Given we have had a couple of SAGE members speak out about this, I wonder if they have been asked by the government to sound a note of caution that weighs against the government's message so people still consider the risks before meeting up with friends, family, etc.

I can only speak for myself, but I'm not planning on altering my behaviour for several weeks to come - I'll be guided by the science, not the government.

The only thing I will be doing differently is that my youngest child will return to preschool next week.

Three of them now

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-boris-johnson

R heading back above 1 seems a lock at this point.

It's very clear easing the lockdown has nothing to do with science and everything to do with politics. The government showing again that they're happy to spend lives if it helps them politically.

Because trends change according to people's behaviour, obviously.

As it is, I'm not sure that Johnson -- still visibly diminished by Covid -- will remain in office till the next election. The Tories are ruthless in dispatching leaders who become liabilities. Sunak and Jeremy Hunt are obviously on manoeuvres (Sunak's even got himself a logo) and Sajid Javid is biding his time but will obviously want revenge on Johnson and Cummings. About 100 Tory MPs have indicated that they're less than happy over the Cummings business, and Theresa May, who has good reason to dislike Johnson, has clearly smelt the blood in the water because she's emailed her constituents to say that Cummings was wrong to breach lockdown, which means Johnson was wrong to defend him.

Unfortunately, for the time being, we're stuck with Johnson, so we're officially buggered. We've still got about 9,000 new cases and 300 deaths a day (due to the NHS practice of shovelling patients out to care homes when they're still unwell) and they want to lift lockdown, against scientific opinion, to make out everything's OK when it isn't. There will be a price for this.

Yes I've made that point many times. The opposition mustn't think they are achieving anything much by winning the mocking/ratings war with boris and/or cummings. Cos if they win that war they will find themselves fighting someone else at the election. Negative politics matters but it needs to be more like 80/20 in favour of the positive. Especially for the left because despite them enjoying it for a moment, the press on not remotely on our side.

Very early days of course but KS needs to put together a positive policy platform to win the next election.

It is of course true that Johnson is a dream opponent for Starmer and any of the likely replacements will be tougher. (And the Tories will have done that same calculation.) I wouldn't write off Starmer's chances against any of the likely replacements, though. We'll see, if we all live that long.

oh I'm not writing of his chances at all. I expect him to put together a positive policy platform.

Plus you always have a chance. Who knows what things look like at the next GE and this is uncharted territory. As you say, if we live that long ...

Styles make fights. It's also true that Starmer is a great opponent for Johnson.

In terms of replacements, Sunak and Hunt are clearly the dangermen for Labour, but Patel, Raab, Hancock and a few of the live outsiders are abject.

In contrast, the talent on Labour's front bench is plentiful with virtually no deadwood.

Unless Covid has a longlasting deleterious effect on Johnson, isn't this talk way premature?

Yes of course. But we're considering that the sheer magnitude of covid (and maybe brexit) will leave boris damaged beyond repair - that is possible.

How common is this?

In net approval rating, Starmer now has a 30-point lead over Johnson. Three-zero.



And the government's overall poll lead has dropped from 12 points to 4 in one week. And things are only going to get harder for the government. There aren't any easy bits. And it's evident that the Tory parliamentary party are beginning to consider Johnson a liability.

They've always known he was a liability. That's why they hid him from public view during the tory leadership contest. And why they again hid him from view during the run up to the general. I can't recall, did he take part in a single debate in the leadership run up? Remember when he hid in a fridge on the eve of the general? The man is an absolute embarrassment. It may have been funny when they voted him in as mayor of London, I can just about get on board with that. But elections do indeed have consequences and what we now have is a man, in the loosest sense of the word, completely out of his depth and at an absolute loss as to what to do in the midst of a national crisis. Which is why he is once again hiding from public view.

There was talk earlier about him taking on the role of Churchillian hero. ****ing hell. I genuinely can't think of anyone less suited to the role.

Imagine wanting a job so badly all your life and then being so **** at it?

Im trying to find the data, but on TV they showed metrics for C19 just for England, e.g. DPM etc, and taking England just on its own, its got the worst metrics in the world.

The most important indicator at the moment is Hospital admissions

24-May 471
25-May 472
26-May 475

It was falling by about 50 a day for the week preceding the 24th.

It's from the FT:

Assuming that's what you're talking about. It's excess deaths rather than official C19 cases, but it's the best indicator imo.

Scotland are actually higher than I expected them to be, but stopping to think about it, we had huge outbreaks in poorer parts of the central belt... Mainly Glasgow, and the same in poorer parts of Dundee. Still surprising, but it's not like you can remove them from the count, same way you can't remove London from England's.

Especially as we can take it as given that Iron Bru kills the virus.

That's not 'them', that's him. He was the same as mayor of London. He doesn't like to appear in public, or even in committee, and explain himself, because he hasn't got a clue and he doesn't know what to say. He just wants to occupy a position with a certain status but doesn't want to do any of the work that goes with it.

Johnson supposedly models himself on Churchill. Churchill at 36 was Home Secretary and felt that our prison population was too high, which it was, and he didn't like people being sent to jail, so he brought in the rule that the courts had to give people time to pay fines. This was 1910 and there were nearly 40,000 people in jail for not paying fines because they hadn't got the money. By 1914, only just over 2,000 people were in jail for not paying fines. Churchill also brought in suspended sentences for minor offences. Again, the prison population dropped off a cliff.

Churchill was also part of the great Liberal government that brought in the old-age pension, the Parliament Act 1911 (which struck out the Lords' power of veto over the Commons, one of the great constitutional measures) and the National Insurance Act 1911 which put an end to the workhouse and implemented the beginnings of the Welfare State.

In 1911 Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, where he commissioned the Queen Elizabeth class of fast battleships. They were the best battleships in the world at that time, and the most famous of the class, HMS Warspite, fought well at Jutland in 1916 and also gave devastating fire support to the Allied landings in Normandy in 1944.

The idea that Johnson models himself on Churchill is sad. He's no Churchill. He's nobody at all.