Boris is going to struggle dealing with the ever so polite but forensic Starmer
Today the new Labour leader, Keir Starmer, faced Boris Johnson for the first time at PMQs. Last week the PM wasn’t there because of the birth of his new baby. This was no ordinary session because clearly, the House was largely empty as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and some MPs were asking their questions by video links. It also came on a difficult day for the government as the UK became the top of the league table for…
Not good pandemic front pages for the government this morning
So far during the coronavirus crisis the government has had pretty good front pages. We are facing a massive challenges as a nation and generally papers from across the political spectrum have until now been broadly supportive. That, I wonder, might be about to change. The resignation of one of the government leading scientists together with the the UK death toll now being the highest in Europe combine to make this quite a difficult day for the government which, of…
A dangerous vacuum or duality: A wing and a prayer isn’t good enough when the PM’s ill
Britain needs to formalise the role of an Acting PM To talk of death lightly in current circumstances might well seem not only morbid but tasteless. In the midst of a pandemic – one hitting Britain almost as hard as anywhere – leaving many thousands of people bereaved, we obviously need to be sensitive to those considerations. And yet in terms of government, deaths among its own members are in truth a lot easier to handle than serious illness. There…
That Boris could be so afflicted brings home in a powerful way why the shutdown is necessary
That the man who just four months ago led the Conservatives to their biggest General Election Victory in decades should now be in intensive care with the coronavirus brings home the sheer magnitude of what the world is facing and why governments are going to extraordinary lengths to try to impede it. This is a killer and at the moment there’s no way of of stopping it. What makes him being afflicted more striking is that Boris is in his…
What happened on Betfair’s next PM market after news of Boris’s hospitalisation came out
There was similar movement on the Johnson exit date market. Raab is Johnson’s designated stand-in. This makes me uneasy about political betting but inevitably some punters will look to anything to turn a buck. I’m also not convinced that the market is reading this right. If there is a need a replacement PM then that would surely be a decision for the whole cabinet. I’m sure everybody on PB wishes Boris a speedy and full recovery. Mike Smithson
It won’t be Brexit that defines Boris but the decisions he made at the start of the coronavirus crisis
With the UK death toll rising by the day it is perhaps worth reflecting on the two decisions the government made at the start of the crisis. Firstly there was the reluctance to follow other nations to impose lockdowns straight away after the first death and then there was the agreement to allow this year’s Cheltenham Festival to take place as planned. The argument on the former was the desire to to delay the peak of the outbreak until the…
Today sees the worst set of front pages for the government since the crisis began
Ministers will get hammered while there’s a shortfall in testing After a period when the government has been generally getting positive media coverage for its fight against the coronavirus all has changed this morning as can be seen. The biggest issue is the amount of testing going on even for NHS staff and others on the front-line. This is far short of expectations of what we had been led to expect. When the Mail and the Mirror are both attacking…