Two thirds of those polled back the key English lockdown easing measure due on Monday
But Scotland is seen as handling the pandemic better than England
Boris looks as though he’s survived the Cummings lockdown road trip – but at what price?
Can the PM get back to where he was? The above is one of the videos now on YouTube with the words of the Proclaimers 500 Miles song adapted for Mr Cummings and his drive to Durham during the lockdown. This events of the past week have dominated the headlines and become a big talking point. The question is what will be the long term political impact? All the polling as we have seen has been very negative with even…
Tonight’s National Theatre at Home re-run of the The House is a must watch for all political nerds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vsSHyjEMrg Tonight on YouTube starting at 7pm there’s a rerun of what to me is best play about politics in years – James Graham’s “This House” chronicling the period 1974 until Mrs. Thatcher’s victory in 1979. It is set in the whips offices of both Labour and Tories from the February 1974 election being called through to 1979. We watch first the period when Labour tried operate without a majority and then as it tries to govern with a majority…
At the start of lockdown Johnson’s Tories had poll leads of upto 26% – now the latest two surveys have that down at 6%
At this rate crossover might happen quite soon On the face of it the polling trends look worrying for the Conservatives and good for LAB which is seeing a lot of progress in getting the gap smaller. However I don’t think we should read too much into this because, of course, the big difference between start of the lockdown and now is that LAB now has a new leader and not the electorally unpopular Corbyn who led the party to…
Joe Biden’s VP pick – we’ve now got a date
This could be by August 1st – two weeks before the convention This is how the Hill is reporting statement’s from the campaign: Former Vice President Joe Biden says he hopes to decide on a running mate by Aug. 1, about two weeks before the Democratic nominating convention in Milwaukee. Speaking at a digital fundraiser hosted by former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Biden said his campaign’s vice presidential committee has already interviewed the contenders on his shortlist. “We’re in the process of…
New polling on Cummings finds 62% still saying it’s important
Tory voters split 49-49 Inevitably when a development is so party political you would expect polling responses to follow a partisan divide. The above table from tonight’s YouGov suggests that is still the case with Cummings and the lockdown but not quite at the scale you would expect. Just half of all Tories in today’s polling are saying it is important which is one reason why this isn’t going to go away. Meanwhile Johnson was grilled for two hours by…
Motes and beams. Leading a response to a pandemic without moral authority
So now we know: as in Pirates of the Caribbean, the rules of the C aren’t so much rules, they’re more what you’d call guidelines. Robert Jenrick has confirmed that the public could always exercise “a degree of personal judgement”. This will come as a considerable surprise to the 27million people who listened to Boris Johnson on 23 March: “give the British people a very simple instruction. You must stay at home, because the critical thing we must do to stop the disease spreading…
With the Cummings lockdown saga now in its seventh day some biting polling in Daily Mail
If the Team Johnson plan for the Cummings lockdown saga was to hope it would go away then there’s no sign of that this morning. Several papers have it as their main story and the usually Tory-backing Daily Mail is giving big prominence to the JL Partners polling above. As I’ve argued before the Mail is critical for a Tory PM and for the paper to oppose so vehemently the actions of Johnson/Cummings is not something we have seen since…