The public remain very supportive of the UK government’s timetable for ending lockdown
TSE
We need to talk about antivaxxer GOPers
If there’s one group of people that need gelding for their own safety as much as our own are those people who hate lockdown but refuse to get vaccinated or don’t get vaccinated promptly. For some reason they don’t realise vaccine hesitancy is likely to keep us in lockdown for longer. Fortunately for us in The United Kingdom the level of vaccine hesitancy is pretty much restricted to that small number of people who think Laurence Fox is an awesome…
This is going to dominate the news for the next few days and a good politician will be able to exploit it ruthlessly
TSE
Ipsos MORI finds for the first time in a year optimists outnumber pessimists
This might explain the current voting intention figures with decent Tory leads, whilst the EU’s vaccine strategy, replete with export bans, has also had an impact, whether this is fleeting or a permanent shift will be interesting. On the subject of Brexit, this latest trend data is notable for the fact that roughly equal numbers of Britons now think the UK’s decision to leave the EU has had a positive impact on the country (39%) as negative (38%). This represents…
Is Mark Drakeford the new Winston Churchill?
Ladbrokes have a fascinating market on the Senedd seat of Cardiff West, looking at the odds above it seems a very easy Labour hold, you’d expect Mark Drakeford, the incumbent First Minister, to hold this seat thanks the excellent rollout of the vaccine he has overseen in Wales which has been seen in the polling. However the most recent poll in Wales by YouGov sees Drakeford losing his seat, which I think that might be more to do with the…
Light the beacons of Gondor, Gavin Williamson may have just come up with a competent and popular policy
We need to talk about betting on Gavin Williamson in the next Prime Minister & Tory leader markets. Being seen as a professional Frank Spencer tribute act Gavin Williamson’s reputation for ministerial competence is lower than snake testes, so when he announced the very competent and popular policy (as evidenced in the tweets above) then it merits serious discussion because these things are rarer than an actual moment of historical accuracy in the film Braveheart. The last two winners of…
Tories forever?
There used to be such a thing in politics as the pendulum. Rather like its physical counterpart, it appears to have gone out of fashion. In fact, there were two pendulums operating simultaneously, one between general elections and one across them. The intra-election pendulum would traditionally swing away from the government after it was elected, as it created a lot of disruption implementing its reforms and, probably, front-loaded other unpopular decisions it felt it had to take, while it had…
If it looks like an outlier, walks like an outlier, and talks like an outlier then it probably is an outlier
This morning’s YouGov poll in The Times attracted a lot of attention, which given the allegations of sleaze emanating, inter alia, from the Greensill Capital story the doubling of the Tory lead was something most of us weren’t expecting. Critics of Starmer seemed to use this poll to criticise him until it was pointed they were inconsistent, contrasting their past behaviour when defending bad polls for Corbyn. The YouGov poll just felt like an outlier to me and others, some…