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

Let us celebrate a British success story. Look past the disappointments: that we no longer rule the waves; that our railways, schools and life expectancy could be better; that we invented soccer but haven’t won the world cup since 1966. Instead, bask in the glory of the one claim that can be made with total … Continue reading Election night results programmes: Britain’s world-beating achievement

Seldom has a sideshow bristled with such danger. The headlines and the stories have shrunk, but the risks to Britain of a ruinous Brexit have only increased. And the cause of the diminished public interest, the coronavirus pandemic, is also the reason why those risks are rising. The United Kingdom left the European Union on January 31, … Continue reading Brexit: Johnson is trapped by Covid-19 and his own weakness

Boris Johnson is in a wretched place. If he isn’t feeling terrible about the way the pandemic drama is playing out, he should. For the crisis has crossed a dangerous line. Until last week it was a positional problem. It is now a valence crisis. To explain: voters’ views on politics usually divide into two … Continue reading Dominic Cummings turns a problem into a crisis for Boris Johnson

A pincer movement threatens the government’s hopes of emerging from the Covid-19 crisis with its reputation intact. One half of the pincer is provided by the latest polls, showing that decline in support for the government is not just continuing, but accelerating. The other half of the pincer is evidence that the government is simply … Continue reading The polls and the pandemic: double trouble for Boris Johnson