This market by Ladbrokes on Labour leading in a UK wide Westminster voting intention poll is an intriguing one, the most recent YouGov poll had the Conservatives 15% ahead, during the first phase of the pandemic that lead peaked at 24%, prior to the pandemic that lead was around the early 20s, so it is fair to say the Conservatives lead with YouGov has been consistently high. So what chance of Labour leading in a YouGov poll this year? The…
The last time I saw a Prime Minister needlessly trash their reputation like this was in the autumn of 2007 when Gordon Brown denied he had been planning on holding a snap election. Even one of his MPs wrote ‘Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority’, such a denial of reality damaged Brown’s ratings and they never really recovered which saw Labour lose power and they haven’t been in power since. These rapid falls…
Can he survive and what’s this going to do to lockdown compliance? One telling reaction has come from Mark Wallace of ConHome under the headline “I admire Dominic Cummings – but he needs to resign now“. He notes: Voters’ fury is real, justified and widespread. The political damage is serious and lasting. The Prime Minister might expend yet more capital to defy the uproar, and Cummings might stay on. But to do so would be a mistake. If he pauses, and coldly…
But what will the pollsters find? I’d be very surprised if we see a poll tonight on the Cummings press conference but surely we will get something during the day time. Although, as he set it out, Dom had understandable reasons for his approach it was very much out of line with what he should have been doing in late March and early April and what a big proportion of the population were doing. What I find really odd is…
Inevitably the papers big story this lockdown bank holiday Monday is the decision by Johnson to retain Cummings in spite what appears to be a clear breach of the lockdown rules. Tens of millions of people in the UK have had to make very difficult decisions in the face of the pandemic and the government’s lockdown that came in at the end of March. The polls suggest a compliance rate of 85-90% which is a big reason why the story…
Time to relax the rules? Isolation, especially when imposed rather than chosen, is hard. No wonder solitary confinement is a punishment. Periods of quiet, retreat, solitariness are valuable as a contrast to life’s normal noisy busyness. Above all, they are chosen and can be broken at will, our will. Humans crave and seek intimacy and closeness and communal activities. Socialisation and socialising – in their widest sense – are necessary for the sound development of the child and joy as…