What’s this doing to Johnson’s survival chances?
Please note I have COVID and my contributions to the site will be very limited until I recover. But there is certainly enough to be talking about.
Wakefield is an absolute must-win for both SKS and BOJO
Today is the first day back at work for MPs after the Easter vacation and one of the things that might come up is moving the writ for the Wakefield by-election. What we know is that Boris Johnson’s government tends to move these pretty quickly after the vacancy occurs. The tradition at Westminster is for the party that held the seat at the general election to actually initiate the process to replace MP who is no longer there. The reason…
The human factor
Another maternity scandal, this time a long-standing one which has, according to this story in the Sunday Times, been going on for ca. 50 years. Pregnant women suffering from epilepsy have been given a drug – sodium valproate – which (while effective at controlling epilepsy) is teratogenic, causing life-changing physical and neurological deformities to children. Its effects on the unborn child have been known about for some time but it continues to be prescribed. The risks were known to the…
Not good numbers for BoJo/CON ahead of the local elections
The Number 10 lockdown bandit plans to tough it out
Given that the latest poll over the weekend has LAB with an 11% lead you would have thought that Johnson would at least recognise that he needs be to contrite in a little way. There is a lot of strong feeling out there from the 80% plus of people who strictly followed the lockdown rules and after being fined you would expect Johnson not to ignore this. The lead story in this morning’s Times under the heading “Defiant Boris Johnson…
Inflation is taxation without legislation
These two charts from YouGov really should frighten anyone in the Conservative Party, I’m a strong proponent of the belief that oppositions don’t win general elections, governments lose them, and these poll findings seem to indicate the Conservatives are on course to lose the next election. The cost of living crisis, the tempest long foretold foretold, is shredding the reputation of the government as evidenced in the above YouGov findings. There’s a bit of irony that keeping inflation low is…
Is Rishi Sunak the new Theresa May?
The speed of Rishi Sunak’s fall from grace from nailed on next Conservative leader and Prime Minister to someone the public really doesn’t like is astonishing and is one of the more remarkable things in the history of British politics. The only real rival to this rapid fall is Theresa May’s going from the PM who was on course for a majority of 290 seats to losing David Cameron’s majority in a little over seven weeks. Tomorrow is the fifth…
BoJo’s survival betting
As can be seen in the betting chart the market on who will be the next prime minister has moved around an enormous amount over the last couple of months. The big loser in betting terms has been Chancellor Sunak and this initially caused a fair bit of money to switch to Keir Starmer. Then everything changed when it became clear that Johnson and Sonak were getting fined for their lockdown violations in 2020. This made Starmer much less attractive…