Chat about Novel Coronavirus - 2019-nCoV - COVID-19

Yes, Gove is the only competent one of the lot of them, but he’s inextricably linked to Cummings.

Patel is both cruel and stupid- the ERG will love her, as will Brexist voters.

Then there will be all the Steve Bakers and Jacob Rees-Moggs who might throw their hats in the ring.

What a horrible mess we are in. Just awful.

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Once a PM's lost their authority they are a dead in the water. Look at Major, Brown, May as examples. Even Blair, once he'd said he would go and hand over to Brown, lost it. Thatcher too. The Johnson government is in a very dangerous place right now and this lack of judgement could be fatal.

I don't think this is a poll tax / black Wednesday / iraq war / financial apocalypse moment.

I think it makes a very loud but ultimately minority group very angry but like Oliver says those people hate Boris and Cummings anyway.
I suspect the quiet majority do not give a fuck or worse are looking on in bewilderment at the rage.

The DM front page is interesting though so let’s see where it goes.

Literally everyone missing the point... this isn’t the Con leadership thread. The key point is the pandemic. Cummings should go because the hypocrisy, message management and arrogance in relation to the broad importance of community cooperation is massively significant. To begin to debate the political ramifications is to fall into the same trap as this morning’s Guardian and pretty much all USA press ever - which is to go on a binary, polemic, tribal sabotage mission.

At the moment, for one of the first times in recent history the country is (relatively) united over its basic attitudes and responsibilities to a global problem. To make it a game of blue and red completely undermines the essential issue. The incumbents are fucking it up and need to adjust immediately. If they gain any confidence that this is only about upsetting people they never had sway over at all they’ll give much less of a shit. I honestly think moments like this are potentially powerful in defining the tactical shape of political responsibility going forward.

BJ has got away with so much shit in his life - I can't believe that this will be anything he can't just wait out, like the rest of the Tory party have done in the past. I mean even grant schapps, Priti Patel, they've all got loads of shit behind them that people just forget because it's not in the papers anymore. Plus with this majority, essentially they can do what they want with no accountability other than the back pages of private eye and a red bubble on twitter.

Spot on. I am one of those people who don’t really care but I’ve enjoyed watching Dom catch some heat.

Except they are getting held accountable aren't they, the cabinet might brass neck it but there seems to be dozen of rank and file Tory MP's saying their inbox's have never been so full and so full of anger form constiuents, I imagine a lot them will be having surgeries where they will have to be facing people who have lost people and being quetioned why they support the hypocrisy. I think the public care this time as we all have skin in the game, it's not some intagible on our lives like migrants or Brussels

You know you fucked up when you have Bishops and Scientists, the Mail and Guardian, Business leaders and celebrities all united in one point of view

Ive never seen so many people different groups of people united against the response to something ever.

You know you fucked up when you have Bishops and Scientists, the Mail and Guardian, Business leaders and celebrities all united in one point of view

Not to mention members of your own party; the opposition parties; NHS workers; children and parents... But it's a loud minority living in a Twitter bubble. Everyone else doesn't care.

Predicting whether this blows over or not is a mug's game. But this is a scandal involving one of the architects of Britain's response to a global pandemic, and it's being treated that way by the public and the press.

Populists have to be popular and have an easily demonised scapegoat.
Yesterday afternoon dePfeffel invested his entire effort declaring 'Cummings is not the scapegoat!'
This did not satisfy those who are ready to brandish their (online) pitchforks and light their pyre igniting torches. The Boris they voted for always gives them a target, 'doomsters & gloomsters', ' the EU', 'dreadful disease', so yesterdays attempt to exonerate Cummings failed on many levels,
and, failed to extinguish the ire.
Greatest pity is that we are dependent upon the Daily Mail to keep Cummings' Durham Dash a front page story, as 'a No. 10 spokesperson' can just ignore campaigning newspapers and the supine BBC.

They don't care.
They have Facebook and Twitter. I think joylon Rubenstein nails it.

Sajid Javid suddenly looks handly placed. Experienced yet far enough away from the current mess to be in with a shout.

Versus Corona, this story is particularly straightforward and has a clear badguy, so it's caught the public. Reminds me most of the Andrew Sachs thing. Either Dom is shortly wounded (sacked, resign, apology) or the Tories will be, the story will fade quickly though. The heat is being fuelled by cabin fever, lack of events and a frustrated society. He is also an arse which makes watching it play out fun.

"Nothing to see here, move on folks"

Because the hypocrisy resonates so much with so many people who have been through tough times under lockdown or know those who have, this is escaping the Westminster bubble IMHO. It’s not often the Guardian and the Mail agree on something.

I want Patel. She’s so incredibly incompetent that she might bring the whole government down.

+1

She'd probably declare war on Wales, thinking it's part of the EU.

You don't think Patel will be too busy at Dover welcoming the migrant families as people of intergrity doing the best for their children?

Or re-invent the Tory party to something more like the Law and Justice party in Poland, then win in a landslide in next election on the promise of re-introducing death penalty.

Counterterrorism workers are already shitting themselves too.

Countercounterterrorism?

Growing sector, buy.