As 74 year old with a range of conditions I feel a lot happier this afternoon after getting an appointment for my first jab at the weekend. What could be potentially problematic for ministers is how the roll out seems to vary depending on where you live. It would be good to see some data splits on the vaccine totals based on more specific local data beyond just the national regions. Overall though the trend is positive and hopefully the…
Today’s Daily Mail front pages looks set to one of those that will be remembered and referred back to in the time to come. You can see it being used as one of the pics in the biographies that are likely to be written after he has stood down and will also be clipped for posterity by obituary writers. COVID has been the defining part of his premiership so far and it is still going on with the fatalities having…
Just five GOP Senators joined Democrats in voting to go forward with the impeachment trial against Trump for his role stirring up a mob that attacked the Capitol. The vote was on a move to stop the process taking place at all and gives a good indication of the likely outcome when the final vote is put in a fortnight’s time. A problem for Republican senators is that this vote might make them popular with the MAGA faction in the party’s…
But if there was a referendum on re-joining “Against” is just ahead YouGov has released details of its England only weekend poll for the Sunday Times and the panel above shows some interesting findings. The top two might seem contradictory but I think it just highlights that people are very reluctant about change. It is not often we see an England only survey and the overall impression of the set of numbers above is that the English are mostly opposed…
Sturgeon has an astonishing net Ipsos MORI satisfaction lead over him of 107% The above polling chart is from Ipsos MORI’s last all Scotland poll which admittedly took place in October. I doubt very much whether the figures have changed much since and hopefully we’ll see its next all Scotland poll in February. We all remember Boris Johnson’s victorious night in December 2019 when he won a substantial Commons majority. That would have been even better for the party if…
As Sting once sang, you can’t control an independent heart. Boris Johnson, however, seems set to try. In the face of opinion polls showing that the SNP are heading for an overall majority at Holyrood with a mandate for a fresh referendum on Scottish independence, he is giving every impression of a man who intends not to agree to one being held. Scotland is not yet a colony of Westminster. If, however, the UK government tries to block the clearly-expressed…
Sturgeon’s statement yesterday that she intends to hold what she describes as a “legal referendum” on independence from the UK if she wins the Scottish elections scheduled for May certainly puts her on a collision course with Boris who opposes opposes another secession vote. All the signs from the polling suggest the SNP is on course for another big victory in the Scottish Parliament elections so the chances are that Sturgeon’s referendum plan could be a reality. Her argument is that…
In the betting its an 80% chance that it won’t happen this year One of the policy commitments that all the Democratic primary challengers were pressed on last year was whether they supported the campaign to make Washington DC a state in its own right. Biden agreed. The main case is that the district has a larger population than two other states but lacks any voting members in Congress. Also its residents pay more in federal taxes than roughly 20…