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Boris looks as though he’s survived the Cummings lockdown road trip – but at what price?

Boris looks as though he’s survived the Cummings lockdown road trip – but at what price?

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Can the PM get back to where he was? The above is one of the videos now on YouTube with the words of the Proclaimers 500 Miles song adapted for Mr Cummings and his drive to Durham during the lockdown. This events of the past week have dominated the headlines and become a big talking point. The question is what will be the long term political impact? All the polling as we have seen has been very negative with even…

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New polling on Cummings finds 62% still saying it’s important

New polling on Cummings finds 62% still saying it’s important

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Tory voters split 49-49 Inevitably when a development is so party political you would expect polling responses to follow a partisan divide. The above table from tonight’s YouGov suggests that is still the case with Cummings and the lockdown but not quite at the scale you would expect. Just half of all Tories in today’s polling are saying it is important which is one reason why this isn’t going to go away. Meanwhile Johnson was grilled for two hours by…

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Motes and beams. Leading a response to a pandemic without moral authority

Motes and beams. Leading a response to a pandemic without moral authority

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So now we know: as in Pirates of the Caribbean, the rules of the C aren’t so much rules, they’re more what you’d call guidelines.  Robert Jenrick has confirmed that the public could always exercise “a degree of personal judgement”.   This will come as a considerable surprise to the 27million people who listened to Boris Johnson on 23 March: “give the British people a very simple instruction. You must stay at home, because the critical thing we must do to stop the disease spreading…

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With the Cummings lockdown saga now in its seventh day some biting polling in Daily Mail

With the Cummings lockdown saga now in its seventh day some biting polling in Daily Mail

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If the Team Johnson plan for the Cummings lockdown saga was to hope it would go away then there’s no sign of that this morning. Several papers have it as their main story and the usually Tory-backing Daily Mail is giving big prominence to the JL Partners polling above. As I’ve argued before the Mail is critical for a Tory PM and for the paper to oppose so vehemently the actions of Johnson/Cummings is not something we have seen since…

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There’s been definite damage to Boris Johnson in the polls following Dominic’s Cummings and Goings

There’s been definite damage to Boris Johnson in the polls following Dominic’s Cummings and Goings

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The last time I saw a Prime Minister needlessly trash their reputation like this was in the autumn of 2007 when Gordon Brown denied he had been planning on holding a snap election. Even one of his MPs wrote ‘Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority’, such a denial of reality damaged Brown’s ratings and they never really recovered which saw Labour lose power and they haven’t been in power since. These rapid falls…

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The front pages after Dom’s big day

The front pages after Dom’s big day

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Can he survive and what’s this going to do to lockdown compliance? One telling reaction has come from Mark Wallace of ConHome under the headline “I admire Dominic Cummings – but he needs to resign now“. He notes: Voters’ fury is real, justified and widespread. The political damage is serious and lasting. The Prime Minister might expend yet more capital to defy the uproar, and Cummings might stay on. But to do so would be a mistake. If he pauses, and coldly…

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The paper that should worry the Tories this morning is the Daily Mail

The paper that should worry the Tories this morning is the Daily Mail

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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…

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In other news Starmer moves to a net 24% lead over Johnson in latest Opinium approval ratings

In other news Starmer moves to a net 24% lead over Johnson in latest Opinium approval ratings

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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….

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