issues they could go very fast indeed, and that's fantastic.
It doesnt mean their vaccine programme failings which will extend the pandemic for them by several months do not exist, just as our earlier vaccine rollout does not mean our own big pandemic failings do not exist.
As has been made clear theoretically any EU nation could have sought supplies outside or not through the shared programme. Whatever positives in supposed fairness exists that has had a negative result of delay and they need to learn lessons, all places have their own lessons to learn.
That doesnt mean people want the situation to be bad.
I think real anger is justified by:
1 - The transparent diversion tactics. 2 - The trashing of a vaccine, creating hesitation in the wider world outside Europe. That will cause people to die.
The EU have revealed themselves to be absolute arseholes on this matter.
But there is still a decent chunk of people looking to use EU failure to justify Brexit (in the absence of sunny uplands). They will be disappointed to see Europe “open up” a month or so after us.
Not in the slightest. Nobody wants to see the EU's population die unnecessarily and it's in the UKs interests to see the virus eliminated there. Plus people will want it to be safe to have holidays etc
But the vaccine difference does justify Brexit. It is proof of concept that shows that taking back control allows the UK to act in a way that suits the UK. It shows that we can hold our decision makers to account now.
We’ll just have to disagree on that.
Malta and Hungary show that an independent vaccine policy was totally available to us.
You've missed the point. Healthcare was never an EU responsibility. Of course we could have had our own vaccine policy in the EU.
But many issues are EU responsibilities. The point here is that having control domestically, rather than control in Brussels, allows better and more accountable decision making.
Do you think there is a magical reason why having domestic control over vaccine decision making allows better and more accountable decision making - but having domestic control over all the other decisions that used to be made in Brussels can't be the same?
This is primary school stuff.
But yes, in order to achieve collective benefits (such as the single market) there is a practical reason to share some powers with other nations.
It’s case by case, although I recognise you don’t “do” nuance.
Actually I do, I have never disputed that. I used to back Remain, I have never claimed leaving the Single Market is cost-free, nor have I claimed there will be no damage to some businesses from Brexit.
But and this is primary school stuff, its about balance. There are two sides to the balance scale not one. I recognise both sides of the balance scale, I recognise both the benefits from Brexit and the cost - you seem determined to see one side of the balance scale alone.
Unless you're prepared to recognise both sides of the balance scale, unless you can do nuance, then you can't judge this properly.
There are costs to Brexit, there are benefits to Brexit, and the responsible thing to do is to balance them against each other. Do you disagree with that?
There are precious few benefits to Brexit that I am aware of.
We have increased our fishing quotas. Perhaps, as someone mentioned upthread, we are more aware of our own puissance.
Well there we go, you're the one blinded to the balance.
The UK has taken back control over swathes of areas that used to be decided by Brussels. Whole areas now controlled by UK governments answerable to a UK Parliament that we elect and we can kick out if they do a bad job.
Just as the UK was better able to do a good job with vaccines (which I acknowledge were a UK competence so we could have done even within the EU), why do you think that lesson can't apply to all the other areas that used to be Brussels competences and are now UK ones?
But i didn’t say that. I said it was “case by case”.
You take several paragraphs to mischaracterise my argument, it’s very dull.
What you said that I was replying to was this:
There are precious few benefits to Brexit that I am aware of.
We have increased our fishing quotas. Perhaps, as someone mentioned upthread, we are more aware of our own puissance.
So do you accept taking back control of our laws as a benefit of Brexit, when it comes to looking at the balance of pros and cons?
No, because “taking back control of our laws” is an both questionable (we had some control, just not the control you wanted) and open-ended (“our laws”).
Well then you're failing to see the nuance and balance.
We have more control over more laws than we did. That its open-ended is not a criticism its the very point, the EU had control over vast swathes of the laws.
Now its perfectly fine and legitimate for you to say that paying the price of handing control of those laws to Europe was worth the return on getting the benefits of Single Market membership. It is perfectly fine for you to argue that the benefits from regaining control of the laws is not worth the price of leaving the Market. That's balance.
It is entirely unbalanced for you to deny there were any benefits whatsoever to regaining control of the laws.
Alistair's Occasional Guide to Scotland for PB Scotch Experts
Part 72 - Differential Turnout
PB Scotch experts love misunderstanding Swing in Scotland. After the 2016 and 2017 election the idea of of SNP-to-Con switchers got embedded in the board psyche. With a couple of notable exception this didn't happen.
What happened was differential turnout. Let's use a really, really clear example, the absolute mouthful that is Perthshire South and Kinross-shire
In 2011 the results were SNP 51.49% Con 28.53% Lab 12.75% LD 7.23%
In 2016 the results were SNP 42.4% (-9.1) Con 38.4% (+9.9) Lab 9.4% (-3.3) LD 8.3% (+1.1)
OMG the SNP fall is almost the same as the Conservative rise IT MUST BE SNP TO CON SWITCHERS!!!!!1!!!one!
2011 SNP Votes: 16,073 2016 SNP Votes: 15,315 (-758)
2011 Con Votes: 8,907 2016 Con Votes:13,893 (+4,986)
So unless 758 voters got counted six and a half times when they switched from SNP to Conservative I don't think SNP to Con switchers is the answer here. A slightly more likely explanation is that the 4933 extra voters who voted in 2016 over 2011 were mostly Conservatives with the additional of some Lab tactical Unionist voting.
This is why turnoutis so vitally important in Scotland. If you do a plot of SNP Constituency vote percentage vs Constituency turnout form 2015 onwards the trend is the lower the constituency turnout the higher the SNP votes share.
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
Britons will be slaves, it seems.
I’ve been amazed at the collective reflex to defer to authority figures over the last year. I was always under the impression that the British cultural norm was instinctive distrust of authority. I can only assume it’s because they’ve put up on stage a doctor and a “scientist”, for whom the normal rules go out the window.
Nonsense. People think lockdown is the right way to go, so they go with it. Like driving on the left. Am I deferring to authority figures, failing to show enough distrust for authority etc when I stop at red lights, put a seatbelt on and so on? This "look at the sheeple" stuff aims for sophistication and actually sounds like Rik Mayall in the Young Ones.
Is it in normal times a human right to drive a car?
Not sure of the relevance, but no. Perhaps it should be, but in practice only if you're licensed, insured, sober and complying with a million and 1 laws, codes etc.
The government took away our human rights - that of freedom of assembly.
Which is granted an exemption when there is a public health emergency. But as I keep saying, at every stage such actions should be robustly and vigorously questioned. They were all waved through.
Alistair's Occasional Guide to Scotland for PB Scotch Experts
Part 72 - Differential Turnout
PB Scotch experts love misunderstanding Swing in Scotland. After the 2016 and 2017 election the idea of of SNP-to-Con switchers got embedded in the board psyche. With a couple of notable exception this didn't happen.
What happened was differential turnout. Let's use a really, really clear example, the absolute mouthful that is Perthshire South and Kinross-shire
In 2011 the results were SNP 51.49% Con 28.53% Lab 12.75% LD 7.23%
In 2016 the results were SNP 42.4% (-9.1) Con 38.4% (+9.9) Lab 9.4% (-3.3) LD 8.3% (+1.1)
OMG the SNP fall is almost the same as the Conservative rise IT MUST BE SNP TO CON SWITCHERS!!!!!1!!!one!
2011 SNP Votes: 16,073 2016 SNP Votes: 15,315 (-758)
2011 Con Votes: 8,907 2016 Con Votes:13,893 (+4,986)
So unless 758 voters got counted six and a half times when they switched from SNP to Conservative I don't think SNP to Con switchers is the answer here. A slightly more likely explanation is that the 4933 extra voters who voted in 2016 over 2011 were mostly Conservatives with the additional of some Lab tactical Unionist voting.
This is why turnoutis so vitally important in Scotland. If you do a plot of SNP Constituency vote percentage vs Constituency turnout form 2015 onwards the trend is the lower the constituency turnout the higher the SNP votes share.
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
It's because most believed them to be necessary, having seen some of the horrors elsewhere.
We're already seeing crumbling of the concensus on here and I'm seeing it anecdotally in friends and family. As the threat recedes, acceptance of the restrictions will too. It would be crazy if that was not the case.
Is it surprising that restrictions have been accepted so far? Maybe. It would be astonishing to me if restrictions were accepted after June, unless there are unforeseen events (some new super-variant that renders vaccines largley ineffective and a third wave). I'm part of the shadowy cabal (scientists, epidemiologists in particular) that apparently wants to take away peoples freedoms forever, but extend the restrictions beyond 21 June without good reason and I'll be joining you on the barricades.
It reminds me of the famous "we've established what you are, we're just haggling over price" quote.
Once people have willingly accepted, welcomed even, those restrictions they are likely not going to be put back in the box and one person's "red line" is another's "that sounds perfectly fine".
To use the most obvious example on here, @contrarian had a red line way, way, way over there <== while, say, @SandyRentool and @FrancisUrquhart I believe (apols if not) have a red line over there ==>
Everyone has a red line but that line is on the continuum of a restriction of liberties. OK what about seatbelts you say. And it is a good question. But there has not been copious legislation about the freedom to drive or be in a car. There has been for freedom of assembly, etc.
Yes, of course there's a continuum of opinions. There are some things that I stopped doing while still legal (we stopped seeing my in-laws before the first lockdown as they were in a vulnerable group) and some things that vexed me a bit due to being illegal (cancelled holiday last summer, in a cottage miles from anywhere with my household only - really zero risk from us going, we'd have seen no one, but I accepted that the rules - if there are rules - have to be universal).
The question is, should things have been illegal or simply just guidance? Most people are fairly pragmatic and - as there was support for many of the restrictions, were not against that being in law (I know that's the 'they came for the Jews but as I was not a Jew I did nothing' argument). I can see the philosophical point about whether these things should be in law or not. However, there's a practical point too in that making things illegal does give people cover to not do them under peer pressure (as also for seatbelts, motorcycle helmets). While I like the Swedish approach in many ways, I suspect passing the law, breaking the law being undetectable in most cases, is still useful for compliance. However, I wouldn't want to see the law enforced in all but the most egregious cases (does that make me a hypocrite? maybe so). I was apalled by Derbyshire police harassing walkers who were going out miles away from anyone. Or indeed stops of cars on the roads.
I do however think the circumstances are/were exceptional and don't think a precendent has been set. If there's another major pandemic then we may see similar laws. But I don't see where this is going to creep into other areas of life, because it simply won't be accepted. Masks this winter for flu? I don't see the government getting away with it or wanting to risk unpopularity by trying. How do I know? Because it crossed my red line, which is much closer to Sandy and Francis's than Contrarian's. To remain popular, the government has to 'win' against Covid and that means things going back to normal. Continued restrictions is not victory, it's failure and the government will not be rewarded for failure.
In short: we can disagree on whether legal restrictions were right or wrong (and there is no right answer, I think). But I don't believe this set of legal restrictions changes the future other than in another pandemic of similar or greater severity.
via @BMGResearch, 22 - 26 Apr Chgs. w/ 19 Mar No other figures available. Tables not yet published.
A lot closer than many others.
But Labour going the wrong way. Voters aren't flocking to them after the wallpapergate roll out.
Was anyone expecting them to?
Plenty of people seemed to on social media platforms.
Did they though? It's one thing to criticise or mock the government but that doesn't mean that they expect the situation to affect voting intention.
I've personally said on here previously that while I believe the allegations to be serious and that people *should* care, I didn't actually expect the public as a whole to care one bit.
Tory sleaze is not cutting through. Ordinary people are much more interested in other issues. We live in a democracy, and we need to know who is bunging money to the Prime Minister for his curtains. All these things are true.
It's interesting how much overlap there is on my timeline between the Lockdown Deniers and the "no-one cares about who paid for Boris's curtains!!!" brigade. Imagine if it turns out the curtains were paid for by the manufacturer of a Covid Passport app...
I don't know that there is as much overlap in general as he thinks from his timeline between lockdown deniers and the no one cares people. The former group is small, the latter unfortunately pretty large. So I think hes engaging in the classic linking of one thing we like to another thing we dont like to suggest they are the same, trick.
Yes and no. There does seem to be a correlation between Brexit, alt-right issues in general and lockdown scepticism. Of course, most who supported Brexit or voted Conservative are not ranting about face nappies, but there is a cluster of people who do hold all these apparently unconnected views, and probably those are the ones Hodges sees.
Mr. Ace, does any major UK party advocate England leaving the UK?
English nationalism isn’t English separatism. The Tory party isn’t an exclusive English nationalist party, but it has become a very comfortable home for them.
There are parallels with Yugoslavia here, as one of my Serbian colleagues keeps reminding me. No, not that anyone in England is planning ethnic cleansing or civil war. But that we have a similar ambiguous attitude to nationality as the Serbs who were comfortable as "Yugoslavia" on the basis they were the dominant partner, but increasingly came to identify as Serbian even while attempting to stop other component parts seceding.
The Yugo parallels are interesting if you put aside the obvious differences in levels of wealth, development and intercommunal hatred. Croatia seems akin to Scotland - a coherent ethnic-national unit that was able to create a new identify fairly easily and embraced EU membership but still suffers from the economic dislocation of the breakup. Wales is more like Montenegro, economically dependent and unsure of its future role. Northern Ireland is quite clearly the Bosnia, riven with communal tensions that are virtually impossible to resolve. We don't have a Slovenia (rich, international, financially better off outside the club) unless you count London.
We're nothing whatsoever like Yugoslavia. Canada 30 years ago is a much better analogy.
There is no equivalent distinction in Canada as English vs British which is the point of the comparison, unless you count "anglophone Canadian" as being the equivalent of English. Canada also doesn't have a province with remotely the history of sectarian and religious violence as Northern Ireland.
I'll give you the latter fortunately, the former is exactly right - Anglos are dominant in Canada, to the chargin of the chippy Quebecois (Scots).
Alistair's Occasional Guide to Scotland for PB Scotch Experts
Part 72 - Differential Turnout
PB Scotch experts love misunderstanding Swing in Scotland. After the 2016 and 2017 election the idea of of SNP-to-Con switchers got embedded in the board psyche. With a couple of notable exception this didn't happen.
What happened was differential turnout. Let's use a really, really clear example, the absolute mouthful that is Perthshire South and Kinross-shire
In 2011 the results were SNP 51.49% Con 28.53% Lab 12.75% LD 7.23%
In 2016 the results were SNP 42.4% (-9.1) Con 38.4% (+9.9) Lab 9.4% (-3.3) LD 8.3% (+1.1)
OMG the SNP fall is almost the same as the Conservative rise IT MUST BE SNP TO CON SWITCHERS!!!!!1!!!one!
2011 SNP Votes: 16,073 2016 SNP Votes: 15,315 (-758)
2011 Con Votes: 8,907 2016 Con Votes:13,893 (+4,986)
So unless 758 voters got counted six and a half times when they switched from SNP to Conservative I don't think SNP to Con switchers is the answer here. A slightly more likely explanation is that the 4933 extra voters who voted in 2016 over 2011 were mostly Conservatives with the additional of some Lab tactical Unionist voting.
This is why turnoutis so vitally important in Scotland. If you do a plot of SNP Constituency vote percentage vs Constituency turnout form 2015 onwards the trend is the lower the constituency turnout the higher the SNP votes share.
Except it does not answer Keir Starmer's question: who initially paid?
And why is BoZo so terrified of revealing it?
How bad can it be?
As I postulated in the last thread, I think Boris has accidentally landed himself in a technical offence, tied up with red tape, and with no clear way out. Every exit so far – charity, trust, donor, party – has sprung a leak and Boris fears he might be holed below the waterline.
Well put. We forget this has been going on for a long time, previously with the charity/trust stuff and as people like Philip rightly point out in the grand scheme of things this really isn't a big issue, but he has tied himself in absolute knots over it.
It's also amusing that people are still treating Hartlepool as a *possible* Con gain rather than an absolute dead certainty.
If the Tories can gain a seat in a by-election while in Government it will be a shock, not a certainty. It would also signal about 15 more Labour-held seats as probable Tory gains next time, which gives a baseline of a Tory majority of 110 going into the next election.
My money is where my mouth is, I've bet on a Labour hold.
I see the Corbynites are already laying the groundwork for a leadership challenge.
Diane Abbott - “Tories increase lead over Labour”If this is true it is very worrying".
I would imagine the Labour left will be readying themselves to seieze the narrative if next Friday proves to be a disappointing day for Starmer. If they want to oust a bland steady Eddy leader it's hard to think of many windows of opportunity except straight after an election.
Which is exactly what the labour right did after the Brexit referendum and the comments from the likes of Diane Abbott are no different to what the labour right did when Corbyn was leader. Not defending it, no saying it’s productive, but it is there. Labour is still at war with itself and it’s current top team is woefully ineffective.
The labour left have lost a lot of members in the last year. I cannot see them either presenting a good candidate, as they don’t have one, or winning If they did have one.
Anyway, its Friday morning so lets set a nice test of legal and moral right and wrong.
It is only right that an individual should be able to choose which laws apply to them. It is only right that when a complaint is made and an investigation carried out to determine if that individual has broken the strict professional code that directs their behaviour, that the accused is able to discard the findings against them and carry on in role.
Its only fair. Lawyers get to dismiss professional misconduct convictions. Doctors. Bent Coppers. People who steal from work. So it is an outrage for people to think there is something wrong with the Prime Minister being able to simply dismiss the professional misconduct findings that are presented to him about his behaviour.
The Prime Minister should be subject to the same courts as the rest of us. If he receives a criminal conviction at a court of law then of course he should resign.
Anonymous people claiming on social media that he has done something wrong is not a court of law.
I was thinking about this last night.
Does anyone know the financial year in which this work was done? I wonder if the reluctance to reveal who repaid the loan was that it was a bridging loan - ie Boris claimed 2 years worth of the refurbishment allowance (£60k) and used the loan to bridge the gap.
I’ve no idea if that would be in the rules (strikes me as a bit of a grey area) or if it happened but it’s a possibility he might not want to put out there as it is certainly a but cute
No he is crooked and had some creepy chum who wanted favours pay for it.
If you’ve evidence of that I’m sure the police would be delighted to see it.
It's also amusing that people are still treating Hartlepool as a *possible* Con gain rather than an absolute dead certainty.
If the Tories can gain a seat in a by-election while in Government it will be a shock, not a certainty. It would also signal about 15 more Labour-held seats as probable Tory gains next time, which gives a baseline of a Tory majority of 110 going into the next election.
My money is where my mouth is, I've bet on a Labour hold.
It seems that Johnson's approval ratings have been impacted by the sleaze allegations, however this has not changed the headline voting figures.
Therefore, it seems to me that Labour is not doing enough on the other side for people to switch. They need to get some policies into place and also change up their top team.
A good post. The Government is riding high on a well-oiled vaccination programme, the pubs open, and free money (4th stage SSEI grants are being paid as we speak).
Not so much the wallpaper, but I did think the "bodies piled high" allegation would shift opinion. On that score Cummings' fox is shot...unless he has a recording.
"Pubs open" - a reality check is needed.
Some pubs are open: those with beer gardens. The vast majority will still be making a loss or, at best, breaking even. That is unsustainable.
What they and restaurants and other hospitality businesses need are the end of social distancing inside or the requirement for mandatory table service or the rule of 6 etc and the ability for people to stand at the bar, as normal. Then they can start earning and making profits.
Will these requirements be lifted? It is unclear. But until they are we are not back to normal and these businesses will not be back to normal and will - without support - be unviable.
There is an unfairness in how they are being treated. If it is ok to go to a shop it is absurd that one cannot go inside a cafe. If it is ok to be packed together in the tube then it is a nonsense to stop people standing together chatting in a pub.
I am suspicious - as is Daughter - of what the government's real intentions are and what will actually happen. She and her customers are desperate to get back to normal. Until she sees the actual rules she does not believe in this "we are getting back to normal" shtick. And she is right to be suspicious. The government is not to be trusted. It has too often said one thing and done another.
If mandatory social distancing regulations for pubs etc are abolished on 21/6, a return to normal not a "new normal" then will you and your daughter be happy with that?
I think it should be sooner, but I'm begrudgingly OK so long as it happens by then. No later, no ifs, no buts.
What needs to go is social distancing and mandatory table service. If that happens she will be happy and can do business again. She has already booked a very popular local band to come in September and December.
What she does not want is the sort of restrictions there were before the last lockdown which meant that she had all the costs without the customers. She opened last December but it was largely a waste of time, apart from a few days. If the government imposes similar restrictions again, then the business is pointless and she will just give it up.
I hope this won't happen. But when I hear people like Van Tam saying that it is perfectly safe for people who have been vaccinated to meet each other indoors but they shouldn't "because we say so" I wonder what sort of country we are becoming and whether the government really will give up the micro-managing control it seems to love.
I agree with all that.
I want the same thing as you, all the nannying, all the social distancing, all the regulations need to go. Hopefully they do all go and your daughter can have a bumper summer. 👍
I have no idea why Van Tam receives plaudits. He’s unable to give a single presser with some inane half baked metaphor about cricket or trains rather than talking clearly and articulately about the scientific detail. And his statement this week on “don’t meet up indoors even when vaccinated just because” was scary.
The reason we are not allowing fully vaccinated folk to get together inside etc is purely to satisfy the British sense of fair play. It is not based on science. I've not seen any polling on it, but I suspect it is being widely flouted anyway (including by me).
Fair play my arse!
No doubt lots of flouting is going on but those businesses which depend for their livelihoods on people meeting together indoors are being denied the opportunity to make a living. They are not being treated fairly at all. All that is happening is that people are flouting the rules and some businesses - supermarkets - sell them what they need to socialise while those whose businesses this is are forced to watch from the sidelines and see their business lose customers, money and jobs.
Mr. Ace, does any major UK party advocate England leaving the UK?
English nationalism isn’t English separatism. The Tory party isn’t an exclusive English nationalist party, but it has become a very comfortable home for them.
There are parallels with Yugoslavia here, as one of my Serbian colleagues keeps reminding me. No, not that anyone in England is planning ethnic cleansing or civil war. But that we have a similar ambiguous attitude to nationality as the Serbs who were comfortable as "Yugoslavia" on the basis they were the dominant partner, but increasingly came to identify as Serbian even while attempting to stop other component parts seceding.
The Yugo parallels are interesting if you put aside the obvious differences in levels of wealth, development and intercommunal hatred. Croatia seems akin to Scotland - a coherent ethnic-national unit that was able to create a new identify fairly easily and embraced EU membership but still suffers from the economic dislocation of the breakup. Wales is more like Montenegro, economically dependent and unsure of its future role. Northern Ireland is quite clearly the Bosnia, riven with communal tensions that are virtually impossible to resolve. We don't have a Slovenia (rich, international, financially better off outside the club) unless you count London.
This was always the inevitable endpoint of the Brexit experience.
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
It's because most believed them to be necessary, having seen some of the horrors elsewhere.
We're already seeing crumbling of the concensus on here and I'm seeing it anecdotally in friends and family. As the threat recedes, acceptance of the restrictions will too. It would be crazy if that was not the case.
Is it surprising that restrictions have been accepted so far? Maybe. It would be astonishing to me if restrictions were accepted after June, unless there are unforeseen events (some new super-variant that renders vaccines largley ineffective and a third wave). I'm part of the shadowy cabal (scientists, epidemiologists in particular) that apparently wants to take away peoples freedoms forever, but extend the restrictions beyond 21 June without good reason and I'll be joining you on the barricades.
It reminds me of the famous "we've established what you are, we're just haggling over price" quote.
Once people have willingly accepted, welcomed even, those restrictions they are likely not going to be put back in the box and one person's "red line" is another's "that sounds perfectly fine"...
I think that nonsense. The consent to current rules is temporary and provisional - and the fact that the degree to, and point beyond which, people find them objectionable differs considerably really doesn’t matter once most decide they are no longer necessary or justifiable.
It's also amusing that people are still treating Hartlepool as a *possible* Con gain rather than an absolute dead certainty.
If the Tories can gain a seat in a by-election while in Government it will be a shock, not a certainty. It would also signal about 15 more Labour-held seats as probable Tory gains next time, which gives a baseline of a Tory majority of 110 going into the next election.
My money is where my mouth is, I've bet on a Labour hold.
Like I said — amusing.
We'll see. If I'm wrong I'll lose some money, but I'll be happy to take 110 majority as a baseline going into the next election before swing.
It's also amusing that people are still treating Hartlepool as a *possible* Con gain rather than an absolute dead certainty.
If the Tories can gain a seat in a by-election while in Government it will be a shock, not a certainty. It would also signal about 15 more Labour-held seats as probable Tory gains next time, which gives a baseline of a Tory majority of 110 going into the next election.
My money is where my mouth is, I've bet on a Labour hold.
Theresa May of course gained Copeland in early 2017 in the by election from Corbyn Labour which as we all remember foretold her landslide general election win later that year
What these charts fairly consistently show is that the UK not only started vaccinating much earlier but continues to vaccinate quicker than the EU as a whole. We are roughly 13% of EU +UK and in this table we have 20% of new vaccines. The result is that our lead over the EU increases as we head to full vaccination and we will be there 2 -2.5 months ahead of the EU.
Which will be worth a few thousand lives in each of the major countries but in the overall scheme of things for the pandemic is not likely to be that material. Italy and Belgium are already well ahead of us in deaths per million and will move more so but it is unlikely that France and Germany will catch up.
Economically, our faster vaccination means that our recovery should be rough a quarter ahead of the EU but we were hit harder than most with more severe lockdowns so a faster recovery was pretty likely anyway.
What this might mean for the government is that the considerable credit that it is getting for fast and effective roll out is likely to fade fairly quickly and may well be gone by the end of this year when the focus will be on the overall performance where the UK is mid table at best, not even that on some measures. It seems probable to me that Tory leads will wane considerably at that point.
I'm going to stick my neck out here and make a clear and unambiguous prediction without caveat.
I think the vaccine rollout has been so good, and so popular, and so demonstrably more competent than elsewhere, that it will be the exception that proves the rule. The electorate will do gratitude, this one time, and the Tories will increase their majority at the next general election (I am reminded of a certain infamous article, yes).
Yep could be although in a month or three the EU and many other countries will be where we are (great article btw Robert) and the question then becomes when the UK is in the same position as everywhere else (and don't forget we are still in lockdown while we get there) will the public be so forgiving?
I think May will feel a lot less like lockdown.
I hope she doesn’t have a say, otherwise we’re all f****d
It's also amusing that people are still treating Hartlepool as a *possible* Con gain rather than an absolute dead certainty.
If the Tories can gain a seat in a by-election while in Government it will be a shock, not a certainty. It would also signal about 15 more Labour-held seats as probable Tory gains next time, which gives a baseline of a Tory majority of 110 going into the next election.
My money is where my mouth is, I've bet on a Labour hold.
Same here. I cannot see how anyone can say it’s an absolute certainty. It isn’t. It’s a toss up. I’ve got fifty quid on a labour hold at an average of 11/8.
I see the Corbynites are already laying the groundwork for a leadership challenge.
Diane Abbott - “Tories increase lead over Labour”If this is true it is very worrying".
I would imagine the Labour left will be readying themselves to seieze the narrative if next Friday proves to be a disappointing day for Starmer. If they want to oust a bland steady Eddy leader it's hard to think of many windows of opportunity except straight after an election.
Which is exactly what the labour right did after the Brexit referendum and the comments from the likes of Diane Abbott are no different to what the labour right did when Corbyn was leader. Not defending it, no saying it’s productive, but it is there. Labour is still at war with itself and it’s current top team is woefully ineffective.
The labour left have lost a lot of members in the last year. I cannot see them either presenting a good candidate, as they don’t have one, or winning If they did have one.
I agree. If the polls are correct I have always maintained the left will return Owen Smith's favour, but they will struggle for a viable candidate, lose and Starmer will come out of a leadership contest stronger.
Of course if Labour outperform the polling he has nothing to worry about until the next election.
I am still hoping and expecting a free and wonderful summer.
Does anyone know what happens after we’ve effectively all been vaccinated? Will the government institute an annual “top up” programme?
There was a minister on Today yesterday who spent most of his time discussing wallpaper but managed to slip in that he had bought 60m booster jabs from Pfizer alone. It seems to be simply flexibility at this point, covering the option of a vaccine resistant variant but also addressing the possibility that with some groups the vaccine effect will be shorter lived than with others.
Today Yesterday sounds like a worthy successor to The Day Today...
It's also amusing that people are still treating Hartlepool as a *possible* Con gain rather than an absolute dead certainty.
If the Tories can gain a seat in a by-election while in Government it will be a shock, not a certainty. It would also signal about 15 more Labour-held seats as probable Tory gains next time, which gives a baseline of a Tory majority of 110 going into the next election.
My money is where my mouth is, I've bet on a Labour hold.
Like I said — amusing.
We'll see. If I'm wrong I'll lose some money, but I'll be happy to take 110 majority as a baseline going into the next election before swing.
Is that seriously what you think?
Not exactly because uniform swing doesn't apply and Hartlepool is somewhat of a 'special case' because of the ridiculously high Brexit Party vote.
But generally for the next election I expect nothing other than a repeat of 2019, based on the current status quo.
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
Britons will be slaves, it seems.
I’ve been amazed at the collective reflex to defer to authority figures over the last year. I was always under the impression that the British cultural norm was instinctive distrust of authority. I can only assume it’s because they’ve put up on stage a doctor and a “scientist”, for whom the normal rules go out the window.
Nonsense. People think lockdown is the right way to go, so they go with it. Like driving on the left. Am I deferring to authority figures, failing to show enough distrust for authority etc when I stop at red lights, put a seatbelt on and so on? This "look at the sheeple" stuff aims for sophistication and actually sounds like Rik Mayall in the Young Ones.
Of course it’s been deferring to authority. We STILL have not received anything resembling a cost benefit analysis of the measures taken, either individually or in totality.
Cyclefree has repeatedly pointed out some of the contradictions and absurdities in the measures. And we should not forget that as many as 40% of the country ended up catching this virus inside one year anyway. So it is very reasonable to ask whether it was necessary or effective to do x,y and z, without trite comparisons to wearing a seatbelt, for which there is excellent supporting evidence by the way.
We have 120 years of data for seatbelts.
My PB pedantry senses tingling. Seatbelts might have been invented in the 19th century but were only introduced to cars in the very late 1940's. Its an interesting thing though. Seatbelts demonstrably save lives (pace Princess Diana). We believe that mask and social distancing work, but the actual data is lacking and hard to generate anyway. It might be that mask use is very important on trains and planes, but much less so in shops for instance. or there might be a threshold of community rates of covid that means masks are useful, but below that there is little or no effect in most situations. FWIW I think we are at that point now.
France and the EU not doing too badly.....that'll have Max and Leon crying into their cornflakes
There is a curious strand that thinks people in the UK will be upset that the EU vaccination programme has improved. I see no evidence for that.
Yes, their programme having been slower than ours has been sharply focused upon, it emphasises our good roll out and the European Commission, Macron and the German government leaking were early on quite blatantly trying to turn their dispute with AZ into a dispute with the UK and that rankled.
But the EU having sped up is great news for everyone. Of course once they got supplies and resolved bureaucratic issues they could go very fast indeed, and that's fantastic.
It doesnt mean their vaccine programme failings which will extend the pandemic for them by several months do not exist, just as our earlier vaccine rollout does not mean our own big pandemic failings do not exist.
As has been made clear theoretically any EU nation could have sought supplies outside or not through the shared programme. Whatever positives in supposed fairness exists that has had a negative result of delay and they need to learn lessons, all places have their own lessons to learn.
That doesnt mean people want the situation to be bad.
I think real anger is justified by:
1 - The transparent diversion tactics. 2 - The trashing of a vaccine, creating hesitation in the wider world outside Europe. That will cause people to die.
The EU have revealed themselves to be absolute arseholes on this matter.
But there is still a decent chunk of people looking to use EU failure to justify Brexit (in the absence of sunny uplands). They will be disappointed to see Europe “open up” a month or so after us.
Not in the slightest. Nobody wants to see the EU's population die unnecessarily and it's in the UKs interests to see the virus eliminated there. Plus people will want it to be safe to have holidays etc
But the vaccine difference does justify Brexit. It is proof of concept that shows that taking back control allows the UK to act in a way that suits the UK. It shows that we can hold our decision makers to account now.
We’ll just have to disagree on that.
Malta and Hungary show that an independent vaccine policy was totally available to us.
You've missed the point. Healthcare was never an EU responsibility. Of course we could have had our own vaccine policy in the EU.
But many issues are EU responsibilities. The point here is that having control domestically, rather than control in Brussels, allows better and more accountable decision making.
Do you think there is a magical reason why having domestic control over vaccine decision making allows better and more accountable decision making - but having domestic control over all the other decisions that used to be made in Brussels can't be the same?
This is primary school stuff.
But yes, in order to achieve collective benefits (such as the single market) there is a practical reason to share some powers with other nations.
It’s case by case, although I recognise you don’t “do” nuance.
Actually I do, I have never disputed that. I used to back Remain, I have never claimed leaving the Single Market is cost-free, nor have I claimed there will be no damage to some businesses from Brexit.
But and this is primary school stuff, its about balance. There are two sides to the balance scale not one. I recognise both sides of the balance scale, I recognise both the benefits from Brexit and the cost - you seem determined to see one side of the balance scale alone.
Unless you're prepared to recognise both sides of the balance scale, unless you can do nuance, then you can't judge this properly.
There are costs to Brexit, there are benefits to Brexit, and the responsible thing to do is to balance them against each other. Do you disagree with that?
There are precious few benefits to Brexit that I am aware of.
We have increased our fishing quotas. Perhaps, as someone mentioned upthread, we are more aware of our own puissance.
Well there we go, you're the one blinded to the balance.
The UK has taken back control over swathes of areas that used to be decided by Brussels. Whole areas now controlled by UK governments answerable to a UK Parliament that we elect and we can kick out if they do a bad job.
Just as the UK was better able to do a good job with vaccines (which I acknowledge were a UK competence so we could have done even within the EU), why do you think that lesson can't apply to all the other areas that used to be Brussels competences and are now UK ones?
But i didn’t say that. I said it was “case by case”.
You take several paragraphs to mischaracterise my argument, it’s very dull.
What you said that I was replying to was this:
There are precious few benefits to Brexit that I am aware of.
We have increased our fishing quotas. Perhaps, as someone mentioned upthread, we are more aware of our own puissance.
So do you accept taking back control of our laws as a benefit of Brexit, when it comes to looking at the balance of pros and cons?
No, because “taking back control of our laws” is an both questionable (we had some control, just not the control you wanted) and open-ended (“our laws”).
Well then you're failing to see the nuance and balance.
We have more control over more laws than we did. That its open-ended is not a criticism its the very point, the EU had control over vast swathes of the laws.
Now its perfectly fine and legitimate for you to say that paying the price of handing control of those laws to Europe was worth the return on getting the benefits of Single Market membership. It is perfectly fine for you to argue that the benefits from regaining control of the laws is not worth the price of leaving the Market. That's balance.
It is entirely unbalanced for you to deny there were any benefits whatsoever to regaining control of the laws.
More paragraphs of bolleaux.
If you give me a law we have “regained control” over, I will tell you if I think it’s a benefit.
A general principle of “regaining control over our laws” is too broad for me to chalk up as a “benefit of Brexit”.
I see the Corbynites are already laying the groundwork for a leadership challenge.
Diane Abbott - “Tories increase lead over Labour”If this is true it is very worrying".
I would imagine the Labour left will be readying themselves to seieze the narrative if next Friday proves to be a disappointing day for Starmer. If they want to oust a bland steady Eddy leader it's hard to think of many windows of opportunity except straight after an election.
Given Corbyn survived losing the county council elections in 2017 by 11% and losing 382 councillors and 7 county councils I am sure Starmer will survive local results which will likely be better than that for Labour on Thursday, coupled with a big Labour win in London and improvement under Sarwar in Scotland
Alistair's Occasional Guide to Scotland for PB Scotch Experts
Part 72 - Differential Turnout
PB Scotch experts love misunderstanding Swing in Scotland. After the 2016 and 2017 election the idea of of SNP-to-Con switchers got embedded in the board psyche. With a couple of notable exception this didn't happen.
What happened was differential turnout. Let's use a really, really clear example, the absolute mouthful that is Perthshire South and Kinross-shire
In 2011 the results were SNP 51.49% Con 28.53% Lab 12.75% LD 7.23%
In 2016 the results were SNP 42.4% (-9.1) Con 38.4% (+9.9) Lab 9.4% (-3.3) LD 8.3% (+1.1)
OMG the SNP fall is almost the same as the Conservative rise IT MUST BE SNP TO CON SWITCHERS!!!!!1!!!one!
2011 SNP Votes: 16,073 2016 SNP Votes: 15,315 (-758)
2011 Con Votes: 8,907 2016 Con Votes:13,893 (+4,986)
So unless 758 voters got counted six and a half times when they switched from SNP to Conservative I don't think SNP to Con switchers is the answer here. A slightly more likely explanation is that the 4933 extra voters who voted in 2016 over 2011 were mostly Conservatives with the additional of some Lab tactical Unionist voting.
This is why turnoutis so vitally important in Scotland. If you do a plot of SNP Constituency vote percentage vs Constituency turnout form 2015 onwards the trend is the lower the constituency turnout the higher the SNP votes share.
Well yes, which is why I was reporting the perception of the Tory campaign that the SNP vote was soft and enthusiasm levels were dented by the Alba wrangling and no doubt much else. I am not expecting many SNP voters to suddenly see the light and vote Tory. I am expecting fewer SNP voters to turn out this time giving a differential advantage to the Tory vote which is very solid, if slightly small. This might be enough to swing Perthshire South and Kinrosshire but probably not Angus South where I am. Angus North might be a better bet.
Its also why I found a PPB that seemed to focus exclusively on the list vote both bewildering and frustrating.
I see the Corbynites are already laying the groundwork for a leadership challenge.
Diane Abbott - “Tories increase lead over Labour”If this is true it is very worrying".
I would imagine the Labour left will be readying themselves to seieze the narrative if next Friday proves to be a disappointing day for Starmer. If they want to oust a bland steady Eddy leader it's hard to think of many windows of opportunity except straight after an election.
Which is exactly what the labour right did after the Brexit referendum and the comments from the likes of Diane Abbott are no different to what the labour right did when Corbyn was leader. Not defending it, no saying it’s productive, but it is there. Labour is still at war with itself and it’s current top team is woefully ineffective.
The labour left have lost a lot of members in the last year. I cannot see them either presenting a good candidate, as they don’t have one, or winning If they did have one.
I agree. If the polls are correct I have always maintained the left will return Owen Smith's favour, but they will struggle for a viable candidate, lose and Starmer will come out of a leadership contest stronger.
Of course if Labour outperform the polling he has nothing to worry about until the next election.
Bit in italics - isn't that actually pretty much what happened with the Owen Smith effort? - Struggle for a viable candidate - CHECK - Lose - CHECK - Come out of a leadership contest stronger - CHECK, I think - the end of serious efforts to unseat Corbyn
It's also amusing that people are still treating Hartlepool as a *possible* Con gain rather than an absolute dead certainty.
If the Tories can gain a seat in a by-election while in Government it will be a shock, not a certainty. It would also signal about 15 more Labour-held seats as probable Tory gains next time, which gives a baseline of a Tory majority of 110 going into the next election.
My money is where my mouth is, I've bet on a Labour hold.
Same here. I cannot see how anyone can say it’s an absolute certainty. It isn’t. It’s a toss up. I’ve got fifty quid on a labour hold at an average of 11/8.
For one reason — Ben Houchen is going to be overwhelmingly reelected and I can't see people voting Con for mayor and then Labour for Westminster. They'll vote, as they say in the states, Blue down ticket.
Mr. Ace, does any major UK party advocate England leaving the UK?
English nationalism isn’t English separatism. The Tory party isn’t an exclusive English nationalist party, but it has become a very comfortable home for them.
There are parallels with Yugoslavia here, as one of my Serbian colleagues keeps reminding me. No, not that anyone in England is planning ethnic cleansing or civil war. But that we have a similar ambiguous attitude to nationality as the Serbs who were comfortable as "Yugoslavia" on the basis they were the dominant partner, but increasingly came to identify as Serbian even while attempting to stop other component parts seceding.
The Yugo parallels are interesting if you put aside the obvious differences in levels of wealth, development and intercommunal hatred. Croatia seems akin to Scotland - a coherent ethnic-national unit that was able to create a new identify fairly easily and embraced EU membership but still suffers from the economic dislocation of the breakup. Wales is more like Montenegro, economically dependent and unsure of its future role. Northern Ireland is quite clearly the Bosnia, riven with communal tensions that are virtually impossible to resolve. We don't have a Slovenia (rich, international, financially better off outside the club) unless you count London.
Brilliant post.
Of course, Yugoslavia was held together by a dominant ideology (Communism), and repressive internal governance.
Our version of Communism (Empire) petered out in the 50s and 60s.
I holidayed on Yugoslavia in about 1989. On coach tours the guide would point out which villages/areas were which nationality etc. I payed little attention. And then shortly after people were killing each other. Horrifying. Despite HYUFD's more strident posts, if/when Scotland does vote to go its own way, I doubt a single person would be physically hurt. We are nothing like Yugoslavia.
It's also amusing that people are still treating Hartlepool as a *possible* Con gain rather than an absolute dead certainty.
If the Tories can gain a seat in a by-election while in Government it will be a shock, not a certainty. It would also signal about 15 more Labour-held seats as probable Tory gains next time, which gives a baseline of a Tory majority of 110 going into the next election.
My money is where my mouth is, I've bet on a Labour hold.
Like I said — amusing.
We'll see. If I'm wrong I'll lose some money, but I'll be happy to take 110 majority as a baseline going into the next election before swing.
Is that seriously what you think?
Not exactly because uniform swing doesn't apply and Hartlepool is somewhat of a 'special case' because of the ridiculously high Brexit Party vote.
But generally for the next election I expect nothing other than a repeat of 2019, based on the current status quo.
That's the point though, I don't think its possible to say that the Brexit Party vote are Tories in exile. They're far more likely to be Labour in exile "neverTories" who were not prepared to vote Tory, even to "Get Brexit Done".
If constituencies with a very high Brexit Party vote is split about 2:1 then that switches Hartlepool from red to blue - but Hartlepool is not a "special case" it is one of 15 seats like this. It would also switch 14 other constituencies too. There are 15 constituencies across the country that would fall to the blue team like Hartlepool if high BXP splits that way.
Perhaps you're right, perhaps high BXP will split Tory and not as I think be "neverTories" but if so then that's setting a baseline of 110 majority that should be in the Tory column without any other swings just from squeezing BXP next time.
It's also amusing that people are still treating Hartlepool as a *possible* Con gain rather than an absolute dead certainty.
If the Tories can gain a seat in a by-election while in Government it will be a shock, not a certainty. It would also signal about 15 more Labour-held seats as probable Tory gains next time, which gives a baseline of a Tory majority of 110 going into the next election.
My money is where my mouth is, I've bet on a Labour hold.
Like I said — amusing.
We'll see. If I'm wrong I'll lose some money, but I'll be happy to take 110 majority as a baseline going into the next election before swing.
Is that seriously what you think?
Not exactly because uniform swing doesn't apply and Hartlepool is somewhat of a 'special case' because of the ridiculously high Brexit Party vote.
But generally for the next election I expect nothing other than a repeat of 2019, based on the current status quo.
Doncaster North and Barnsley East are the other seats I can work out that are vaguely similar wrt high Brexit/Tories closer than you'd think. I couldn't believe how close Ed Miliband was to losing my 1-5 ton on him at the GE !
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
Britons will be slaves, it seems.
I’ve been amazed at the collective reflex to defer to authority figures over the last year. I was always under the impression that the British cultural norm was instinctive distrust of authority. I can only assume it’s because they’ve put up on stage a doctor and a “scientist”, for whom the normal rules go out the window.
Nonsense. People think lockdown is the right way to go, so they go with it. Like driving on the left. Am I deferring to authority figures, failing to show enough distrust for authority etc when I stop at red lights, put a seatbelt on and so on? This "look at the sheeple" stuff aims for sophistication and actually sounds like Rik Mayall in the Young Ones.
Of course it’s been deferring to authority. We STILL have not received anything resembling a cost benefit analysis of the measures taken, either individually or in totality.
Cyclefree has repeatedly pointed out some of the contradictions and absurdities in the measures. And we should not forget that as many as 40% of the country ended up catching this virus inside one year anyway. So it is very reasonable to ask whether it was necessary or effective to do x,y and z, without trite comparisons to wearing a seatbelt, for which there is excellent supporting evidence by the way.
We have 120 years of data for seatbelts.
My PB pedantry senses tingling. Seatbelts might have been invented in the 19th century but were only introduced to cars in the very late 1940's. Its an interesting thing though. Seatbelts demonstrably save lives (pace Princess Diana). We believe that mask and social distancing work, but the actual data is lacking and hard to generate anyway. It might be that mask use is very important on trains and planes, but much less so in shops for instance. or there might be a threshold of community rates of covid that means masks are useful, but below that there is little or no effect in most situations. FWIW I think we are at that point now.
The other thing to think about is marginal cost. The marginal cost of wearing a mask is very low - both to the individual and the social/economic system around them.
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
Britons will be slaves, it seems.
I’ve been amazed at the collective reflex to defer to authority figures over the last year. I was always under the impression that the British cultural norm was instinctive distrust of authority. I can only assume it’s because they’ve put up on stage a doctor and a “scientist”, for whom the normal rules go out the window.
I think it’s more the public have listened, decided it sounds sensible so are going along with it. And round the edges they ignore the rules when it suits them
I see the Corbynites are already laying the groundwork for a leadership challenge.
Diane Abbott - “Tories increase lead over Labour”If this is true it is very worrying".
I would imagine the Labour left will be readying themselves to seieze the narrative if next Friday proves to be a disappointing day for Starmer. If they want to oust a bland steady Eddy leader it's hard to think of many windows of opportunity except straight after an election.
Which is exactly what the labour right did after the Brexit referendum and the comments from the likes of Diane Abbott are no different to what the labour right did when Corbyn was leader. Not defending it, no saying it’s productive, but it is there. Labour is still at war with itself and it’s current top team is woefully ineffective.
The labour left have lost a lot of members in the last year. I cannot see them either presenting a good candidate, as they don’t have one, or winning If they did have one.
I agree. If the polls are correct I have always maintained the left will return Owen Smith's favour, but they will struggle for a viable candidate, lose and Starmer will come out of a leadership contest stronger.
Of course if Labour outperform the polling he has nothing to worry about until the next election.
Bit in italics - isn't that actually pretty much what happened with the Owen Smith effort? - Struggle for a viable candidate - CHECK - Lose - CHECK - Come out of a leadership contest stronger - CHECK, I think - the end of serious efforts to unseat Corbyn
Very true. I think with the Labour right they struggled for a candidate because the well known more serious hitters didnt want blood on their hands so they ended up with a limited stalking horse in Smith.
Now the gloves are well and truly off I imagine a few of the remaining Labour left bigger beasts (McDonnell, Lewis, Burgon) would have no qualms about taking on SKS. None of them will win mind.
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
It's because most believed them to be necessary, having seen some of the horrors elsewhere.
We're already seeing crumbling of the concensus on here and I'm seeing it anecdotally in friends and family. As the threat recedes, acceptance of the restrictions will too. It would be crazy if that was not the case.
Is it surprising that restrictions have been accepted so far? Maybe. It would be astonishing to me if restrictions were accepted after June, unless there are unforeseen events (some new super-variant that renders vaccines largley ineffective and a third wave). I'm part of the shadowy cabal (scientists, epidemiologists in particular) that apparently wants to take away peoples freedoms forever, but extend the restrictions beyond 21 June without good reason and I'll be joining you on the barricades.
It reminds me of the famous "we've established what you are, we're just haggling over price" quote.
Once people have willingly accepted, welcomed even, those restrictions they are likely not going to be put back in the box and one person's "red line" is another's "that sounds perfectly fine".
To use the most obvious example on here, @contrarian had a red line way, way, way over there <== while, say, @SandyRentool and @FrancisUrquhart I believe (apols if not) have a red line over there ==>
Everyone has a red line but that line is on the continuum of a restriction of liberties. OK what about seatbelts you say. And it is a good question. But there has not been copious legislation about the freedom to drive or be in a car. There has been for freedom of assembly, etc.
Yes, of course there's a continuum of opinions. There are some things that I stopped doing while still legal (we stopped seeing my in-laws before the first lockdown as they were in a vulnerable group) and some things that vexed me a bit due to being illegal (cancelled holiday last summer, in a cottage miles from anywhere with my household only - really zero risk from us going, we'd have seen no one, but I accepted that the rules - if there are rules - have to be universal).
The question is, should things have been illegal or simply just guidance? Most people are fairly pragmatic and - as there was support for many of the restrictions, were not against that being in law (I know that's the 'they came for the Jews but as I was not a Jew I did nothing' argument). I can see the philosophical point about whether these things should be in law or not. However, there's a practical point too in that making things illegal does give people cover to not do them under peer pressure (as also for seatbelts, motorcycle helmets). While I like the Swedish approach in many ways, I suspect passing the law, breaking the law being undetectable in most cases, is still useful for compliance. However, I wouldn't want to see the law enforced in all but the most egregious cases (does that make me a hypocrite? maybe so). I was apalled by Derbyshire police harassing walkers who were going out miles away from anyone. Or indeed stops of cars on the roads.
I do however think the circumstances are/were exceptional and don't think a precendent has been set. If there's another major pandemic then we may see similar laws. But I don't see where this is going to creep into other areas of life, because it simply won't be accepted. Masks this winter for flu? I don't see the government getting away with it or wanting to risk unpopularity by trying. How do I know? Because it crossed my red line, which is much closer to Sandy and Francis's than Contrarian's. To remain popular, the government has to 'win' against Covid and that means things going back to normal. Continued restrictions is not victory, it's failure and the government will not be rewarded for failure.
In short: we can disagree on whether legal restrictions were right or wrong (and there is no right answer, I think). But I don't believe this set of legal restrictions changes the future other than in another pandemic of similar or greater severity.
Thank you. I paid you the compliment (I hope) of reading your post carefully. Line by line indeed - something that I have been doing while reading Jonathan Sumption's latest book which is necessary!
And yes - for me the nub is laws vs guidelines. The lockdowns were to save lives and protect the NHS. So the lives yes of course (cf seatbelts) and saving us from ourselves, which has precedent. But the laws dealt with the most fundamental of our rights as the seatbelt laws don't and once laws are on the books and that precedent is set then it is damned difficult and nor do governments seem to want to remove them.
As for the peer pressure for me it's not enough of a quid pro quo.
So I do think that the government will maintain this anxiety because logically, politically, it works and the role of a government is to keep itself in power. I don't think "THEY WANT TO CONTROL US BECAUSE EVIL". But I do think that having found that they are popular with such measures, that people approve of them, the imperative to remove them is diminished greatly.
Although as others have said, if the UK wants voluntarily to submit to such a life then who am I to complain.
It's also amusing that people are still treating Hartlepool as a *possible* Con gain rather than an absolute dead certainty.
If the Tories can gain a seat in a by-election while in Government it will be a shock, not a certainty. It would also signal about 15 more Labour-held seats as probable Tory gains next time, which gives a baseline of a Tory majority of 110 going into the next election.
My money is where my mouth is, I've bet on a Labour hold.
Like I said — amusing.
We'll see. If I'm wrong I'll lose some money, but I'll be happy to take 110 majority as a baseline going into the next election before swing.
Is that seriously what you think?
Not exactly because uniform swing doesn't apply and Hartlepool is somewhat of a 'special case' because of the ridiculously high Brexit Party vote.
But generally for the next election I expect nothing other than a repeat of 2019, based on the current status quo.
That's the point though, I don't think its possible to say that the Brexit Party vote are Tories in exile. They're far more likely to be Labour in exile "neverTories" who were not prepared to vote Tory, even to "Get Brexit Done".
If constituencies with a very high Brexit Party vote is split about 2:1 then that switches Hartlepool from red to blue - but Hartlepool is not a "special case" it is one of 15 seats like this. It would also switch 14 other constituencies too. There are 15 constituencies across the country that would fall to the blue team like Hartlepool if high BXP splits that way.
Perhaps you're right, perhaps high BXP will split Tory and not as I think be "neverTories" but if so then that's setting a baseline of 110 majority that should be in the Tory column without any other swings just from squeezing BXP next time.
I'd expect Labour, under Starmer, to win some metropolitan liberal elite seats in the south to make up for the further loss in the North — leading us back to 2019.
France and the EU not doing too badly.....that'll have Max and Leon crying into their cornflakes
There is a curious strand that thinks people in the UK will be upset that the EU vaccination programme has improved. I see no evidence for that.
Yes, their programme having been slower than ours has been sharply focused upon, it emphasises our good roll out and the European Commission, Macron and the German government leaking were early on quite blatantly trying to turn their dispute with AZ into a dispute with the UK and that rankled.
But the EU having sped up is great news for everyone. Of course once they got supplies and resolved bureaucratic issues they could go very fast indeed, and that's fantastic.
It doesnt mean their vaccine programme failings which will extend the pandemic for them by several months do not exist, just as our earlier vaccine rollout does not mean our own big pandemic failings do not exist.
As has been made clear theoretically any EU nation could have sought supplies outside or not through the shared programme. Whatever positives in supposed fairness exists that has had a negative result of delay and they need to learn lessons, all places have their own lessons to learn.
That doesnt mean people want the situation to be bad.
I think real anger is justified by:
1 - The transparent diversion tactics. 2 - The trashing of a vaccine, creating hesitation in the wider world outside Europe. That will cause people to die.
The EU have revealed themselves to be absolute arseholes on this matter.
But there is still a decent chunk of people looking to use EU failure to justify Brexit (in the absence of sunny uplands). They will be disappointed to see Europe “open up” a month or so after us.
Not in the slightest. Nobody wants to see the EU's population die unnecessarily and it's in the UKs interests to see the virus eliminated there. Plus people will want it to be safe to have holidays etc
But the vaccine difference does justify Brexit. It is proof of concept that shows that taking back control allows the UK to act in a way that suits the UK. It shows that we can hold our decision makers to account now.
You forgot to invoke the nimble/sclerotic dialectique.
We're about to see the other side of that, though. Yes, a speedboat is nippy and responsive. An oil tanker or a container ship takes a while to get going. But once it does, it can really go places and achieve a lot more.
100% agree. A speedboat could never have blocked a canal
France and the EU not doing too badly.....that'll have Max and Leon crying into their cornflakes
There is a curious strand that thinks people in the UK will be upset that the EU vaccination programme has improved. I see no evidence for that.
Yes, their programme having been slower than ours has been sharply focused upon, it emphasises our good roll out and the European Commission, Macron and the German government leaking were early on quite blatantly trying to turn their dispute with AZ into a dispute with the UK and that rankled.
But the EU having sped up is great news for everyone. Of course once they got supplies and resolved bureaucratic issues they could go very fast indeed, and that's fantastic.
It doesnt mean their vaccine programme failings which will extend the pandemic for them by several months do not exist, just as our earlier vaccine rollout does not mean our own big pandemic failings do not exist.
As has been made clear theoretically any EU nation could have sought supplies outside or not through the shared programme. Whatever positives in supposed fairness exists that has had a negative result of delay and they need to learn lessons, all places have their own lessons to learn.
That doesnt mean people want the situation to be bad.
I think real anger is justified by:
1 - The transparent diversion tactics. 2 - The trashing of a vaccine, creating hesitation in the wider world outside Europe. That will cause people to die.
The EU have revealed themselves to be absolute arseholes on this matter.
But there is still a decent chunk of people looking to use EU failure to justify Brexit (in the absence of sunny uplands). They will be disappointed to see Europe “open up” a month or so after us.
Not in the slightest. Nobody wants to see the EU's population die unnecessarily and it's in the UKs interests to see the virus eliminated there. Plus people will want it to be safe to have holidays etc
But the vaccine difference does justify Brexit. It is proof of concept that shows that taking back control allows the UK to act in a way that suits the UK. It shows that we can hold our decision makers to account now.
We’ll just have to disagree on that.
Malta and Hungary show that an independent vaccine policy was totally available to us.
You've missed the point. Healthcare was never an EU responsibility. Of course we could have had our own vaccine policy in the EU.
But many issues are EU responsibilities. The point here is that having control domestically, rather than control in Brussels, allows better and more accountable decision making.
Do you think there is a magical reason why having domestic control over vaccine decision making allows better and more accountable decision making - but having domestic control over all the other decisions that used to be made in Brussels can't be the same?
This is primary school stuff.
But yes, in order to achieve collective benefits (such as the single market) there is a practical reason to share some powers with other nations.
It’s case by case, although I recognise you don’t “do” nuance.
Actually I do, I have never disputed that. I used to back Remain, I have never claimed leaving the Single Market is cost-free, nor have I claimed there will be no damage to some businesses from Brexit.
But and this is primary school stuff, its about balance. There are two sides to the balance scale not one. I recognise both sides of the balance scale, I recognise both the benefits from Brexit and the cost - you seem determined to see one side of the balance scale alone.
Unless you're prepared to recognise both sides of the balance scale, unless you can do nuance, then you can't judge this properly.
There are costs to Brexit, there are benefits to Brexit, and the responsible thing to do is to balance them against each other. Do you disagree with that?
There are precious few benefits to Brexit that I am aware of.
We have increased our fishing quotas. Perhaps, as someone mentioned upthread, we are more aware of our own puissance.
Well there we go, you're the one blinded to the balance.
The UK has taken back control over swathes of areas that used to be decided by Brussels. Whole areas now controlled by UK governments answerable to a UK Parliament that we elect and we can kick out if they do a bad job.
Just as the UK was better able to do a good job with vaccines (which I acknowledge were a UK competence so we could have done even within the EU), why do you think that lesson can't apply to all the other areas that used to be Brussels competences and are now UK ones?
But i didn’t say that. I said it was “case by case”.
You take several paragraphs to mischaracterise my argument, it’s very dull.
What you said that I was replying to was this:
There are precious few benefits to Brexit that I am aware of.
We have increased our fishing quotas. Perhaps, as someone mentioned upthread, we are more aware of our own puissance.
So do you accept taking back control of our laws as a benefit of Brexit, when it comes to looking at the balance of pros and cons?
No, because “taking back control of our laws” is an both questionable (we had some control, just not the control you wanted) and open-ended (“our laws”).
Well then you're failing to see the nuance and balance.
We have more control over more laws than we did. That its open-ended is not a criticism its the very point, the EU had control over vast swathes of the laws.
Now its perfectly fine and legitimate for you to say that paying the price of handing control of those laws to Europe was worth the return on getting the benefits of Single Market membership. It is perfectly fine for you to argue that the benefits from regaining control of the laws is not worth the price of leaving the Market. That's balance.
It is entirely unbalanced for you to deny there were any benefits whatsoever to regaining control of the laws.
More paragraphs of bolleaux.
If you give me a law we have “regained control” over, I will tell you if I think it’s a benefit.
A general principle of “regaining control over our laws” is too broad for me to chalk up as a “benefit of Brexit”.
Trade policy. We can now sign trade deals with the likes of CPTPP, Australia and others.
You might reasonably say that in your opinion the benefit from that is not worth the cost (and I would disagree with that) but if you're claiming there are no benefits at all then that's just blinkered.
Primary school stuff as you said. If you have a balance scale and you put one block on one side, then ten blocks on the other side, you would be right in saying that ten is more than one. You would be wrong in saying that there is nothing on one of the sides.
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
Britons will be slaves, it seems.
I’ve been amazed at the collective reflex to defer to authority figures over the last year. I was always under the impression that the British cultural norm was instinctive distrust of authority. I can only assume it’s because they’ve put up on stage a doctor and a “scientist”, for whom the normal rules go out the window.
Nonsense. People think lockdown is the right way to go, so they go with it. Like driving on the left. Am I deferring to authority figures, failing to show enough distrust for authority etc when I stop at red lights, put a seatbelt on and so on? This "look at the sheeple" stuff aims for sophistication and actually sounds like Rik Mayall in the Young Ones.
Of course it’s been deferring to authority. We STILL have not received anything resembling a cost benefit analysis of the measures taken, either individually or in totality.
Cyclefree has repeatedly pointed out some of the contradictions and absurdities in the measures. And we should not forget that as many as 40% of the country ended up catching this virus inside one year anyway. So it is very reasonable to ask whether it was necessary or effective to do x,y and z, without trite comparisons to wearing a seatbelt, for which there is excellent supporting evidence by the way.
We have 120 years of data for seatbelts.
My PB pedantry senses tingling. Seatbelts might have been invented in the 19th century but were only introduced to cars in the very late 1940's. Its an interesting thing though. Seatbelts demonstrably save lives (pace Princess Diana). We believe that mask and social distancing work, but the actual data is lacking and hard to generate anyway. It might be that mask use is very important on trains and planes, but much less so in shops for instance. or there might be a threshold of community rates of covid that means masks are useful, but below that there is little or no effect in most situations. FWIW I think we are at that point now.
The other thing to think about is marginal cost. The marginal cost of wearing a mask is very low - both to the individual and the social/economic system around them.
I'm not sure of this. On holiday in Wales I was seriously fed up having to wear a mask in shops etc. I hate it. It puts me off from browsing and shopping in general. I think there is a danger that it reduces the extent to which people do things, and that will affect the economy. The same could be true of needing to take lateral flow tests days before attending say a football match. It will deter the casual fan. There is also the danger of keeping a population more scared than they need to be.
It seems that Johnson's approval ratings have been impacted by the sleaze allegations, however this has not changed the headline voting figures.
Therefore, it seems to me that Labour is not doing enough on the other side for people to switch. They need to get some policies into place and also change up their top team.
A good post. The Government is riding high on a well-oiled vaccination programme, the pubs open, and free money (4th stage SSEI grants are being paid as we speak).
Not so much the wallpaper, but I did think the "bodies piled high" allegation would shift opinion. On that score Cummings' fox is shot...unless he has a recording.
"Pubs open" - a reality check is needed.
Some pubs are open: those with beer gardens. The vast majority will still be making a loss or, at best, breaking even. That is unsustainable.
What they and restaurants and other hospitality businesses need are the end of social distancing inside or the requirement for mandatory table service or the rule of 6 etc and the ability for people to stand at the bar, as normal. Then they can start earning and making profits.
Will these requirements be lifted? It is unclear. But until they are we are not back to normal and these businesses will not be back to normal and will - without support - be unviable.
There is an unfairness in how they are being treated. If it is ok to go to a shop it is absurd that one cannot go inside a cafe. If it is ok to be packed together in the tube then it is a nonsense to stop people standing together chatting in a pub.
I am suspicious - as is Daughter - of what the government's real intentions are and what will actually happen. She and her customers are desperate to get back to normal. Until she sees the actual rules she does not believe in this "we are getting back to normal" shtick. And she is right to be suspicious. The government is not to be trusted. It has too often said one thing and done another.
If mandatory social distancing regulations for pubs etc are abolished on 21/6, a return to normal not a "new normal" then will you and your daughter be happy with that?
I think it should be sooner, but I'm begrudgingly OK so long as it happens by then. No later, no ifs, no buts.
What needs to go is social distancing and mandatory table service. If that happens she will be happy and can do business again. She has already booked a very popular local band to come in September and December.
What she does not want is the sort of restrictions there were before the last lockdown which meant that she had all the costs without the customers. She opened last December but it was largely a waste of time, apart from a few days. If the government imposes similar restrictions again, then the business is pointless and she will just give it up.
I hope this won't happen. But when I hear people like Van Tam saying that it is perfectly safe for people who have been vaccinated to meet each other indoors but they shouldn't "because we say so" I wonder what sort of country we are becoming and whether the government really will give up the micro-managing control it seems to love.
I agree with all that.
I want the same thing as you, all the nannying, all the social distancing, all the regulations need to go. Hopefully they do all go and your daughter can have a bumper summer. 👍
I have no idea why Van Tam receives plaudits. He’s unable to give a single presser with some inane half baked metaphor about cricket or trains rather than talking clearly and articulately about the scientific detail. And his statement this week on “don’t meet up indoors even when vaccinated just because” was scary.
The reason we are not allowing fully vaccinated folk to get together inside etc is purely to satisfy the British sense of fair play. It is not based on science. I've not seen any polling on it, but I suspect it is being widely flouted anyway (including by me).
Fair play my arse!
No doubt lots of flouting is going on but those businesses which depend for their livelihoods on people meeting together indoors are being denied the opportunity to make a living. They are not being treated fairly at all. All that is happening is that people are flouting the rules and some businesses - supermarkets - sell them what they need to socialise while those whose businesses this is are forced to watch from the sidelines and see their business lose customers, money and jobs.
I can see the 'fair play' argument on not letting those vaccinated enjoy benefits that younger people, through no fault other than being young are denied. Particularly when the young have made lots of sacrifices largely to protect the old.
However, I'm not vaccinated yet and I can't get in the least bit worked up about vaccinated people meeting up with each other, going down the pub, going to restaurants. If I can't do that, I can't do that. There's no actual harm to me if other people are allowed to do it. And indirect benefits to me if the economy is less screwed and (if I worked in the hospitality industry) direct benefits in keeping a job.
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
It's because most believed them to be necessary, having seen some of the horrors elsewhere.
We're already seeing crumbling of the concensus on here and I'm seeing it anecdotally in friends and family. As the threat recedes, acceptance of the restrictions will too. It would be crazy if that was not the case.
Is it surprising that restrictions have been accepted so far? Maybe. It would be astonishing to me if restrictions were accepted after June, unless there are unforeseen events (some new super-variant that renders vaccines largley ineffective and a third wave). I'm part of the shadowy cabal (scientists, epidemiologists in particular) that apparently wants to take away peoples freedoms forever, but extend the restrictions beyond 21 June without good reason and I'll be joining you on the barricades.
It reminds me of the famous "we've established what you are, we're just haggling over price" quote.
Once people have willingly accepted, welcomed even, those restrictions they are likely not going to be put back in the box and one person's "red line" is another's "that sounds perfectly fine".
To use the most obvious example on here, @contrarian had a red line way, way, way over there <== while, say, @SandyRentool and @FrancisUrquhart I believe (apols if not) have a red line over there ==>
Everyone has a red line but that line is on the continuum of a restriction of liberties. OK what about seatbelts you say. And it is a good question. But there has not been copious legislation about the freedom to drive or be in a car. There has been for freedom of assembly, etc.
Yes, of course there's a continuum of opinions. There are some things that I stopped doing while still legal (we stopped seeing my in-laws before the first lockdown as they were in a vulnerable group) and some things that vexed me a bit due to being illegal (cancelled holiday last summer, in a cottage miles from anywhere with my household only - really zero risk from us going, we'd have seen no one, but I accepted that the rules - if there are rules - have to be universal).
The question is, should things have been illegal or simply just guidance? Most people are fairly pragmatic and - as there was support for many of the restrictions, were not against that being in law (I know that's the 'they came for the Jews but as I was not a Jew I did nothing' argument). I can see the philosophical point about whether these things should be in law or not. However, there's a practical point too in that making things illegal does give people cover to not do them under peer pressure (as also for seatbelts, motorcycle helmets). While I like the Swedish approach in many ways, I suspect passing the law, breaking the law being undetectable in most cases, is still useful for compliance. However, I wouldn't want to see the law enforced in all but the most egregious cases (does that make me a hypocrite? maybe so). I was apalled by Derbyshire police harassing walkers who were going out miles away from anyone. Or indeed stops of cars on the roads.
I do however think the circumstances are/were exceptional and don't think a precendent has been set. If there's another major pandemic then we may see similar laws. But I don't see where this is going to creep into other areas of life, because it simply won't be accepted. Masks this winter for flu? I don't see the government getting away with it or wanting to risk unpopularity by trying. How do I know? Because it crossed my red line, which is much closer to Sandy and Francis's than Contrarian's. To remain popular, the government has to 'win' against Covid and that means things going back to normal. Continued restrictions is not victory, it's failure and the government will not be rewarded for failure.
In short: we can disagree on whether legal restrictions were right or wrong (and there is no right answer, I think). But I don't believe this set of legal restrictions changes the future other than in another pandemic of similar or greater severity.
Thank you. I paid you the compliment (I hope) of reading your post carefully. Line by line indeed - something that I have been doing while reading Jonathan Sumption's latest book which is necessary!
And yes - for me the nub is laws vs guidelines. The lockdowns were to save lives and protect the NHS. So the lives yes of course (cf seatbelts) and saving us from ourselves, which has precedent. But the laws dealt with the most fundamental of our rights as the seatbelt laws don't and once laws are on the books and that precedent is set then it is damned difficult and nor do governments seem to want to remove them.
As for the peer pressure for me it's not enough of a quid pro quo.
So I do think that the government will maintain this anxiety because logically, politically, it works and the role of a government is to keep itself in power. I don't think "THEY WANT TO CONTROL US BECAUSE EVIL". But I do think that having found that they are popular with such measures, that people approve of them, the imperative to remove them is diminished greatly.
Although as others have said, if the UK wants voluntarily to submit to such a life then who am I to complain.
I very much enjoyed Sumptions book Trials of the State and was much persuaded by it, so I hope his new book is more nuanced or detailed than some of his Covid media pieces, which at times were a bit lazy and Ill informed in a 'I enjoy being a lockdown rebel' kind of way.
It's also amusing that people are still treating Hartlepool as a *possible* Con gain rather than an absolute dead certainty.
If the Tories can gain a seat in a by-election while in Government it will be a shock, not a certainty. It would also signal about 15 more Labour-held seats as probable Tory gains next time, which gives a baseline of a Tory majority of 110 going into the next election.
My money is where my mouth is, I've bet on a Labour hold.
Like I said — amusing.
We'll see. If I'm wrong I'll lose some money, but I'll be happy to take 110 majority as a baseline going into the next election before swing.
Is that seriously what you think?
Not exactly because uniform swing doesn't apply and Hartlepool is somewhat of a 'special case' because of the ridiculously high Brexit Party vote.
But generally for the next election I expect nothing other than a repeat of 2019, based on the current status quo.
That's the point though, I don't think its possible to say that the Brexit Party vote are Tories in exile. They're far more likely to be Labour in exile "neverTories" who were not prepared to vote Tory, even to "Get Brexit Done".
If constituencies with a very high Brexit Party vote is split about 2:1 then that switches Hartlepool from red to blue - but Hartlepool is not a "special case" it is one of 15 seats like this. It would also switch 14 other constituencies too. There are 15 constituencies across the country that would fall to the blue team like Hartlepool if high BXP splits that way.
Perhaps you're right, perhaps high BXP will split Tory and not as I think be "neverTories" but if so then that's setting a baseline of 110 majority that should be in the Tory column without any other swings just from squeezing BXP next time.
I'd expect Labour, under Starmer, to win some metropolitan liberal elite seats in the south to make up for the further loss in the North — leading us back to 2019.
Labour's real failure in 2019 was that it is nowhere near in the likes of Stevenage, Milton Keynes, Reading West, Crawley and so on.
It's also amusing that people are still treating Hartlepool as a *possible* Con gain rather than an absolute dead certainty.
If the Tories can gain a seat in a by-election while in Government it will be a shock, not a certainty. It would also signal about 15 more Labour-held seats as probable Tory gains next time, which gives a baseline of a Tory majority of 110 going into the next election.
My money is where my mouth is, I've bet on a Labour hold.
Same here. I cannot see how anyone can say it’s an absolute certainty. It isn’t. It’s a toss up. I’ve got fifty quid on a labour hold at an average of 11/8.
For one reason — Ben Houchen is going to be overwhelmingly reelected and I can't see people voting Con for mayor and then Labour for Westminster. They'll vote, as they say in the states, Blue down ticket.
I agree about Houchen. He’s done a decent job and the labour candidate is Really poor. However Hartlepool has gained less compared to other areas in the Tees mayoralty. Houchen can, and will, win without necessarily getting a majority in the hartlepool seat. I can’t see it being a Tory cert. do you think if the by election was Middlesbrough not Hartlepool it would go Tory ?
It's also amusing that people are still treating Hartlepool as a *possible* Con gain rather than an absolute dead certainty.
If the Tories can gain a seat in a by-election while in Government it will be a shock, not a certainty. It would also signal about 15 more Labour-held seats as probable Tory gains next time, which gives a baseline of a Tory majority of 110 going into the next election.
My money is where my mouth is, I've bet on a Labour hold.
Like I said — amusing.
We'll see. If I'm wrong I'll lose some money, but I'll be happy to take 110 majority as a baseline going into the next election before swing.
Is that seriously what you think?
Not exactly because uniform swing doesn't apply and Hartlepool is somewhat of a 'special case' because of the ridiculously high Brexit Party vote.
But generally for the next election I expect nothing other than a repeat of 2019, based on the current status quo.
That's the point though, I don't think its possible to say that the Brexit Party vote are Tories in exile. They're far more likely to be Labour in exile "neverTories" who were not prepared to vote Tory, even to "Get Brexit Done".
If constituencies with a very high Brexit Party vote is split about 2:1 then that switches Hartlepool from red to blue - but Hartlepool is not a "special case" it is one of 15 seats like this. It would also switch 14 other constituencies too. There are 15 constituencies across the country that would fall to the blue team like Hartlepool if high BXP splits that way.
Perhaps you're right, perhaps high BXP will split Tory and not as I think be "neverTories" but if so then that's setting a baseline of 110 majority that should be in the Tory column without any other swings just from squeezing BXP next time.
I'd expect Labour, under Starmer, to win some metropolitan liberal elite seats in the south to make up for the further loss in the North — leading us back to 2019.
I also expect Labour to make gains in the South too. Quite frankly there are some long-held Tory areas that the Tories deserve to lose due to pandering to NIMBYism and meaning that people can't afford their own homes. If that means the likes of IDS lose their seat then I can live with that.
If that balances out net to another 2019 style result but IDS and other southern MPs replaced with Northern ones then even better.
It's also amusing that people are still treating Hartlepool as a *possible* Con gain rather than an absolute dead certainty.
If the Tories can gain a seat in a by-election while in Government it will be a shock, not a certainty. It would also signal about 15 more Labour-held seats as probable Tory gains next time, which gives a baseline of a Tory majority of 110 going into the next election.
My money is where my mouth is, I've bet on a Labour hold.
Like I said — amusing.
We'll see. If I'm wrong I'll lose some money, but I'll be happy to take 110 majority as a baseline going into the next election before swing.
Is that seriously what you think?
Not exactly because uniform swing doesn't apply and Hartlepool is somewhat of a 'special case' because of the ridiculously high Brexit Party vote.
But generally for the next election I expect nothing other than a repeat of 2019, based on the current status quo.
That's the point though, I don't think its possible to say that the Brexit Party vote are Tories in exile. They're far more likely to be Labour in exile "neverTories" who were not prepared to vote Tory, even to "Get Brexit Done".
If constituencies with a very high Brexit Party vote is split about 2:1 then that switches Hartlepool from red to blue - but Hartlepool is not a "special case" it is one of 15 seats like this. It would also switch 14 other constituencies too. There are 15 constituencies across the country that would fall to the blue team like Hartlepool if high BXP splits that way.
Perhaps you're right, perhaps high BXP will split Tory and not as I think be "neverTories" but if so then that's setting a baseline of 110 majority that should be in the Tory column without any other swings just from squeezing BXP next time.
I'd expect Labour, under Starmer, to win some metropolitan liberal elite seats in the south to make up for the further loss in the North — leading us back to 2019.
At the moment that is the best Labour can hope for - win seats down south while losing the seats Farage gave them in the last election.
That's definitely not enough but I can't see how Labour targets the two completely different targets they need to reach at the same time. The Tories have grabbed the middle ground and what is left isn't targetable with a single set of policies.
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
Britons will be slaves, it seems.
I’ve been amazed at the collective reflex to defer to authority figures over the last year. I was always under the impression that the British cultural norm was instinctive distrust of authority. I can only assume it’s because they’ve put up on stage a doctor and a “scientist”, for whom the normal rules go out the window.
Nonsense. People think lockdown is the right way to go, so they go with it. Like driving on the left. Am I deferring to authority figures, failing to show enough distrust for authority etc when I stop at red lights, put a seatbelt on and so on? This "look at the sheeple" stuff aims for sophistication and actually sounds like Rik Mayall in the Young Ones.
Of course it’s been deferring to authority. We STILL have not received anything resembling a cost benefit analysis of the measures taken, either individually or in totality.
Cyclefree has repeatedly pointed out some of the contradictions and absurdities in the measures. And we should not forget that as many as 40% of the country ended up catching this virus inside one year anyway. So it is very reasonable to ask whether it was necessary or effective to do x,y and z, without trite comparisons to wearing a seatbelt, for which there is excellent supporting evidence by the way.
We have 120 years of data for seatbelts.
My PB pedantry senses tingling. Seatbelts might have been invented in the 19th century but were only introduced to cars in the very late 1940's. Its an interesting thing though. Seatbelts demonstrably save lives (pace Princess Diana). We believe that mask and social distancing work, but the actual data is lacking and hard to generate anyway. It might be that mask use is very important on trains and planes, but much less so in shops for instance. or there might be a threshold of community rates of covid that means masks are useful, but below that there is little or no effect in most situations. FWIW I think we are at that point now.
The other thing to think about is marginal cost. The marginal cost of wearing a mask is very low - both to the individual and the social/economic system around them.
I'm not sure of this. On holiday in Wales I was seriously fed up having to wear a mask in shops etc. I hate it. It puts me off from browsing and shopping in general. I think there is a danger that it reduces the extent to which people do things, and that will affect the economy. The same could be true of needing to take lateral flow tests days before attending say a football match. It will deter the casual fan. There is also the danger of keeping a population more scared than they need to be.
One example is cinemas. I'm not going to a cinema if I have to wear a mask, simply because it will be a far less pleasant experience than watching something on TV at home. I'm not much of a shopper anyway, but see the argument there, too.
What these charts fairly consistently show is that the UK not only started vaccinating much earlier but continues to vaccinate quicker than the EU as a whole. We are roughly 13% of EU +UK and in this table we have 20% of new vaccines. The result is that our lead over the EU increases as we head to full vaccination and we will be there 2 -2.5 months ahead of the EU.
Which will be worth a few thousand lives in each of the major countries but in the overall scheme of things for the pandemic is not likely to be that material. Italy and Belgium are already well ahead of us in deaths per million and will move more so but it is unlikely that France and Germany will catch up.
Economically, our faster vaccination means that our recovery should be rough a quarter ahead of the EU but we were hit harder than most with more severe lockdowns so a faster recovery was pretty likely anyway.
What this might mean for the government is that the considerable credit that it is getting for fast and effective roll out is likely to fade fairly quickly and may well be gone by the end of this year when the focus will be on the overall performance where the UK is mid table at best, not even that on some measures. It seems probable to me that Tory leads will wane considerably at that point.
I'm going to stick my neck out here and make a clear and unambiguous prediction without caveat.
I think the vaccine rollout has been so good, and so popular, and so demonstrably more competent than elsewhere, that it will be the exception that proves the rule. The electorate will do gratitude, this one time, and the Tories will increase their majority at the next general election (I am reminded of a certain infamous article, yes).
Striking and plausible. Hats off. I'm not ruling that sort of scenario out but I will let a year pass before making the official 'newpunditry-newpolitics' long range call for the next GE.
I price it as follows atm -
Tory majority 50% Hung parliament 40% Labour majority 10%
Very much agree with this. Pricing Labour is tricky. It seems to me that a Labour majority required a black swan shift in sentiment, and that barring a game changer a Tory majority and hung parliament cover nearly 100% of the eventualities. In a sense therefore a 10% chance seems high, but the volatility of the political climate indicates caution. But the bookies current 7/2 Labour majority is fantasy stuff.
Yes, I'm pricing a Labour majority like a long dated, out-of-the-money option. It's well underwater in current conditions but there's quite a bit of "time value". Hence the 10%. I'd actually lump on if the odds were (say) 15/1.
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
It's because most believed them to be necessary, having seen some of the horrors elsewhere.
We're already seeing crumbling of the concensus on here and I'm seeing it anecdotally in friends and family. As the threat recedes, acceptance of the restrictions will too. It would be crazy if that was not the case.
Is it surprising that restrictions have been accepted so far? Maybe. It would be astonishing to me if restrictions were accepted after June, unless there are unforeseen events (some new super-variant that renders vaccines largley ineffective and a third wave). I'm part of the shadowy cabal (scientists, epidemiologists in particular) that apparently wants to take away peoples freedoms forever, but extend the restrictions beyond 21 June without good reason and I'll be joining you on the barricades.
It reminds me of the famous "we've established what you are, we're just haggling over price" quote.
Once people have willingly accepted, welcomed even, those restrictions they are likely not going to be put back in the box and one person's "red line" is another's "that sounds perfectly fine".
To use the most obvious example on here, @contrarian had a red line way, way, way over there <== while, say, @SandyRentool and @FrancisUrquhart I believe (apols if not) have a red line over there ==>
Everyone has a red line but that line is on the continuum of a restriction of liberties. OK what about seatbelts you say. And it is a good question. But there has not been copious legislation about the freedom to drive or be in a car. There has been for freedom of assembly, etc.
I see the Corbynites are already laying the groundwork for a leadership challenge.
Diane Abbott - “Tories increase lead over Labour”If this is true it is very worrying".
I would imagine the Labour left will be readying themselves to seieze the narrative if next Friday proves to be a disappointing day for Starmer. If they want to oust a bland steady Eddy leader it's hard to think of many windows of opportunity except straight after an election.
Which is exactly what the labour right did after the Brexit referendum and the comments from the likes of Diane Abbott are no different to what the labour right did when Corbyn was leader. Not defending it, no saying it’s productive, but it is there. Labour is still at war with itself and it’s current top team is woefully ineffective.
The labour left have lost a lot of members in the last year. I cannot see them either presenting a good candidate, as they don’t have one, or winning If they did have one.
I agree. If the polls are correct I have always maintained the left will return Owen Smith's favour, but they will struggle for a viable candidate, lose and Starmer will come out of a leadership contest stronger.
Of course if Labour outperform the polling he has nothing to worry about until the next election.
Bit in italics - isn't that actually pretty much what happened with the Owen Smith effort? - Struggle for a viable candidate - CHECK - Lose - CHECK - Come out of a leadership contest stronger - CHECK, I think - the end of serious efforts to unseat Corbyn
Very true. I think with the Labour right they struggled for a candidate because the well known more serious hitters didnt want blood on their hands so they ended up with a limited stalking horse in Smith.
Now the gloves are well and truly off I imagine a few of the remaining Labour left bigger beasts (McDonnell, Lewis, Burgon) would have no qualms about taking on SKS. None of them will win mind.
There's absolutely zero chance of Starmer being challenged this year, however woeful the local election results. Both left and right will give him a minimum of another year before anxiety starts (if he hasn't made significant opinion poll progress).
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
Britons will be slaves, it seems.
I’ve been amazed at the collective reflex to defer to authority figures over the last year. I was always under the impression that the British cultural norm was instinctive distrust of authority. I can only assume it’s because they’ve put up on stage a doctor and a “scientist”, for whom the normal rules go out the window.
Nonsense. People think lockdown is the right way to go, so they go with it. Like driving on the left. Am I deferring to authority figures, failing to show enough distrust for authority etc when I stop at red lights, put a seatbelt on and so on? This "look at the sheeple" stuff aims for sophistication and actually sounds like Rik Mayall in the Young Ones.
Of course it’s been deferring to authority. We STILL have not received anything resembling a cost benefit analysis of the measures taken, either individually or in totality.
Cyclefree has repeatedly pointed out some of the contradictions and absurdities in the measures. And we should not forget that as many as 40% of the country ended up catching this virus inside one year anyway. So it is very reasonable to ask whether it was necessary or effective to do x,y and z, without trite comparisons to wearing a seatbelt, for which there is excellent supporting evidence by the way.
We have 120 years of data for seatbelts.
My PB pedantry senses tingling. Seatbelts might have been invented in the 19th century but were only introduced to cars in the very late 1940's. Its an interesting thing though. Seatbelts demonstrably save lives (pace Princess Diana). We believe that mask and social distancing work, but the actual data is lacking and hard to generate anyway. It might be that mask use is very important on trains and planes, but much less so in shops for instance. or there might be a threshold of community rates of covid that means masks are useful, but below that there is little or no effect in most situations. FWIW I think we are at that point now.
The other thing to think about is marginal cost. The marginal cost of wearing a mask is very low - both to the individual and the social/economic system around them.
I'm not sure of this. On holiday in Wales I was seriously fed up having to wear a mask in shops etc. I hate it. It puts me off from browsing and shopping in general. I think there is a danger that it reduces the extent to which people do things, and that will affect the economy. The same could be true of needing to take lateral flow tests days before attending say a football match. It will deter the casual fan. There is also the danger of keeping a population more scared than they need to be.
One example is cinemas. I'm not going to a cinema if I have to wear a mask, simply because it will be a far less pleasant experience than watching something on TV at home. I'm not much of a shopper anyway, but see the argument there, too.
I went in December and I think we were supposed to be wearing masks in cinemas then, but after 5 minutes I saw no one else was so stopped. Certainly none of the staff seemed to be bothered so long as you had one on as you entered the building.
It's also amusing that people are still treating Hartlepool as a *possible* Con gain rather than an absolute dead certainty.
If the Tories can gain a seat in a by-election while in Government it will be a shock, not a certainty. It would also signal about 15 more Labour-held seats as probable Tory gains next time, which gives a baseline of a Tory majority of 110 going into the next election.
My money is where my mouth is, I've bet on a Labour hold.
Same here. I cannot see how anyone can say it’s an absolute certainty. It isn’t. It’s a toss up. I’ve got fifty quid on a labour hold at an average of 11/8.
For one reason — Ben Houchen is going to be overwhelmingly reelected and I can't see people voting Con for mayor and then Labour for Westminster. They'll vote, as they say in the states, Blue down ticket.
I agree about Houchen. He’s done a decent job and the labour candidate is Really poor. However Hartlepool has gained less compared to other areas in the Tees mayoralty. Houchen can, and will, win without necessarily getting a majority in the hartlepool seat. I can’t see it being a Tory cert. do you think if the by election was Middlesbrough not Hartlepool it would go Tory ?
Boro is the most Labour friendly constituency on Teesside — it is a university seat after all.
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
Britons will be slaves, it seems.
I’ve been amazed at the collective reflex to defer to authority figures over the last year. I was always under the impression that the British cultural norm was instinctive distrust of authority. I can only assume it’s because they’ve put up on stage a doctor and a “scientist”, for whom the normal rules go out the window.
Nonsense. People think lockdown is the right way to go, so they go with it. Like driving on the left. Am I deferring to authority figures, failing to show enough distrust for authority etc when I stop at red lights, put a seatbelt on and so on? This "look at the sheeple" stuff aims for sophistication and actually sounds like Rik Mayall in the Young Ones.
Of course it’s been deferring to authority. We STILL have not received anything resembling a cost benefit analysis of the measures taken, either individually or in totality.
Cyclefree has repeatedly pointed out some of the contradictions and absurdities in the measures. And we should not forget that as many as 40% of the country ended up catching this virus inside one year anyway. So it is very reasonable to ask whether it was necessary or effective to do x,y and z, without trite comparisons to wearing a seatbelt, for which there is excellent supporting evidence by the way.
We have 120 years of data for seatbelts.
My PB pedantry senses tingling. Seatbelts might have been invented in the 19th century but were only introduced to cars in the very late 1940's. Its an interesting thing though. Seatbelts demonstrably save lives (pace Princess Diana). We believe that mask and social distancing work, but the actual data is lacking and hard to generate anyway. It might be that mask use is very important on trains and planes, but much less so in shops for instance. or there might be a threshold of community rates of covid that means masks are useful, but below that there is little or no effect in most situations. FWIW I think we are at that point now.
The other thing to think about is marginal cost. The marginal cost of wearing a mask is very low - both to the individual and the social/economic system around them.
I'm not sure of this. On holiday in Wales I was seriously fed up having to wear a mask in shops etc. I hate it. It puts me off from browsing and shopping in general. I think there is a danger that it reduces the extent to which people do things, and that will affect the economy. The same could be true of needing to take lateral flow tests days before attending say a football match. It will deter the casual fan. There is also the danger of keeping a population more scared than they need to be.
One example is cinemas. I'm not going to a cinema if I have to wear a mask, simply because it will be a far less pleasant experience than watching something on TV at home. I'm not much of a shopper anyway, but see the argument there, too.
From talking to people from countries where mask wearing in public is a long standing thing... similar numbers of people don't like them. They just get used to using them. I presume that a number don't adapt and find them always hateful... But all in all, life goes on.
Anyway, its Friday morning so lets set a nice test of legal and moral right and wrong.
It is only right that an individual should be able to choose which laws apply to them. It is only right that when a complaint is made and an investigation carried out to determine if that individual has broken the strict professional code that directs their behaviour, that the accused is able to discard the findings against them and carry on in role.
Its only fair. Lawyers get to dismiss professional misconduct convictions. Doctors. Bent Coppers. People who steal from work. So it is an outrage for people to think there is something wrong with the Prime Minister being able to simply dismiss the professional misconduct findings that are presented to him about his behaviour.
The Prime Minister should be subject to the same courts as the rest of us. If he receives a criminal conviction at a court of law then of course he should resign.
Anonymous people claiming on social media that he has done something wrong is not a court of law.
I was thinking about this last night.
Does anyone know the financial year in which this work was done? I wonder if the reluctance to reveal who repaid the loan was that it was a bridging loan - ie Boris claimed 2 years worth of the refurbishment allowance (£60k) and used the loan to bridge the gap.
I’ve no idea if that would be in the rules (strikes me as a bit of a grey area) or if it happened but it’s a possibility he might not want to put out there as it is certainly a but cute
Yes that will probably be the next rationalisation tried: bringing forward next year's allowance. It seems to be within the rules to roll allowances forward and this is just the obverse. Give it another six months for Boris and CCHQ to make the required declarations and Bob's your uncle.
Except it does not answer Keir Starmer's question: who initially paid?
It seems that Johnson's approval ratings have been impacted by the sleaze allegations, however this has not changed the headline voting figures.
Therefore, it seems to me that Labour is not doing enough on the other side for people to switch. They need to get some policies into place and also change up their top team.
A good post. The Government is riding high on a well-oiled vaccination programme, the pubs open, and free money (4th stage SSEI grants are being paid as we speak).
Not so much the wallpaper, but I did think the "bodies piled high" allegation would shift opinion. On that score Cummings' fox is shot...unless he has a recording.
"Pubs open" - a reality check is needed.
Some pubs are open: those with beer gardens. The vast majority will still be making a loss or, at best, breaking even. That is unsustainable.
What they and restaurants and other hospitality businesses need are the end of social distancing inside or the requirement for mandatory table service or the rule of 6 etc and the ability for people to stand at the bar, as normal. Then they can start earning and making profits.
Will these requirements be lifted? It is unclear. But until they are we are not back to normal and these businesses will not be back to normal and will - without support - be unviable.
There is an unfairness in how they are being treated. If it is ok to go to a shop it is absurd that one cannot go inside a cafe. If it is ok to be packed together in the tube then it is a nonsense to stop people standing together chatting in a pub.
I am suspicious - as is Daughter - of what the government's real intentions are and what will actually happen. She and her customers are desperate to get back to normal. Until she sees the actual rules she does not believe in this "we are getting back to normal" shtick. And she is right to be suspicious. The government is not to be trusted. It has too often said one thing and done another.
If mandatory social distancing regulations for pubs etc are abolished on 21/6, a return to normal not a "new normal" then will you and your daughter be happy with that?
I think it should be sooner, but I'm begrudgingly OK so long as it happens by then. No later, no ifs, no buts.
What needs to go is social distancing and mandatory table service. If that happens she will be happy and can do business again. She has already booked a very popular local band to come in September and December.
What she does not want is the sort of restrictions there were before the last lockdown which meant that she had all the costs without the customers. She opened last December but it was largely a waste of time, apart from a few days. If the government imposes similar restrictions again, then the business is pointless and she will just give it up.
I hope this won't happen. But when I hear people like Van Tam saying that it is perfectly safe for people who have been vaccinated to meet each other indoors but they shouldn't "because we say so" I wonder what sort of country we are becoming and whether the government really will give up the micro-managing control it seems to love.
I agree with all that.
I want the same thing as you, all the nannying, all the social distancing, all the regulations need to go. Hopefully they do all go and your daughter can have a bumper summer. 👍
I have no idea why Van Tam receives plaudits. He’s unable to give a single presser with some inane half baked metaphor about cricket or trains rather than talking clearly and articulately about the scientific detail. And his statement this week on “don’t meet up indoors even when vaccinated just because” was scary.
The reason we are not allowing fully vaccinated folk to get together inside etc is purely to satisfy the British sense of fair play. It is not based on science. I've not seen any polling on it, but I suspect it is being widely flouted anyway (including by me).
Fair play my arse!
No doubt lots of flouting is going on but those businesses which depend for their livelihoods on people meeting together indoors are being denied the opportunity to make a living. They are not being treated fairly at all. All that is happening is that people are flouting the rules and some businesses - supermarkets - sell them what they need to socialise while those whose businesses this is are forced to watch from the sidelines and see their business lose customers, money and jobs.
I meant fair play towards the public, and essentially those not eligible for the vaccine yet. I note America has a different approach.
It's also amusing that people are still treating Hartlepool as a *possible* Con gain rather than an absolute dead certainty.
If the Tories can gain a seat in a by-election while in Government it will be a shock, not a certainty. It would also signal about 15 more Labour-held seats as probable Tory gains next time, which gives a baseline of a Tory majority of 110 going into the next election.
My money is where my mouth is, I've bet on a Labour hold.
Same here. I cannot see how anyone can say it’s an absolute certainty. It isn’t. It’s a toss up. I’ve got fifty quid on a labour hold at an average of 11/8.
For one reason — Ben Houchen is going to be overwhelmingly reelected and I can't see people voting Con for mayor and then Labour for Westminster. They'll vote, as they say in the states, Blue down ticket.
I agree about Houchen. He’s done a decent job and the labour candidate is Really poor. However Hartlepool has gained less compared to other areas in the Tees mayoralty. Houchen can, and will, win without necessarily getting a majority in the hartlepool seat. I can’t see it being a Tory cert. do you think if the by election was Middlesbrough not Hartlepool it would go Tory ?
Hartlepool's choice is to vote Tory in the hope that they get something from this Tory Government or vote Labour and watch things continue to go elsewhere.
The issue for Hartlepool is that Geographically it's not that great a place to invest in, it's transport links are dire when you compare it to almost anywhere else in the Tees Valley..
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
It's because most believed them to be necessary, having seen some of the horrors elsewhere.
We're already seeing crumbling of the concensus on here and I'm seeing it anecdotally in friends and family. As the threat recedes, acceptance of the restrictions will too. It would be crazy if that was not the case.
Is it surprising that restrictions have been accepted so far? Maybe. It would be astonishing to me if restrictions were accepted after June, unless there are unforeseen events (some new super-variant that renders vaccines largley ineffective and a third wave). I'm part of the shadowy cabal (scientists, epidemiologists in particular) that apparently wants to take away peoples freedoms forever, but extend the restrictions beyond 21 June without good reason and I'll be joining you on the barricades.
It reminds me of the famous "we've established what you are, we're just haggling over price" quote.
Once people have willingly accepted, welcomed even, those restrictions they are likely not going to be put back in the box and one person's "red line" is another's "that sounds perfectly fine".
To use the most obvious example on here, @contrarian had a red line way, way, way over there <== while, say, @SandyRentool and @FrancisUrquhart I believe (apols if not) have a red line over there ==>
Everyone has a red line but that line is on the continuum of a restriction of liberties. OK what about seatbelts you say. And it is a good question. But there has not been copious legislation about the freedom to drive or be in a car. There has been for freedom of assembly, etc.
Yes, of course there's a continuum of opinions. There are some things that I stopped doing while still legal (we stopped seeing my in-laws before the first lockdown as they were in a vulnerable group) and some things that vexed me a bit due to being illegal (cancelled holiday last summer, in a cottage miles from anywhere with my household only - really zero risk from us going, we'd have seen no one, but I accepted that the rules - if there are rules - have to be universal).
The question is, should things have been illegal or simply just guidance? Most people are fairly pragmatic and - as there was support for many of the restrictions, were not against that being in law (I know that's the 'they came for the Jews but as I was not a Jew I did nothing' argument). I can see the philosophical point about whether these things should be in law or not. However, there's a practical point too in that making things illegal does give people cover to not do them under peer pressure (as also for seatbelts, motorcycle helmets). While I like the Swedish approach in many ways, I suspect passing the law, breaking the law being undetectable in most cases, is still useful for compliance. However, I wouldn't want to see the law enforced in all but the most egregious cases (does that make me a hypocrite? maybe so). I was apalled by Derbyshire police harassing walkers who were going out miles away from anyone. Or indeed stops of cars on the roads.
I do however think the circumstances are/were exceptional and don't think a precendent has been set. If there's another major pandemic then we may see similar laws. But I don't see where this is going to creep into other areas of life, because it simply won't be accepted. Masks this winter for flu? I don't see the government getting away with it or wanting to risk unpopularity by trying. How do I know? Because it crossed my red line, which is much closer to Sandy and Francis's than Contrarian's. To remain popular, the government has to 'win' against Covid and that means things going back to normal. Continued restrictions is not victory, it's failure and the government will not be rewarded for failure.
In short: we can disagree on whether legal restrictions were right or wrong (and there is no right answer, I think). But I don't believe this set of legal restrictions changes the future other than in another pandemic of similar or greater severity.
Thank you. I paid you the compliment (I hope) of reading your post carefully. Line by line indeed - something that I have been doing while reading Jonathan Sumption's latest book which is necessary!
And yes - for me the nub is laws vs guidelines. The lockdowns were to save lives and protect the NHS. So the lives yes of course (cf seatbelts) and saving us from ourselves, which has precedent. But the laws dealt with the most fundamental of our rights as the seatbelt laws don't and once laws are on the books and that precedent is set then it is damned difficult and nor do governments seem to want to remove them.
As for the peer pressure for me it's not enough of a quid pro quo.
So I do think that the government will maintain this anxiety because logically, politically, it works and the role of a government is to keep itself in power. I don't think "THEY WANT TO CONTROL US BECAUSE EVIL". But I do think that having found that they are popular with such measures, that people approve of them, the imperative to remove them is diminished greatly.
Although as others have said, if the UK wants voluntarily to submit to such a life then who am I to complain.
It was long, overly so, so I applaud your diligence
I'll keep it short this time: I think such measures will become unpopular and people will disapprove of them once the reason for them is gone. It will be imperative to remove them if the goverment wishes to remain popular.
But anyway, we'll get to see quite soon, won't we? If the government is still pushing restrictions beyond June 21 and polls show restrictions are still popular (without the arrival of a third wave including hospitalisations and deaths, not just cases) then I will admit that I'm wrong. And join whichever party is opposing them (I might draw the line at UKIPBrexit Reform).
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
It's because most believed them to be necessary, having seen some of the horrors elsewhere.
We're already seeing crumbling of the concensus on here and I'm seeing it anecdotally in friends and family. As the threat recedes, acceptance of the restrictions will too. It would be crazy if that was not the case.
Is it surprising that restrictions have been accepted so far? Maybe. It would be astonishing to me if restrictions were accepted after June, unless there are unforeseen events (some new super-variant that renders vaccines largley ineffective and a third wave). I'm part of the shadowy cabal (scientists, epidemiologists in particular) that apparently wants to take away peoples freedoms forever, but extend the restrictions beyond 21 June without good reason and I'll be joining you on the barricades.
It reminds me of the famous "we've established what you are, we're just haggling over price" quote.
Once people have willingly accepted, welcomed even, those restrictions they are likely not going to be put back in the box and one person's "red line" is another's "that sounds perfectly fine"...
I think that nonsense. The consent to current rules is temporary and provisional - and the fact that the degree to, and point beyond which, people find them objectionable differs considerably really doesn’t matter once most decide they are no longer necessary or justifiable.
Comments
Cyclefree has repeatedly pointed out some of the contradictions and absurdities in the measures. And we should not forget that as many as 40% of the country ended up catching this virus inside one year anyway. So it is very reasonable to ask whether it was necessary or effective to do x,y and z, without trite comparisons to wearing a seatbelt, for which there is excellent supporting evidence by the way.
I doubt there will be agreement long term on most appropriate measure to look at, excess deaths etc, and other factors will be relevant, but mortality rate is not one I think European leaders will do well by seeking comparisons with one another.
It's interesting how much overlap there is on my timeline between the Lockdown Deniers and the "no-one cares about who paid for Boris's curtains!!!" brigade. Imagine if it turns out the curtains were paid for by the manufacturer of a Covid Passport app...
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1388023310064275463
The Yugo parallels are interesting if you put aside the obvious differences in levels of wealth, development and intercommunal hatred. Croatia seems akin to Scotland - a coherent ethnic-national unit that was able to create a new identify fairly easily and embraced EU membership but still suffers from the economic dislocation of the breakup. Wales is more like Montenegro, economically dependent and unsure of its future role. Northern Ireland is quite clearly the Bosnia, riven with communal tensions that are virtually impossible to resolve. We don't have a Slovenia (rich, international, financially better off outside the club) unless you count London.
Except it does not answer Keir Starmer's question: who initially paid?
How bad can it be?
https://babylonbee.com/news/car-manufacturers-now-recommend-wearing-a-seatbelt-even-when-youre-outside-the-car
Fisheries do seem to have been used to bog down Barnier, allowing the UK to secure wins on the big picture issues.
Diane Abbott - “Tories increase lead over Labour”If this is true it is very worrying".
I would imagine the Labour left will be readying themselves to seieze the narrative if next Friday proves to be a disappointing day for Starmer. If they want to oust a bland steady Eddy leader it's hard to think of many windows of opportunity except straight after an election.
LPF, tariffs, quotas and governance were all big wins for the UK in the TCA.
Of course, Yugoslavia was held together by a dominant ideology (Communism), and repressive internal governance.
Our version of Communism (Empire) petered out in the 50s and 60s.
And if you say otherwise enjoy an entirely coincidental trip to the gulag.
BoZo presides over the investigation, which clears BoZo of any wrongdoing.
Job's a good 'un.
We have more control over more laws than we did. That its open-ended is not a criticism its the very point, the EU had control over vast swathes of the laws.
Now its perfectly fine and legitimate for you to say that paying the price of handing control of those laws to Europe was worth the return on getting the benefits of Single Market membership. It is perfectly fine for you to argue that the benefits from regaining control of the laws is not worth the price of leaving the Market. That's balance.
It is entirely unbalanced for you to deny there were any benefits whatsoever to regaining control of the laws.
Alistair's Occasional Guide to Scotland for PB Scotch Experts
Part 72 - Differential Turnout
PB Scotch experts love misunderstanding Swing in Scotland. After the 2016 and 2017 election the idea of of SNP-to-Con switchers got embedded in the board psyche. With a couple of notable exception this didn't happen.What happened was differential turnout. Let's use a really, really clear example, the absolute mouthful that is Perthshire South and Kinross-shire
In 2011 the results were
SNP 51.49%
Con 28.53%
Lab 12.75%
LD 7.23%
In 2016 the results were
SNP 42.4% (-9.1)
Con 38.4% (+9.9)
Lab 9.4% (-3.3)
LD 8.3% (+1.1)
OMG the SNP fall is almost the same as the Conservative rise IT MUST BE SNP TO CON SWITCHERS!!!!!1!!!one!
Stop, please, think about what you are saying.
Let us look at what actually happened:
2011 Turnout: 53.2% (31,216)
2016 Turnout: 60.9% (36,149)
2011 SNP Votes: 16,073
2016 SNP Votes: 15,315 (-758)
2011 Con Votes: 8,907
2016 Con Votes:13,893 (+4,986)
So unless 758 voters got counted six and a half times when they switched from SNP to Conservative I don't think SNP to Con switchers is the answer here. A slightly more likely explanation is that the 4933 extra voters who voted in 2016 over 2011 were mostly Conservatives with the additional of some Lab tactical Unionist voting.
This is why turnoutis so vitally important in Scotland. If you do a plot of SNP Constituency vote percentage vs Constituency turnout form 2015 onwards the trend is the lower the constituency turnout the higher the SNP votes share.
Which is granted an exemption when there is a public health emergency. But as I keep saying, at every stage such actions should be robustly and vigorously questioned. They were all waved through.
The question is, should things have been illegal or simply just guidance? Most people are fairly pragmatic and - as there was support for many of the restrictions, were not against that being in law (I know that's the 'they came for the Jews but as I was not a Jew I did nothing' argument). I can see the philosophical point about whether these things should be in law or not. However, there's a practical point too in that making things illegal does give people cover to not do them under peer pressure (as also for seatbelts, motorcycle helmets). While I like the Swedish approach in many ways, I suspect passing the law, breaking the law being undetectable in most cases, is still useful for compliance. However, I wouldn't want to see the law enforced in all but the most egregious cases (does that make me a hypocrite? maybe so). I was apalled by Derbyshire police harassing walkers who were going out miles away from anyone. Or indeed stops of cars on the roads.
I do however think the circumstances are/were exceptional and don't think a precendent has been set. If there's another major pandemic then we may see similar laws. But I don't see where this is going to creep into other areas of life, because it simply won't be accepted. Masks this winter for flu? I don't see the government getting away with it or wanting to risk unpopularity by trying. How do I know? Because it crossed my red line, which is much closer to Sandy and Francis's than Contrarian's. To remain popular, the government has to 'win' against Covid and that means things going back to normal. Continued restrictions is not victory, it's failure and the government will not be rewarded for failure.
In short: we can disagree on whether legal restrictions were right or wrong (and there is no right answer, I think). But I don't believe this set of legal restrictions changes the future other than in another pandemic of similar or greater severity.
I've personally said on here previously that while I believe the allegations to be serious and that people *should* care, I didn't actually expect the public as a whole to care one bit.
My money is where my mouth is, I've bet on a Labour hold.
The labour left have lost a lot of members in the last year. I cannot see them either presenting a good candidate, as they don’t have one, or winning If they did have one.
Otherwise shall we dial back the libel a bit?
No doubt lots of flouting is going on but those businesses which depend for their livelihoods on people meeting together indoors are being denied the opportunity to make a living. They are not being treated fairly at all. All that is happening is that people are flouting the rules and some businesses - supermarkets - sell them what they need to socialise while those whose businesses this is are forced to watch from the sidelines and see their business lose customers, money and jobs.
The consent to current rules is temporary and provisional - and the fact that the degree to, and point beyond which, people find them objectionable differs considerably really doesn’t matter once most decide they are no longer necessary or justifiable.
Is that seriously what you think?
Of course if Labour outperform the polling he has nothing to worry about until the next election.
But generally for the next election I expect nothing other than a repeat of 2019, based on the current status quo.
Starmer is useless, BoZo is King...
The Tories are going to win at a canter, and take hundreds of council seats, right?
Its an interesting thing though. Seatbelts demonstrably save lives (pace Princess Diana). We believe that mask and social distancing work, but the actual data is lacking and hard to generate anyway. It might be that mask use is very important on trains and planes, but much less so in shops for instance. or there might be a threshold of community rates of covid that means masks are useful, but below that there is little or no effect in most situations. FWIW I think we are at that point now.
If you give me a law we have “regained control” over, I will tell you if I think it’s a benefit.
A general principle of “regaining control over our laws” is too broad for me to chalk up as a “benefit of Brexit”.
I have no clue what Covid is going to do to turnout figures and so have no insight into what the actual result might be.
Its also why I found a PPB that seemed to focus exclusively on the list vote both bewildering and frustrating.
- Struggle for a viable candidate - CHECK
- Lose - CHECK
- Come out of a leadership contest stronger - CHECK, I think - the end of serious efforts to unseat Corbyn
We are nothing like Yugoslavia.
If constituencies with a very high Brexit Party vote is split about 2:1 then that switches Hartlepool from red to blue - but Hartlepool is not a "special case" it is one of 15 seats like this. It would also switch 14 other constituencies too. There are 15 constituencies across the country that would fall to the blue team like Hartlepool if high BXP splits that way.
Perhaps you're right, perhaps high BXP will split Tory and not as I think be "neverTories" but if so then that's setting a baseline of 110 majority that should be in the Tory column without any other swings just from squeezing BXP next time.
Now the gloves are well and truly off I imagine a few of the remaining Labour left bigger beasts (McDonnell, Lewis, Burgon) would have no qualms about taking on SKS. None of them will win mind.
And yes - for me the nub is laws vs guidelines. The lockdowns were to save lives and protect the NHS. So the lives yes of course (cf seatbelts) and saving us from ourselves, which has precedent. But the laws dealt with the most fundamental of our rights as the seatbelt laws don't and once laws are on the books and that precedent is set then it is damned difficult and nor do governments seem to want to remove them.
As for the peer pressure for me it's not enough of a quid pro quo.
So I do think that the government will maintain this anxiety because logically, politically, it works and the role of a government is to keep itself in power. I don't think "THEY WANT TO CONTROL US BECAUSE EVIL". But I do think that having found that they are popular with such measures, that people approve of them, the imperative to remove them is diminished greatly.
Although as others have said, if the UK wants voluntarily to submit to such a life then who am I to complain.
You might reasonably say that in your opinion the benefit from that is not worth the cost (and I would disagree with that) but if you're claiming there are no benefits at all then that's just blinkered.
Primary school stuff as you said. If you have a balance scale and you put one block on one side, then ten blocks on the other side, you would be right in saying that ten is more than one. You would be wrong in saying that there is nothing on one of the sides.
There is also the danger of keeping a population more scared than they need to be.
However, I'm not vaccinated yet and I can't get in the least bit worked up about vaccinated people meeting up with each other, going down the pub, going to restaurants. If I can't do that, I can't do that. There's no actual harm to me if other people are allowed to do it. And indirect benefits to me if the economy is less screwed and (if I worked in the hospitality industry) direct benefits in keeping a job.
https://leantossup.ca/scotland-holyrood/
If that balances out net to another 2019 style result but IDS and other southern MPs replaced with Northern ones then even better.
That's definitely not enough but I can't see how Labour targets the two completely different targets they need to reach at the same time. The Tories have grabbed the middle ground and what is left isn't targetable with a single set of policies.
Look at the 2017 Tees Valley Mayoral elections: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Tees_Valley_mayoral_election
In Boro, Con+UKIP is still less than Labour. In Hartlepool, Con+UKIP is over 55%, well above labour on 35%.
The issue for Hartlepool is that Geographically it's not that great a place to invest in, it's transport links are dire when you compare it to almost anywhere else in the Tees Valley..
I'll keep it short this time:
I think such measures will become unpopular and people will disapprove of them once the reason for them is gone. It will be imperative to remove them if the goverment wishes to remain popular.
But anyway, we'll get to see quite soon, won't we? If the government is still pushing restrictions beyond June 21 and polls show restrictions are still popular (without the arrival of a third wave including hospitalisations and deaths, not just cases) then I will admit that I'm wrong. And join whichever party is opposing them (I might draw the line at UKIP Brexit Reform).