New COVID19 polling finds two thirds of Brits saying that the government acted too late
But fewer are concerned about the individual threat Whenever this is all over, and who can predict that, it is clear that the events of the past three months and the actions of ministers are set to have a big impact on domestic politics. Pollster Ipsos-MORI has been asking tracker questions and we can see from the two charts above how things have moved. The worrying one for Team Boris is the growing percentage who think that action was taken…
The Pandemic – some of this afternoon’s developments
Great polling numbers for those who got on the PB 250/1 Sunak for next PM bet
Back in November PBer Philip Thompson had a great guest slot here in which he suggested that the 200/1 then being offered by Ladbrokes was was great value bet. It came during the GE2019 campaign shortly after Rishi Sunak had been chosen by Johnson to act as the Tory rep on one of the set piece debates. The bet in fact was better than that. Ladbrokes was offering an odds boost which made this a 250/1 shot not a 200/1…
Splendid self-isolation. The lack of realism infecting British foreign policy
https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1253976187887669249 Play it again Sam. The piano is battered but the tune is very familiar. This time it is China that is the focus of the hostility. It’s too big, too powerful, too inscrutable and too responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic. The John Bull tendency has decided that there must be consequences. There must be boycotts. China must be made an international pariah. The Huawei 5G contract assuredly must be ripped up. There must be a reckoning. You must remember this refrain. Those furious with China now were in…
YouGov finds little evidence of people wanting to ease the lockdown
So far at least, if the polling above has this right, there is no real desire amongst the public in the UK to ease some of the lockdown restrictions. Every suggestion of things being eased in the poll found the majority of respondents wanting things to stay as they are. This suggests that there’s a broad acceptance of the reasons why this is having to be done and there’s no indication there there will be any change in the immediate…
Some points from today’s new polling
There’s a huge amount of doubt on whether the 100k a day testing target will be reached How likely or unlikely do you think it is that the government will hit its target of testing 100,000 people per day for coronavirus by the end of the month? (YouGov) Only a third intend to wear a face mask Providing you are able to get one, do you intend on wearing a face mask in public once lockdown is lifted?
The Index Case. Dealing with Covid-19 inside our care homes
A longstanding PBer tell his story Regular readers of the comments on this site will know that over the weekend, my father died after contracting coronavirus in his care home. The index case (colloquially, ‘patient zero’, but more accurately, the first documented patient in a disease outbreak within a particular population), was a patient recently discharged directly from hospital, into the care home. In the ten days which marked the period of my father’s infection, I understand that somewhere just…