Also completely absent from the wannabe Tory leaders: any acknowledgement that their lockdowns put us in the mess we are now in, and caused massive harms, the lesser of them being the sky-high prices they claim they will “protect” us from. Nobody is talking about this at all, or that the Conservatives destroyed just about all of their Conservative values in one breath in March 2020. It is as if the last two years of government tyranny never happened (for this, read because they want to use this method again). When are the Tories going to admit to destroying the economy and public mental health (especially that of children) with their extremely damaging lockdowns? When are the Tories going to admit that they deliberately terrified the public into compliance? Is the new leader going to pledge to move away from fear messaging, and show that they have learned the lesson of the boy who cried wolf? It’s still happening: a few hot days is now a “heat emergency”, there are “outbreaks” of hepatitis, monkeypox, traces of polio in sewers, an “explosion of cases” of Covid. Are the Tories going to tell us that it is now safe to set up business in this country, because they promise never to use lockdowns to destroy businesses again?
Are the Tories going to tell us that pigs can fly?
Give it a rest! I am a Remainer, but I am not banging about the Brexiteers admitting it was a disaster. It has happened, it is done, it will not be reversed. Let us look to the future.
Not really. It is a comparison, if you like: The lockdowns have happened. They are over. We have enough problems without squabbling to win battles we have already lost.
They are not over until there is an acknowledgement of the damage they caused and that they were wrong and unnecessary.
Until that happens, I for one can’t feel safe that they won’t pull that stunt again! Three years to flatten the country, anyone?
It is blindingly obvious that the Great Barrington Declaration was the way to go. As an expert in risk management I can tell you: while it’s better to remove the risk from the vulnerable people sometimes that’s highly impracticable as in the case of pandemics. The solution was always to remove the vulnerable from the virus-ridden towns and cities and let them get on with herd immunity.
But the response was often “oh, you are suggesting concentration camps then?”.
So let’s not be too selective in our memories – there was huge pressure to “battle the virus” ie to contain the uncontainable!
GBD was indeed the correct approach. I signed it. I witnessed many weak minded woke citizens stating it to be barbaric and devoid of compassion. Unfortunately, those same people are now the losers after endless lockdowns etc and a semi bankrupt Country. Fundamental to solving this is remedying the lack of ability of most UK citizens to move beyond woke peer group acceptance and into a more self-responsible economically aware mode of behaviour.
I disagree that the lockdown battle is over: although I very much hope they are unlikely to be used again, the threat of future lockdowns and other restrictions is still very much there, ready to be produced like a rabbit out of a hat. Partygate meant that restrictions became unacceptable under Johnson, but it might be different with his successor. I am hoping that the rocketing case numbers of the present mean that lockdown becomes even more politically impossible, but I’m not holding my breath. No minister has yet condemned lockdown as a bad thing, and the “opposition” were either cheering lockdowns on, or complaining they did not go far enough. Although many people are relieved lockdowns are over, I don’t think lots of people would oppose them just yet; the painful aftermath of (among many things) the effect on children’s mental health has not made itself widely known yet, lots of the public have not yet turned against lockdown and masks in principle. I will not relax until we get through a winter without any restrictions, including mask mandates, threats of vax passes, school bubbles, and campaigns of fear: I think there is still a very real danger of seasonal restrictions becoming permanent by stealth. Now that the precedent of lockdown has been set, it is difficult to erase this. Lockdowns have led to an expectation that the government “must do something” in an “emergency”: for example some people are clamouring for school closures in the “heat emergency” of next week.
OK, I withdraw my comment above. What happened over the past two years is history, but I see that there is still an active and necessary debate with people who want a guarantee that no government will ever again do anything to reduce the death toll from future pandemics.
Makes no difference. For people who believe that vaccines kill more people than COVID and wearing a cloth mask is an unbearable outrage nothing will ever be necessary.
The deaths were not reduced, in fact I’m sure history will show that they cost more lives than they saved.
So I want a guarantee that they will act in a proportional way and include a cost/benefit analysis before using the wrecking ball approach. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.
Well, the estimated death toll from the pandemic is 21.4 million deaths, as of May this year (The Economist). To be sure that does not tell us how many died from secondary effects rather than COVID or how many more / less would have died with different policies, but you tell me – what kind of measures would you consider proportional to try to prevent 21 million deaths?
We all like a cost-benefit analysis, but you can only do it properly if you know exactly what the consequences of each choice will be. Which we still do not. And, as one article pointed out, even a four-day delay in taking measures can lead to a lot more deaths, if you have an epidemic that is doubling every few days. Are you really saying that until they know for sure – which means until long after the pandemic is passed – they should do nothing?
Doing nothing was never on the table – they were initially going to follow the tried and tested pandemic planning protocols, which centred around advice and trusting people to make the correct decisions around social distancing, shielding if you were vulnerable etc. Sweden followed this, and their eventual outcome was much better than ours, and the fallout in terms of economy, childrens’ education, and general mental health was minimal.
The Chinese style lockdowns were themselves the experiment, having never been attempted before in democratic countries. As predicted by a few of us (who were shamed and silenced at the time but now vindicated), this caused absolute social chaos and wreaked far more damage than Covid. Current excess non-covid deaths have been consistently higher for the past year or so. It turns out that turning the NHS into a Covid only service and discouraging those with other health issues to stay away, caused a great deal of damage which will take years to get on top of.
And as you say, the reported death figures are ‘with’ not ‘from’ (and within 28 days of a positive test), so we don’t really know what the true figure is.
I had this discussion recently here, with someone else.
First check out this article, a modelling study estimating that both the UK and Denmark would have had on the order of three times as many dead at the start if they had followed Swedish policies. The UK (according to the article) did worse because the virus got there earlier and had more time to spread, and would have done even worse with Swedish policies This is only a plausible scenario, not proof, but even so 1) it very much weakens the idea that the ‘tried and tested’ policies of Sweden would have been better, 2) it is supported by evidence in a way that your judgments (or mine) are not.
The article also points out that the actual reduction in social contact etc. was not that much different in Sweden – it just took longer to get there at a crucial time in the pandemic. Before recommending Swedish policies people should realise that Swedes are maybe uniquely disposed (for a European country) to obey public opinion and official recommendations. Which means that the real degree of coercion – and compliance – in Sweden is much higher than you would get with the same policies in most other countries.
Also the ‘in-place pandemic plan was tried and tested for influenza, a disease that was less lethal, less contagious and, crucially, is not infectious before symptoms appear. Taking it for granted that your influenza plan will of course work for a new virus is a sign of complacency and over-confidence, not wisdom.
Finally, it is true both that the effects on society, the health service etc, has been serious, and that there is much we still do not know. But it seems extraordinary to me to claim that this is ‘proof’ that the best available epidemiological judgemetns are wrong, and that the gut feelings of people who disagree are therefore proved correct.
That was a modelling study carried out by Neil Ferguson (amongst others), nearly a year ago. His models have turned out to be very wildly wrong, so I’m afraid I wouldn’t pay any heed to them.
Otherwise you make some good points and I will come back to address them later.
Best way to prove you were right the first time is to repeat the exercise. Clearly, if you do something different that’s admission you accept you were wrong: and if it works it’s proof positive you were definitely wrong!
Call it what you like. I still think Brexit was a very bad idea, and the actual implementation was disastrous. I call that ‘Remainer’, just like people still talk about ‘Brexiteers’, even after Brexit has happened.
What should be done now is another matter. Britain is out, and it is politically impossible to change that for a generation at least. Also, considering that the re-entry offer will be a lot worse than what Britain used to have, rejoining (even if it were possible) would be a lot less attractive than it would have been to remain in the first place. For now let us concentrate on staying where we are while minimising the damage.
Why rejoin? Simply accept the single market and your problems are solved, ala NI which, (despite DUP bleeting) has moved from bottom on growth to top within the UK 4.. All the benefits but you keep your empire: sorry sovereignty..
Not that simple, unfortunately. It works for NI, which is too small to set its own regulations anyway. It works for Norway, which is also small and only exports oil, gas and fish. The UK is a large, differentiated service economy with particular needs. It would never work to have all the market rules set in Brussels with no UK vote. Imagine the rules for the City of London – set by Frankfurt and Paris?
Speaking of remaining:
Brexit may be a done deal … sort of … but the political establishment that delivered (unchallenged) lockdowns and unscientific policies promoted by “The Science” remains. I’d be worried that the establishment is not done pulling its stunts and has yet to face up to some accountability. The evidence of institutional rot is obvious. So, why doesn’t the press talk about it?
Hint: (re your final question): if the media journalists don’t speak up for one of their own, Julian Assange then we know who’s deciding what gets reported on..
Agreed: but the point made is valid: they were both ‘battles’ that you lost and are now paying a very high price for. They do have that in common, surely?
Remember that the lockdowns were implemented more slowly than many in the general population wanted. They were not so much ‘Tory led’ as ‘Tory follows’.
A politician who resigned because they thought lockdown was the wrong way to proceed would certainly be at the front of the queue for my vote for PM but as far as I know none of the contenders did that.
Almost all politicians went along with the general clamour for lockdown so this fails to differentiate any of them and is certainly nothing that differentiates the Tory hopefuls from Labour whose only complaint was that lockdown was not swifter and harsher.
Lockdown was in my view a policy error but no UK party followed the Swedish model so unfortunately it becomes a non-issue as far as determining who should govern in future.
Bit of a tall order to expect an amateur in all the relevant sciences to take that stand: do remember Sweden was out on its own!
One other outlier was Tanzania: they just had 3 days of prayer and (as a result?) were largely unscathed! Go figure…
There are no accurate figures for Covid in Tanzania, since the late President was not prepared to accept the reality of a disease that may have killed him.
“Are the Tories going to tell us that pigs can fly?”
They’ve been telling us that for years, along with the rest of the frankly wretched political establishment.
Corona was just one further cataclysmic disaster in a line stretching back at least as far as 1914, and for most of that time but not all, we have had one pseudo Tory government after another. This is not off course to exculpate ‘Utopian’ Labour, but the Tories must bear full responsibility for the near destruction of this once great country of ours.
‘Consummatum est’.
The media, especially the BBC, are more to blame than the government. They rely on fear mongering to keep themselves front and centre of public life so they can influence public thinking and effect cultural change. The BBC want a Labour government, so the next Tory leader, whoever that is, will be undermined from the start.
Literally all the parties supported lockdown, and not just in this country, but Europe supported lockdowns too. Macron just got a bloody nose trying to get lockdown extension laws passed and only because the left and right parties coalesced to stop him, but the bill will pass just without some of the extreme amendments.
Sweden is the only continental European nation to not have locked down and where widely derided for it at the time, hindsight is now showing they had it right.
don’t forget Boris initially wanted to ride the storm, gain herd immunity and not lockdown. He got bounced into locking down largely by the press, opposition parties and also those in his party who challenged him, namely his cabinet consisting of most of the would be pm’s.
not locking down was a huge gamble and against all the advice from SAGE and at odds to all the other global nations of a similar standing to us.
so yes the Tories decided to lockdown, but any other party in charge would have done the same!
Like the EU pre-2016, lockdowns are off the official political agenda because all the parties supported them. The Tories are not going to shoot themselves in the feet arguing over whether the lockdowns were too harsh, when Labour were arguing for even more tyrannical lockdowns.
Alphonse Pfarti
1 year ago
“Red Wall voters who are either comfortable with the status-quo or would even like to pay a bit more to get better public services in return“
There’s a problem here. That people may say that they are ok with higher taxes in return for ‘better’ public services (which is an unlikely consequence) is no guarantee that they believe that they are also the people who will pay those taxes.
“…is no guarantee that they believe that they are also the people who will pay those taxes.” That is the oldest one in the book, and a good reason to treat polls with a degree of circumspection. What do the punters really mean?
In a democracy involving one man one vote the views of non-taxpayers need to be accommodated by politicians. The Labour Party exists to accommodate those who don’t pay taxes or who benefit disproportionately from the distribution of the taxes levied. The Tories are for those who wish to mitigate tax or their malign side-effects. That at least is how it is supposed to function.
The Labour, LibDem and SNP policy of enfranchising 16 and 17 year-olds would certainly empower a new tranche of voters who cannot possibly be paying tax. Is this not worthy of debate?
Indeed. Naked self-interest. Why stop at 16 there are plenty of 13 year olds that have as much knowledge of politics than most of the population and an interest in seeing the country governed according to their lights. If prisoners are to be entitled to the vote why not those who are deemed mature enough to decide what sex they are?
Why stop there? Why not disenfranchise the poor and those not clever enough to vote? And old guys like me: surely we must be too senile to vote now? Let’s introduce tje former NI solution: only property owners allowed to vote..
You’re setting up a straw man to enjoy knocking him down. I said nothing about taking the vote from the poor, the property-less or the old.
As regards those with ‘learning difficulties’ I do think that they should not vote, although now they can. Voting requires judgement and experience. If someone is genuinely impaired then how can they exercise that right? https://www.everyvotecounts.org.uk/information-for-politicians/learning-disabilities/
Now that is funny! Learning difficulties? Ha ha.. voters vote over and over for the same shysters and expect a different result! If that doesn’t display ‘learning difficulty’ I don’t know what does. Technically I believe it’s called insanity.
Don’t disagree with you on that. It’s the non-sequitur in the argument, based on polling data where we don’t have the original question. ‘Would you accept higher taxes in return for better public services?’ might give very different results to ‘Would you be willing to pay more tax for higher spending in public services’.
Basically, polling is a corrupt, evil dark art and should not be trusted!
I can tell you, as a statistician you are half right! It is not (always) a dark art: however, yes, the framing of the question is all important. How about: “Taxes makes the rich richer and the poor poorer: are you in favour of taxes?” You’ll find: 0.1% will totally agree: 1% will strongly agree: 9% will agree and 80% will disagree.. the other 10% are the slow learners I’ve already referred to!
I see it more as redressing the wrong where owners take a grossly disproportionate profit from those who produce the goods AND the profit. It is a kind if fine imposed on thieves. Benefits to the (working) poor are crumbs in comparison with the loaves given to the already criminally rich. Tories do it too: otherwise it’s burning brands and pitchforks.
Indeed. And has a party that promised to increase taxation ever won an election?
Michael F
1 year ago
Everyone wants higher taxes for better public services, as long as they’re not the ones paying the taxes. The question should be “do you personally want to pay higher taxes, to pay for other people’s public services”?
However much money we throw at the main public services, they get worse and worse. The NHS is on its deathbed. We’re taxed to the hilt and see NOTHING for it. That we now have a HUGE nanny state, tax and spend Conservative government is a kick in the face for all of us who vote Conservative.
Yes, and Britain crossed the rubicon around 10 years ago, when less than 50% of the population are now net contributors. This is dangerous, because once a majority of voters are not net contributors to the system (but net beneficiaries of it) they will of course vote themselves more of other people’s stuff.
…Leading to a shrinking tax base as the producers are punished more and more heavily, and start to throw in the towel, or have no working capital free to innovate/hire/invest because the vampire state is drinking too much of the economic lifeblood.
This is a real problem. I think the best way to solve it is flat taxes, no deductions.Start with very low rates for the band under 50K, but have everyone in society contributing to taxes. The creation of a system where some pay and most don’t means that the beneficiaries will vote us all the way to a socialist collapse. And the state will become ever more inept and corrupt, because it’s constantly growing and feeding on the dwindling producer cohort, right up until the spectacular immolation of the economy, as demonstrated by Venezuela and others.
The public sector dont pay any tax, as their income is derived from taxation and borrowing in the first place: they should be paid net and it be made aware to the voting public
I work in the Greater Blob (for my sins) and agree with this. Have pointed this out to other Blobbites when they moan on about austerity and taxing the rich(er than they are).
If tax take goes to rich company owners (it does in large part) then your point applies to most who are paid a wage/salary. Money just goes ’round and ’round. Wouldn’t it be really interesting if everyone who handled money put their name in it?
Dentist charges £3,000 for a job: pays £1k in tax: buys a non essential item for €2k: Item mnfr. pays £400 VAT + £100 corp tax + £1k in wages: on which income taxed £400.. and so on: result: ALL goes on tax ultimately.. so your point makes no sense..
Prof. Goodwin—I don’t want to come across as adversarial but I wonder if you might amend the article to provide some further details of your poll such as sample size, methodology, definitions (what does “red wall” mean here?) Not that I doubt you or your writing, just that it’s impossible to attach any kind of weight to your research without these details. Personally, I’m rooting for Badenoch, who is performing mid- to upper-field in all the other polls I’ve come across. Your poll is a bit of an outlier in that regard, and if your results are borne out by adequate sample size and methodology then that would be most valuable information to me. I promise I’m not trolling, I just want to know.
Jeremy Poynton
1 year ago
Sunak has put generations in debt for generations.
Mordaunt says women can have penises
Truss is a loony.
Badenoch the only conservative of the lot, and she won’t get in.
All our political parties are lumps of jelly. Damned if I can see myself voting again. Johnson’s promises on election all turned out to be lies, and the panic he got into Covid, for which we had a perfectly good and well-thought out plan he threw away and the rest is history.
FUBAR.
‘Truss is a loony’ – ha! That’s exactly what I thought when I saw that ridiculous picture of her in a tank. Heaven help us if she gets the keys to no. 10.
The problem with asking individual voters what the best policies are is that human nature, what drives our desire, is animalistic, comes from the amygdala, our prehistoirc brain, and I am afriad makes us simply selfish and greedy; most people only think and vote for what is best for them as individuals. I wonder how many people actually believe that the government has a pot of money they can spend but don’t equate that to the tax take and the health of the economy. I suspect millions do not join those dots. Great leaders MUST think of what is right for the country as a whole and the economy NOT what is currently popular, and convince the electorate to do the right thing. That is why the current rail strikes, effectively over an inflation rate no government could control, because it is being imported, is so selfish and wrong. It is a group of people, many earning far more than the average, thinking only of themselves and not of the greater good, the result of which would be to curb pay rises and endure the pain while it lasts, as everyone surely must. That way we would recover quicker; their way, we won’t. It needs a Kemi Badenoch to tell some simple truths and explain the realities rather than try to make everyone happy and feel protected from the storm. It is not the job of government to do that. That way lies victimhood, all too obvious nowadays.
If only the senior management of the rail companies had restrained their greed.. they could now hold themselves up as exemplars of restraint. Instead they pay themselves vast sums thereby ‘proving’ that there is plenty of money in the pot, not just to keep up with inflation but to surpass it many times over!
But they do it because they can: that’s the market for you. Now that Mick Lynch says: “we’ll have a small slice of that too thank you very much” he’s the bad guy. He’s just playing by the rules like the others but in a far less greedy way. ‘Can’t have it both ways I’m afraid: sauce, goose and gander is the name of the game!
Jeremy Bray
1 year ago
The figure in this survey are somewhat odd. The total of those making some declaration in respect of the Red Wall voters amounts to 85 % The great majority either don’t know or plump for none of the above. I suspect that doesn’t mean there is a massive hidden vote for Priti Patel or some other unnamed candidate. I presume also the missing 15% were those who could not even be bothered to reply.
The truth is that most of the population takes little interest in the various candidates that the MSM obsess about and quite rightly conclude they haven’t a clue who might best lead the Conservative party. Indeed while I like some of what I have heard from some of the candidates, I really don’t know how they would shape up under the pressure of events and the pressure from the civil service and their colleagues. Given that we are often surprised at the opinions of our nearest and dearest the task of picking the best PM is not within our grasp. At best we can deploy a few prejudices to identify who we definitely wouldn’t want.
Happily those not bothering to commit will probably not nother to vote?
Brendan O'Leary
1 year ago
The polls were against everything Thatcher wanted to do as well.
That’s 3-term Thatcher, longest-serving PM of modern times – remember her?
Edward H
1 year ago
I would love to see more polling drilling down into some of this. What taxes, specifically, would people be unhappy with reducing? VAT? Corp. tax? NI? Income tax? and at which rates?
Absolutely risible that he would run on a campaign slogan of “Let’s …rebuild the economy.” — YOU smashed it RIshi. That was you! The Chancellor!
The sheer front of it is just incredible. He burns our nation’s house down and then says “Hey, you wanna hire my construction firm to rebuild that for you…”
Duplicitous, globalist shill. And if the Tories choose him then they are doomed, and deservedly so.
I’m pretty certain that I read somewhere that he was one of the bankers responsible for the last banking crisis. I couldn’t understand why anyone thought it made him a good choice of chancellor and it certainly doesn’t make him a good choice for PM.
Yes, we in Ireland once elected a quasi crook as PM: on the basis that he’d make a fortune for the country just as he’d made a fortune for himself. He didn’t: he just continued making a fortune for himself but now he had other suckers to bleed! It’s what they do: think of leopards and spots..
Last edited 1 year ago by Liam O'Mahony
Stephen Lingam
1 year ago
Public support for increasing taxes to spend more on public services rocketed, peaking at 60% in 2017 and staying above 50% in the most recent data, from 2019.
This can be explained by the fact that around 34m pay income tax in a country with a population of 67m. Of course, spending other people’s money is terribly popular.
This is where as someone who is not good at numbers I get confused – what’s the figure if you remove the nation’s children from the figures?
Brenda Pilott
1 year ago
I wonder if those who replied ‘none of the above’ had Boris Johnson in mind?
Mike Bell
1 year ago
Excellent. Thank you. You’ve done a rare thing nowadays: you looked at facts and analysed them. Such a treat.
Albireo Double
1 year ago
Tell us. In the polling, were people asked if they favoured increased taxes for worse services? I just ask, as that is the reality “on the ground”, as it were.
No. I thought not. Which makes all that research a bit of a waste of time, I’m afraid.
Ian Stewart
1 year ago
“The Conservative Party is in the grip of its most important leadership election in nearly 20 years.”
Really? You didn’t think Johnson taking over from May saved us from the greatest constitutional disaster since the English civil war?
Adam McDermont
1 year ago
Nothing I have heard from the ‘Conservative Party’ gives me cause to doubt that they support incessant mass immigration. They are not conservative in any meaningful way.
The old adage of promising to be “all things to all men” seems appropriate here. Most voters expect to be lied to (or exaggeration at least) so U-turns will present little problem. Sadly it has become the norm. If Rishi Sunak thinks talk of restraint (austerity lite) – from an obscenely rich MP – will cut it he’s sadly mistaken. The argument that the ‘money simply isn’t there’ is no longer believed by anyone: it’s there in very plentiful supply to make the rich, like him, ever richer: add in the (deplorably English) race card and he hasn’t a snowball’s’.
My money is on Penny Mordaunt as the best of a bad lot.
Btw I love the names: apart from an over representation of the subcontinental we have: Badenoch (like Enoch Powell wasn’t bad enough) and Braverman (clearly not woke or she’d be Bravernonbinary by now) and best of all Truss: isn’t that a kind of plank? And not forgetting Tegendhat (perhaps a woke version of wringing the cap?)..
Rob Britton
1 year ago
Part of the reason for Boris Johnson’s downfall was his attempt to square the circle of being a big state, big spending socialist while at the same time being a small state, tax cutting Tory. In the end he pleased no one.
Last edited 1 year ago by Rob Britton
Paul King
1 year ago
Voters want PR, because we have two parties who ask us what we want before elections, and show us what they want after the election.
Richard Abbot
1 year ago
The words of Peter Hitchens seem more and more accurate every day
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago
The voting majority, not just Tory voters want free speech, freedom of expression, the removal of ‘ hate crimes’ from the statute book and a war on woke, aka they do not care a fig about global warming, racism and LBGT, and want to be able to say so, and it is as simple as that…. I would say that the chronic state of policing, and bent coppers is next on the list…
Andrew Daws
1 year ago
this just shows that the Britannia Unchained message has not got through. The idea that reducing taxes increases productivity is absent: we see only that if we tax less we can spend less.. So the candidates have completely muddied the message, as they did with Brexit.
Henry Haslam
1 year ago
There is good reason for Conservatives to look again at the low-tax issue. We are not a dogmatic party.
Of course we prefer low taxes: we like to choose how to spend our money, not have government decide for us. This applies to vanity projects: we prefer our own.
However, we are a prosperous society. Most of us have enough money for the essentials, with some to spare for inessentials. We could pay more tax without hurting too much. We can see the need for more government spending, in areas from healthcare and social care to justice, immigration control and security at home and abroad. Our lives would be more enriched by the security that comes from knowing than justice, police or an ambulance will be available when we need them than they are by the ephemera that we buy.
There is nothing unConservative about such thinking.
Also completely absent from the wannabe Tory leaders: any acknowledgement that their lockdowns put us in the mess we are now in, and caused massive harms, the lesser of them being the sky-high prices they claim they will “protect” us from. Nobody is talking about this at all, or that the Conservatives destroyed just about all of their Conservative values in one breath in March 2020. It is as if the last two years of government tyranny never happened (for this, read because they want to use this method again). When are the Tories going to admit to destroying the economy and public mental health (especially that of children) with their extremely damaging lockdowns? When are the Tories going to admit that they deliberately terrified the public into compliance? Is the new leader going to pledge to move away from fear messaging, and show that they have learned the lesson of the boy who cried wolf? It’s still happening: a few hot days is now a “heat emergency”, there are “outbreaks” of hepatitis, monkeypox, traces of polio in sewers, an “explosion of cases” of Covid. Are the Tories going to tell us that it is now safe to set up business in this country, because they promise never to use lockdowns to destroy businesses again?
Are the Tories going to tell us that pigs can fly?
Agreed. BIG elephant in the room!
I thought he resigned??
Give it a rest! I am a Remainer, but I am not banging about the Brexiteers admitting it was a disaster. It has happened, it is done, it will not be reversed. Let us look to the future.
Wrong thread?
Not really. It is a comparison, if you like: The lockdowns have happened. They are over. We have enough problems without squabbling to win battles we have already lost.
They are not over until there is an acknowledgement of the damage they caused and that they were wrong and unnecessary.
Until that happens, I for one can’t feel safe that they won’t pull that stunt again! Three years to flatten the country, anyone?
It is blindingly obvious that the Great Barrington Declaration was the way to go. As an expert in risk management I can tell you: while it’s better to remove the risk from the vulnerable people sometimes that’s highly impracticable as in the case of pandemics. The solution was always to remove the vulnerable from the virus-ridden towns and cities and let them get on with herd immunity.
But the response was often “oh, you are suggesting concentration camps then?”.
So let’s not be too selective in our memories – there was huge pressure to “battle the virus” ie to contain the uncontainable!
GBD was indeed the correct approach. I signed it. I witnessed many weak minded woke citizens stating it to be barbaric and devoid of compassion. Unfortunately, those same people are now the losers after endless lockdowns etc and a semi bankrupt Country. Fundamental to solving this is remedying the lack of ability of most UK citizens to move beyond woke peer group acceptance and into a more self-responsible economically aware mode of behaviour.
So true: sadly also so rare..
I disagree that the lockdown battle is over: although I very much hope they are unlikely to be used again, the threat of future lockdowns and other restrictions is still very much there, ready to be produced like a rabbit out of a hat. Partygate meant that restrictions became unacceptable under Johnson, but it might be different with his successor. I am hoping that the rocketing case numbers of the present mean that lockdown becomes even more politically impossible, but I’m not holding my breath. No minister has yet condemned lockdown as a bad thing, and the “opposition” were either cheering lockdowns on, or complaining they did not go far enough. Although many people are relieved lockdowns are over, I don’t think lots of people would oppose them just yet; the painful aftermath of (among many things) the effect on children’s mental health has not made itself widely known yet, lots of the public have not yet turned against lockdown and masks in principle. I will not relax until we get through a winter without any restrictions, including mask mandates, threats of vax passes, school bubbles, and campaigns of fear: I think there is still a very real danger of seasonal restrictions becoming permanent by stealth. Now that the precedent of lockdown has been set, it is difficult to erase this. Lockdowns have led to an expectation that the government “must do something” in an “emergency”: for example some people are clamouring for school closures in the “heat emergency” of next week.
OK, I withdraw my comment above. What happened over the past two years is history, but I see that there is still an active and necessary debate with people who want a guarantee that no government will ever again do anything to reduce the death toll from future pandemics.
Insert ‘unnecessary’ after ‘anything’. There, fixed it for you RF.
Makes no difference. For people who believe that vaccines kill more people than COVID and wearing a cloth mask is an unbearable outrage nothing will ever be necessary.
The deaths were not reduced, in fact I’m sure history will show that they cost more lives than they saved.
So I want a guarantee that they will act in a proportional way and include a cost/benefit analysis before using the wrecking ball approach. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.
Well, the estimated death toll from the pandemic is 21.4 million deaths, as of May this year (The Economist). To be sure that does not tell us how many died from secondary effects rather than COVID or how many more / less would have died with different policies, but you tell me – what kind of measures would you consider proportional to try to prevent 21 million deaths?
We all like a cost-benefit analysis, but you can only do it properly if you know exactly what the consequences of each choice will be. Which we still do not. And, as one article pointed out, even a four-day delay in taking measures can lead to a lot more deaths, if you have an epidemic that is doubling every few days. Are you really saying that until they know for sure – which means until long after the pandemic is passed – they should do nothing?
Doing nothing was never on the table – they were initially going to follow the tried and tested pandemic planning protocols, which centred around advice and trusting people to make the correct decisions around social distancing, shielding if you were vulnerable etc. Sweden followed this, and their eventual outcome was much better than ours, and the fallout in terms of economy, childrens’ education, and general mental health was minimal.
The Chinese style lockdowns were themselves the experiment, having never been attempted before in democratic countries. As predicted by a few of us (who were shamed and silenced at the time but now vindicated), this caused absolute social chaos and wreaked far more damage than Covid. Current excess non-covid deaths have been consistently higher for the past year or so. It turns out that turning the NHS into a Covid only service and discouraging those with other health issues to stay away, caused a great deal of damage which will take years to get on top of.
And as you say, the reported death figures are ‘with’ not ‘from’ (and within 28 days of a positive test), so we don’t really know what the true figure is.
I had this discussion recently here, with someone else.
First check out this article, a modelling study estimating that both the UK and Denmark would have had on the order of three times as many dead at the start if they had followed Swedish policies. The UK (according to the article) did worse because the virus got there earlier and had more time to spread, and would have done even worse with Swedish policies This is only a plausible scenario, not proof, but even so 1) it very much weakens the idea that the ‘tried and tested’ policies of Sweden would have been better, 2) it is supported by evidence in a way that your judgments (or mine) are not.
The article also points out that the actual reduction in social contact etc. was not that much different in Sweden – it just took longer to get there at a crucial time in the pandemic. Before recommending Swedish policies people should realise that Swedes are maybe uniquely disposed (for a European country) to obey public opinion and official recommendations. Which means that the real degree of coercion – and compliance – in Sweden is much higher than you would get with the same policies in most other countries.
Also the ‘in-place pandemic plan was tried and tested for influenza, a disease that was less lethal, less contagious and, crucially, is not infectious before symptoms appear. Taking it for granted that your influenza plan will of course work for a new virus is a sign of complacency and over-confidence, not wisdom.
Finally, it is true both that the effects on society, the health service etc, has been serious, and that there is much we still do not know. But it seems extraordinary to me to claim that this is ‘proof’ that the best available epidemiological judgemetns are wrong, and that the gut feelings of people who disagree are therefore proved correct.
That was a modelling study carried out by Neil Ferguson (amongst others), nearly a year ago. His models have turned out to be very wildly wrong, so I’m afraid I wouldn’t pay any heed to them.
Otherwise you make some good points and I will come back to address them later.
As Johnson said, he’d do it again at the drop of a hat. As will his replacement.
Best way to prove you were right the first time is to repeat the exercise. Clearly, if you do something different that’s admission you accept you were wrong: and if it works it’s proof positive you were definitely wrong!
Correction: you Were a Remainer. That’s done and dusted, as you admit, so presumably you are a Rejoiner or neither.
Call it what you like. I still think Brexit was a very bad idea, and the actual implementation was disastrous. I call that ‘Remainer’, just like people still talk about ‘Brexiteers’, even after Brexit has happened.
What should be done now is another matter. Britain is out, and it is politically impossible to change that for a generation at least. Also, considering that the re-entry offer will be a lot worse than what Britain used to have, rejoining (even if it were possible) would be a lot less attractive than it would have been to remain in the first place. For now let us concentrate on staying where we are while minimising the damage.
Why rejoin? Simply accept the single market and your problems are solved, ala NI which, (despite DUP bleeting) has moved from bottom on growth to top within the UK 4.. All the benefits but you keep your empire: sorry sovereignty..
Not that simple, unfortunately. It works for NI, which is too small to set its own regulations anyway. It works for Norway, which is also small and only exports oil, gas and fish. The UK is a large, differentiated service economy with particular needs. It would never work to have all the market rules set in Brussels with no UK vote. Imagine the rules for the City of London – set by Frankfurt and Paris?
Not ideal, or course.. but compared to starvation, hungry mightn’t be such a bad option?
So important to get the label right! Helps to obscure the issue..
Speaking of remaining:
Brexit may be a done deal … sort of … but the political establishment that delivered (unchallenged) lockdowns and unscientific policies promoted by “The Science” remains. I’d be worried that the establishment is not done pulling its stunts and has yet to face up to some accountability. The evidence of institutional rot is obvious. So, why doesn’t the press talk about it?
Hint: (re your final question): if the media journalists don’t speak up for one of their own, Julian Assange then we know who’s deciding what gets reported on..
Conflating Covid with Brexit? Uh? WTF are you on about. Nothing it do with each other; Utterly DUMB
Agreed: but the point made is valid: they were both ‘battles’ that you lost and are now paying a very high price for. They do have that in common, surely?
Doesn’t stop it being a disaster. The two propositions are mot mutually exclusive. You can have the Penny (Mordaunt) and the Bun.
Remember that the lockdowns were implemented more slowly than many in the general population wanted. They were not so much ‘Tory led’ as ‘Tory follows’.
Good point.
A politician who resigned because they thought lockdown was the wrong way to proceed would certainly be at the front of the queue for my vote for PM but as far as I know none of the contenders did that.
Almost all politicians went along with the general clamour for lockdown so this fails to differentiate any of them and is certainly nothing that differentiates the Tory hopefuls from Labour whose only complaint was that lockdown was not swifter and harsher.
Lockdown was in my view a policy error but no UK party followed the Swedish model so unfortunately it becomes a non-issue as far as determining who should govern in future.
Bit of a tall order to expect an amateur in all the relevant sciences to take that stand: do remember Sweden was out on its own!
One other outlier was Tanzania: they just had 3 days of prayer and (as a result?) were largely unscathed! Go figure…
There are no accurate figures for Covid in Tanzania, since the late President was not prepared to accept the reality of a disease that may have killed him.
“Are the Tories going to tell us that pigs can fly?”
They’ve been telling us that for years, along with the rest of the frankly wretched political establishment.
Corona was just one further cataclysmic disaster in a line stretching back at least as far as 1914, and for most of that time but not all, we have had one pseudo Tory government after another. This is not off course to exculpate ‘Utopian’ Labour, but the Tories must bear full responsibility for the near destruction of this once great country of ours.
‘Consummatum est’.
Why not? The told you bigger porkies than that and you swallowed them!
The media, especially the BBC, are more to blame than the government. They rely on fear mongering to keep themselves front and centre of public life so they can influence public thinking and effect cultural change. The BBC want a Labour government, so the next Tory leader, whoever that is, will be undermined from the start.
Literally all the parties supported lockdown, and not just in this country, but Europe supported lockdowns too. Macron just got a bloody nose trying to get lockdown extension laws passed and only because the left and right parties coalesced to stop him, but the bill will pass just without some of the extreme amendments.
Sweden is the only continental European nation to not have locked down and where widely derided for it at the time, hindsight is now showing they had it right.
don’t forget Boris initially wanted to ride the storm, gain herd immunity and not lockdown. He got bounced into locking down largely by the press, opposition parties and also those in his party who challenged him, namely his cabinet consisting of most of the would be pm’s.
not locking down was a huge gamble and against all the advice from SAGE and at odds to all the other global nations of a similar standing to us.
so yes the Tories decided to lockdown, but any other party in charge would have done the same!
so your central point is that we should have known that Covid wasn’t as life threatening as Spanish flu, when it was a new virus? Hindsight is 20/20
Like the EU pre-2016, lockdowns are off the official political agenda because all the parties supported them. The Tories are not going to shoot themselves in the feet arguing over whether the lockdowns were too harsh, when Labour were arguing for even more tyrannical lockdowns.
“Red Wall voters who are either comfortable with the status-quo or would even like to pay a bit more to get better public services in return“
There’s a problem here. That people may say that they are ok with higher taxes in return for ‘better’ public services (which is an unlikely consequence) is no guarantee that they believe that they are also the people who will pay those taxes.
“…is no guarantee that they believe that they are also the people who will pay those taxes.”
That is the oldest one in the book, and a good reason to treat polls with a degree of circumspection. What do the punters really mean?
It’s simple: you pay rhe taxes and I get the benefits.. what’s the hard part of that?
In a democracy involving one man one vote the views of non-taxpayers need to be accommodated by politicians. The Labour Party exists to accommodate those who don’t pay taxes or who benefit disproportionately from the distribution of the taxes levied. The Tories are for those who wish to mitigate tax or their malign side-effects. That at least is how it is supposed to function.
The Labour, LibDem and SNP policy of enfranchising 16 and 17 year-olds would certainly empower a new tranche of voters who cannot possibly be paying tax. Is this not worthy of debate?
Indeed. Naked self-interest. Why stop at 16 there are plenty of 13 year olds that have as much knowledge of politics than most of the population and an interest in seeing the country governed according to their lights. If prisoners are to be entitled to the vote why not those who are deemed mature enough to decide what sex they are?
The reductio ad absurdum
Why stop there? Why not disenfranchise the poor and those not clever enough to vote? And old guys like me: surely we must be too senile to vote now? Let’s introduce tje former NI solution: only property owners allowed to vote..
You’re setting up a straw man to enjoy knocking him down. I said nothing about taking the vote from the poor, the property-less or the old.
As regards those with ‘learning difficulties’ I do think that they should not vote, although now they can. Voting requires judgement and experience. If someone is genuinely impaired then how can they exercise that right?
https://www.everyvotecounts.org.uk/information-for-politicians/learning-disabilities/
Now that is funny! Learning difficulties? Ha ha.. voters vote over and over for the same shysters and expect a different result! If that doesn’t display ‘learning difficulty’ I don’t know what does. Technically I believe it’s called insanity.
Don’t disagree with you on that. It’s the non-sequitur in the argument, based on polling data where we don’t have the original question. ‘Would you accept higher taxes in return for better public services?’ might give very different results to ‘Would you be willing to pay more tax for higher spending in public services’.
Basically, polling is a corrupt, evil dark art and should not be trusted!
I can tell you, as a statistician you are half right! It is not (always) a dark art: however, yes, the framing of the question is all important. How about: “Taxes makes the rich richer and the poor poorer: are you in favour of taxes?” You’ll find: 0.1% will totally agree: 1% will strongly agree: 9% will agree and 80% will disagree.. the other 10% are the slow learners I’ve already referred to!
I see it more as redressing the wrong where owners take a grossly disproportionate profit from those who produce the goods AND the profit. It is a kind if fine imposed on thieves. Benefits to the (working) poor are crumbs in comparison with the loaves given to the already criminally rich. Tories do it too: otherwise it’s burning brands and pitchforks.
Indeed. And has a party that promised to increase taxation ever won an election?
Everyone wants higher taxes for better public services, as long as they’re not the ones paying the taxes. The question should be “do you personally want to pay higher taxes, to pay for other people’s public services”?
However much money we throw at the main public services, they get worse and worse. The NHS is on its deathbed. We’re taxed to the hilt and see NOTHING for it. That we now have a HUGE nanny state, tax and spend Conservative government is a kick in the face for all of us who vote Conservative.
ConSocialism is what we have.
Yes, and Britain crossed the rubicon around 10 years ago, when less than 50% of the population are now net contributors. This is dangerous, because once a majority of voters are not net contributors to the system (but net beneficiaries of it) they will of course vote themselves more of other people’s stuff.
…Leading to a shrinking tax base as the producers are punished more and more heavily, and start to throw in the towel, or have no working capital free to innovate/hire/invest because the vampire state is drinking too much of the economic lifeblood.
This is a real problem. I think the best way to solve it is flat taxes, no deductions.Start with very low rates for the band under 50K, but have everyone in society contributing to taxes. The creation of a system where some pay and most don’t means that the beneficiaries will vote us all the way to a socialist collapse. And the state will become ever more inept and corrupt, because it’s constantly growing and feeding on the dwindling producer cohort, right up until the spectacular immolation of the economy, as demonstrated by Venezuela and others.
The public sector dont pay any tax, as their income is derived from taxation and borrowing in the first place: they should be paid net and it be made aware to the voting public
I work in the Greater Blob (for my sins) and agree with this. Have pointed this out to other Blobbites when they moan on about austerity and taxing the rich(er than they are).
If tax take goes to rich company owners (it does in large part) then your point applies to most who are paid a wage/salary. Money just goes ’round and ’round. Wouldn’t it be really interesting if everyone who handled money put their name in it?
Dentist charges £3,000 for a job: pays £1k in tax: buys a non essential item for €2k: Item mnfr. pays £400 VAT + £100 corp tax + £1k in wages: on which income taxed £400.. and so on: result: ALL goes on tax ultimately.. so your point makes no sense..
Definitely not for the triple lock.
One overlooked result: So-called “Red wall voters” have substantially the same views as voters in the rest of the country.
Except with regard to Mr Sunak I would say.
Prof. Goodwin—I don’t want to come across as adversarial but I wonder if you might amend the article to provide some further details of your poll such as sample size, methodology, definitions (what does “red wall” mean here?) Not that I doubt you or your writing, just that it’s impossible to attach any kind of weight to your research without these details. Personally, I’m rooting for Badenoch, who is performing mid- to upper-field in all the other polls I’ve come across. Your poll is a bit of an outlier in that regard, and if your results are borne out by adequate sample size and methodology then that would be most valuable information to me. I promise I’m not trolling, I just want to know.
Sunak has put generations in debt for generations.
Mordaunt says women can have penises
Truss is a loony.
Badenoch the only conservative of the lot, and she won’t get in.
All our political parties are lumps of jelly. Damned if I can see myself voting again. Johnson’s promises on election all turned out to be lies, and the panic he got into Covid, for which we had a perfectly good and well-thought out plan he threw away and the rest is history.
FUBAR.
Sorry, “FUBAR”?
F***ed Up Beyond All Repair. It’s a military acronym.
Sounds about right to me!
Ha! Thanks for the colourful acronym.
‘Truss is a loony’ – ha! That’s exactly what I thought when I saw that ridiculous picture of her in a tank. Heaven help us if she gets the keys to no. 10.
The hint is in the name: Truss..a plank!
The problem with asking individual voters what the best policies are is that human nature, what drives our desire, is animalistic, comes from the amygdala, our prehistoirc brain, and I am afriad makes us simply selfish and greedy; most people only think and vote for what is best for them as individuals. I wonder how many people actually believe that the government has a pot of money they can spend but don’t equate that to the tax take and the health of the economy. I suspect millions do not join those dots. Great leaders MUST think of what is right for the country as a whole and the economy NOT what is currently popular, and convince the electorate to do the right thing. That is why the current rail strikes, effectively over an inflation rate no government could control, because it is being imported, is so selfish and wrong. It is a group of people, many earning far more than the average, thinking only of themselves and not of the greater good, the result of which would be to curb pay rises and endure the pain while it lasts, as everyone surely must. That way we would recover quicker; their way, we won’t. It needs a Kemi Badenoch to tell some simple truths and explain the realities rather than try to make everyone happy and feel protected from the storm. It is not the job of government to do that. That way lies victimhood, all too obvious nowadays.
If only the senior management of the rail companies had restrained their greed.. they could now hold themselves up as exemplars of restraint. Instead they pay themselves vast sums thereby ‘proving’ that there is plenty of money in the pot, not just to keep up with inflation but to surpass it many times over!
But they do it because they can: that’s the market for you. Now that Mick Lynch says: “we’ll have a small slice of that too thank you very much” he’s the bad guy. He’s just playing by the rules like the others but in a far less greedy way. ‘Can’t have it both ways I’m afraid: sauce, goose and gander is the name of the game!
The figure in this survey are somewhat odd. The total of those making some declaration in respect of the Red Wall voters amounts to 85 % The great majority either don’t know or plump for none of the above. I suspect that doesn’t mean there is a massive hidden vote for Priti Patel or some other unnamed candidate. I presume also the missing 15% were those who could not even be bothered to reply.
The truth is that most of the population takes little interest in the various candidates that the MSM obsess about and quite rightly conclude they haven’t a clue who might best lead the Conservative party. Indeed while I like some of what I have heard from some of the candidates, I really don’t know how they would shape up under the pressure of events and the pressure from the civil service and their colleagues. Given that we are often surprised at the opinions of our nearest and dearest the task of picking the best PM is not within our grasp. At best we can deploy a few prejudices to identify who we definitely wouldn’t want.
Happily those not bothering to commit will probably not nother to vote?
The polls were against everything Thatcher wanted to do as well.
That’s 3-term Thatcher, longest-serving PM of modern times – remember her?
I would love to see more polling drilling down into some of this. What taxes, specifically, would people be unhappy with reducing? VAT? Corp. tax? NI? Income tax? and at which rates?
We want Kemi! We want Kemi!
And we definitely don’t want Rishi.
Absolutely risible that he would run on a campaign slogan of “Let’s …rebuild the economy.” — YOU smashed it RIshi. That was you! The Chancellor!
The sheer front of it is just incredible. He burns our nation’s house down and then says “Hey, you wanna hire my construction firm to rebuild that for you…”
Duplicitous, globalist shill. And if the Tories choose him then they are doomed, and deservedly so.
He is working on the basis of those notices in some shops: You break it; you own it.
I’m pretty certain that I read somewhere that he was one of the bankers responsible for the last banking crisis. I couldn’t understand why anyone thought it made him a good choice of chancellor and it certainly doesn’t make him a good choice for PM.
Yes, we in Ireland once elected a quasi crook as PM: on the basis that he’d make a fortune for the country just as he’d made a fortune for himself. He didn’t: he just continued making a fortune for himself but now he had other suckers to bleed! It’s what they do: think of leopards and spots..
This can be explained by the fact that around 34m pay income tax in a country with a population of 67m. Of course, spending other people’s money is terribly popular.
This is where as someone who is not good at numbers I get confused – what’s the figure if you remove the nation’s children from the figures?
I wonder if those who replied ‘none of the above’ had Boris Johnson in mind?
Excellent. Thank you. You’ve done a rare thing nowadays: you looked at facts and analysed them. Such a treat.
Tell us. In the polling, were people asked if they favoured increased taxes for worse services? I just ask, as that is the reality “on the ground”, as it were.
No. I thought not. Which makes all that research a bit of a waste of time, I’m afraid.
“The Conservative Party is in the grip of its most important leadership election in nearly 20 years.”
Really? You didn’t think Johnson taking over from May saved us from the greatest constitutional disaster since the English civil war?
Nothing I have heard from the ‘Conservative Party’ gives me cause to doubt that they support incessant mass immigration. They are not conservative in any meaningful way.
The Heritage Site | Adam McDermont | Substack
Just created an account, checking it works…..
It does!
The old adage of promising to be “all things to all men” seems appropriate here. Most voters expect to be lied to (or exaggeration at least) so U-turns will present little problem. Sadly it has become the norm. If Rishi Sunak thinks talk of restraint (austerity lite) – from an obscenely rich MP – will cut it he’s sadly mistaken. The argument that the ‘money simply isn’t there’ is no longer believed by anyone: it’s there in very plentiful supply to make the rich, like him, ever richer: add in the (deplorably English) race card and he hasn’t a snowball’s’.
My money is on Penny Mordaunt as the best of a bad lot.
Btw I love the names: apart from an over representation of the subcontinental we have: Badenoch (like Enoch Powell wasn’t bad enough) and Braverman (clearly not woke or she’d be Bravernonbinary by now) and best of all Truss: isn’t that a kind of plank? And not forgetting Tegendhat (perhaps a woke version of wringing the cap?)..
Part of the reason for Boris Johnson’s downfall was his attempt to square the circle of being a big state, big spending socialist while at the same time being a small state, tax cutting Tory. In the end he pleased no one.
Voters want PR, because we have two parties who ask us what we want before elections, and show us what they want after the election.
The words of Peter Hitchens seem more and more accurate every day
The voting majority, not just Tory voters want free speech, freedom of expression, the removal of ‘ hate crimes’ from the statute book and a war on woke, aka they do not care a fig about global warming, racism and LBGT, and want to be able to say so, and it is as simple as that…. I would say that the chronic state of policing, and bent coppers is next on the list…
this just shows that the Britannia Unchained message has not got through. The idea that reducing taxes increases productivity is absent: we see only that if we tax less we can spend less.. So the candidates have completely muddied the message, as they did with Brexit.
There is good reason for Conservatives to look again at the low-tax issue. We are not a dogmatic party.
Of course we prefer low taxes: we like to choose how to spend our money, not have government decide for us. This applies to vanity projects: we prefer our own.
However, we are a prosperous society. Most of us have enough money for the essentials, with some to spare for inessentials. We could pay more tax without hurting too much. We can see the need for more government spending, in areas from healthcare and social care to justice, immigration control and security at home and abroad. Our lives would be more enriched by the security that comes from knowing than justice, police or an ambulance will be available when we need them than they are by the ephemera that we buy.
There is nothing unConservative about such thinking.