Sunday 16 May 2021

The Polling paradox

I am seriously worried about the future of this country. The latest polling has the Tory party with a huge lead and in one, Boris Johnson has a 17 Point lead over Starmer as the best prime minister. I note Sam Coates, deputy political editor at Sky News says this is a problem for the Labour Party. It isn’t a problem for Labour, it’s a problem for the nation. If a man like Johnson is seen by a majority as a better leader than a former DPP we are all in very deep trouble.

This is from Coates:

And another projecting a 122 seat Conservative majority:

Johnson is by a good margin the worst prime minister in history. He has so many investigations being conducted against him the BBC has to publish a list in case we lose track: All the investigations facing the government, explained. There are ten headings, some with multiple investigations, by official watchdogs in most cases, with what seems like prima facie evidence of wrong doing.  And this doesn't include the PPE and other corrupt contract scandals hanging over the Tory party like a particularly bad stench involving billions of pounds of public money.

The prime minister has a shameful record of lying, infidelity, dishonesty, greed, betrayal, entitlement and virtually every other vice you can think of, yet people think he’s not only capable of being prime minister, he is better equipped than Starmer, a patently decent and honest man, to do the job. This is deeply shocking to me.

In late 2016 I remember sitting in my local pub talking about Trump and saying it was impossible the American people would elect a man so clearly unfit to even be a human being, let alone the next POTUS.  We know what happened then, but amazingly, after four years of farce, chaos and humiliation a sizeable chunk of the US electorate still voted for him in 2020!

Now we have our own Trump. We really are in big trouble.

I confess I thought people would have realised Brexit was a big mistake by now but there is little sign of it yet among a great mass of people - not perhaps the majority who appear to think it's a mistake, but not one to bother too much about - despite a tsunami of bad news. Perhaps it is all being hidden behind the pandemic who knows?

The country took a crazy decision in 2016, encouraged by Johnson. Seventeen million British people could not see the insanity of Brexit. For me this was an embarrassment. I knew we had more than our share of barmy people, it isn’t possible to avoid coming into contact with them or to see contestants on quiz shows for example, who seem to want to parade their ignorance before the nation. 

Don’t get me wrong, I am not a potential candidate for Mastermind, mainly because I know my limitations. However, it’s clear to me that many people don’t. Having the rest of the world realise we have a majority of stupid people is cringeworthy.

After The Daily Mail yesterday carried two stories of Johnson, The Sunday Times have an article today about the spread of the Indian Covid-19 variant claiming that "at least 20,000 passengers who could have been infected with a virulent strain of coronavirus were allowed to enter Britain while Boris Johnson delayed imposing a travel ban from India."

Johnson only added India to the so-called red list on April 23, three weeks after announcing a ban on flights from neighbouring Pakistan and Bangladesh and the surge in cases of the new variant threatens to derail the easing of lockdown restrictions.

The piece quotes: 

"A source who attended a Whitehall war gaming exercise on the Indian variant on Thursday said: 'It’s very clear that we should have closed the border to India earlier and that Boris did not do so because he didn’t want to offend Modi'.”

This is going to cause more unnecessary deaths and probably more regional lockdowns simply because he wanted to get a trade deal with India to 'prove' Brexit was worth it.  If the past is a guide to the future this will only increase Johnson's popularity. Where are we headed?

Finally, I see The Telegraph has a piece about the NI Protocol with allies of the PM saying it is "dead in the water."   Reading it you get the impression this is the usual bluster and an attempt to intimidate Brussels during talks to try and mitigate the impact of the protocol, the one described by its maker as 'unsustainable'.

Essentially, the UK is trying to put pressure on the EU by suggesting that unless concessions are made before July 12 when the marching season reaches a peak, they will somehow just scrap the protocol. 

The article makes some claims that I have seen before but not from any official source. For example, it is suggested the EU is carrying out 20 per cent of all its external border checks at the so-called ‘sea border’ in the Irish Sea.  This sounds unbelievable to me.

One UK source claimed EU officials were "halting shipments of own-brand loaves of bread being transported from a Sainsbury's supermarket in Liverpool to a sister store in Belfast, even though there are no Sainsbury’s shops in the Republic."

And I note yet another mad idea is being floated to resolve the problem. Frost's team have been "examining the idea of ‘mutual enforcement’ of border checks, in which either side enforces checks at the same level as the other, effectively removing them. However the EU is said not to want to engage." That is not a surprise.  It shows once again the stupidity of negotiating the WA (and the TCA) under your own self-imposed time constraints in order to satisfy Johnson's political and personal ambitions rather that take the time to come up with solutions that work and carry popular support.

The government is clearly worried about the newly elected DUP leader Edwin Poots who told The Telegraph the protocol was “damaging Northern Ireland’s economy and undermining the Union” by “disrupting trade with our biggest and most important market”.  

He added: “No rational argument could be made for the Protocol. It is madness and must go. We hear Lord Frost’s words and we hear the Prime Minister’s words but we need to see action.

"The mechanisms are open to the Government to deal with this flawed Protocol but the longer it is left untouched the more damage it is causing. We will be pressing the Government to act and act with urgency. "

Trouble is coming in Ireland, make no mistake.

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