Think spots and leopards. Boris Johnson became Prime Minister having been sacked twice from other jobs for telling lies – in 1988 from The Times for fabricating a quote from his godfather; and in 2004 from the Conservative front bench for lying to his party leader about an affair. His supporters must have hoped that … Continue reading Boris Johnson’s top ten lies from his first year as Prime Minister

On Wednesday (August 12), we shall be told how much Britain’s economy contracted in the second quarter of this year. Here are three predictions. First, the figures will show that Britain’s economy has contracted by more than at any time since the Black Death (or some other ancient horror). Second, they will dominate the day’s … Continue reading Ignore this week’s GDP figures. They will be nonsense

The Brexit saga is back with a vengeance. Michel Barnier, the European Union’s chief negotiator says his negotiations with Britain are going nowhere. He and David Frost, the UK negotiator, agree that the transition phase could end in December without a deal. The prospect of breakdown is real, even if we are witnessing the kind … Continue reading What Britain’s voters want from Brexit

Boris Johnson would lose an election held today. Despite holding a steady four-point lead in recent polls, the Conservatives would lose around 70 seats. They would remain the largest party in parliament, but with too few MPs to stay in office. And just as their huge gains in Labour’s traditional “Red Wall” seats delivered Boris … Continue reading ‘Red wall’ voters would make Keir Starmer PM if an election were held now

Today, buried in the detailed statistics published each day by the New York Times, is something that should terrify Donald Trump. Until this week, the President could make the case that his strategy for tackling coronavirus was working, even though the number of people newly reported to have the disease has more than doubled since … Continue reading Here are the Covid-19 numbers that should terrify Trump

At the moment, Leicester has Britain’s worst Covid infection rate. One of the grim ironies of the city’s current plight is that once it blazed a trail for preventing the spread of infectious diseases. It was, admittedly, a long time ago – 1878 to be precise – but the story prompts the question: would the … Continue reading Ministers should have obeyed the contact-tracing rules my great uncle set out in 1919

We are told these days to expect a ‘new normal’: different ways of living, working, travelling and shopping once the Covid-19 crisis is over. Maybe politics, too. Here is my ‘new normal’ advice to the three main Britain-wide parties – with absolutely no guarantee that, if they do as I say, they won’t fall flat … Continue reading Politics in the post-pandemic “New Normal” will and should be different. Here’s how

Joe Biden has drawn well ahead of Donald Trump in the latest American polls. This analysis seeks to answer two questions: is Biden’s lead real — and will it last? Let’s start with what the polls currently say. According to the 538 website — the most sophisticated of the sites that monitor the polls — … Continue reading The US polls put Biden well ahead of Trump. Are they right?

To the list of government failures in tackling the pandemic, one more must now be added. Ministers are misreading the state of public opinion and risk making a bad situation worse. It has been widely reported and not seriously denied that Boris Johnson is nervous about relaxing the lockdown because most voters oppose the idea. … Continue reading Why Boris Johnson should ignore the polls

Two weeks ago I argued here that the government’s handling of Covid-19 had converted a positional problem into a valence crisis. That is, voters were no longer just worried about Boris Johnson’s policies; in growing numbers they felt that he and his ministers were dishonest, incompetent and out of touch. Dominic Cummings’s actions crystallised these … Continue reading A new index puts Labour ahead of the Tories