politicalbetting.com

Covid-19 is careering in many directions but among the most predictable has been the outbreak of Sinophobia. China is being blamed for causing the outbreak itself, for concealing its extent, for providing faulty equipment, for being too important in the manufacturing chain. President Trump has pushed the idea of a China virus for all it is worth. Not to be outdone, Nigel Farage has claimed that many members of our big business class, of the civil service, and indeed of our political…

Read More Read More

By international standards, the British response has been poor If we’d been told a year ago that Boris Johnson would be prime minister, we could have accepted that as plausible. Theresa May’s authority was hopelessly undermined and Boris was well-placed to succeed her. Had we been told that he would now be sitting on an 80-seat majority, we might have been a little more taken aback but Johnson does have a record as an effective campaigner and Corbyn was suffering…

Read More Read More

What are you doing more of? One thing is for sure that when all this is over there are going to be many books and studies of how people coped during this period of lockdown as they sought to avoid getting the Coronavirus. I am of an age which makes the threat of coronavirus quite dangerous and I’m being ultra cautious but then I assume most people are. When I go for my daily exercise ride on my bike just…

Read More Read More

The death toll continues to mount. To date, at least, the government is having a spectacularly good pandemic, in political terms. Its popularity has hit heights only seen in the heyday of the first Labour government under Tony Blair. The Prime Minister has emerged from his harrowing illness to widespread genuine public affection. This government is having its honeymoon in a plague pit. In one sense, this is very normal. Governments from Ireland to Italy have seen their poll ratings improve sharply as their…

Read More Read More

As someone who has been generally supportive of the government’s handling of Covid-19 I’m despairing at the handling of issues related to PPE and testing, but in this piece I’m going to focus solely on PPE. Up to now the worst accusation from respectable observers at the government is that they listened to their scientists, if that’s the worst accusation to be levelled at the government the government should be fine, however there’s now a danger the issues around PPE…

Read More Read More