But what will the pollsters find? I’d be very surprised if we see a poll tonight on the Cummings press conference but surely we will get something during the day time. Although, as he set it out, Dom had understandable reasons for his approach it was very much out of line with what he should have been doing in late March and early April and what a big proportion of the population were doing. What I find really odd is…
Inevitably the papers big story this lockdown bank holiday Monday is the decision by Johnson to retain Cummings in spite what appears to be a clear breach of the lockdown rules. Tens of millions of people in the UK have had to make very difficult decisions in the face of the pandemic and the government’s lockdown that came in at the end of March. The polls suggest a compliance rate of 85-90% which is a big reason why the story…
Time to relax the rules? Isolation, especially when imposed rather than chosen, is hard. No wonder solitary confinement is a punishment. Periods of quiet, retreat, solitariness are valuable as a contrast to life’s normal noisy busyness. Above all, they are chosen and can be broken at will, our will. Humans crave and seek intimacy and closeness and communal activities. Socialisation and socialising – in their widest sense – are necessary for the sound development of the child and joy as…
We become what we hate, so yogis tell us. For Dominic Cummings, son-in-law of a baronet and nephew of a judge, the transition to unelected and unaccountable metropolitan elitist was a short journey. The Prime Minister has thrown his weight behind him for now and the Cabinet were dutifully tweeting on behalf of a devoted family man who felt the compelling need to drive the length of the country to self-isolate in his other home. Will this last? The answer may depend…
A third of Tory voters disapprove of Starmer compared with three-quarters of LAB voters disapproving of Johnson The latest Opinium poll carried out before the Cummings lockdown affair came out overnight and the big change has been in the approval ratings of the PM and LOTO. The charts above show the recent trends. A big development is that for the first time Starmer has moved ahead of Johnson and he’s done it with a spectacular jump in just seven days….
A guest slot from Richard Tyndall First a declaration of my view of Dominic Cummings. I am a huge fan both of the man himself, of what he has tried to achieve over many years, and of his successes as a political advisor and brains behind the Leave campaign. So it should be clear that my views on the Durham-gate affair are not based on personal antipathy towards him. In an ideal world I would want nothing more than for…