“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters” Donald Trump famously said. Unlike the United States, British politics and society generally shies away from arms. But a sense of deep denial, and politics without consequence, seems the same. “I could […]
Tag: Dominic Cummings
UK politics: not normal
A Minister who had presided over a fiasco as major as Gavin Williamson has with the A-Level results algorithm problems would – in normal times – have either resigned or been sacked. A Special Adviser who had admitted a major breach of lockdown rules would – in normal times – […]
A knighthood for Cummings? It’s probably a lie. But what happens when there is no consequence for telling lies?
I read this tweet earlier: Hearing rumours that Dominic Cummings will get a knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours List. — Christopher Snowdon (@cjsnowdon) June 5, 2020 It had a hundred odd retweets then, and more than a thousand now at the time of writing. It has to be a […]
Why details still matter in the Dominic Cummings case
On BBC Breakfast this morning, recounted by The Guardian here, Robert Jenrick (Minister for Housing, Communities and Local Government) said the following: [Dominic Cummings] has given his explanation to the prime minister, who listened and concluded that he’d acted reasonably and legally. The prime minister then asked him to give […]
What happens if refusing to acknowledge the economic costs of Brexit is actually the UK Government’s tactic?
I’ve long been fascinated by how the pro-Brexit campaign’s lack of a plan for Brexit, prior to the 2016, actually helped the Leave side win that referendum. It gave Leave a sort of slippery quality in campaigning terms. “Oh no one is talking about putting up trade barriers!” Gove would say […]
Dominic Cummings (@odysseanproject) deletes his Twitter account – piecing it back together
NOTE: due to disk space requirements, the files mentioned in this blog post have been removed from the web. If you have any questions about these files, or this issue, please contact me. Dominic Cummings was Campaign Director of Vote Leave. His tweets from his account @odysseanproject became strangely compelling, […]
The lack of a Brexit plan: perfect to win a referendum, a nightmare now – the Euratom issue
So Tory backbenchers are rebelling about Euratom (the European Atomic Energy Community). They want to stay in it, despite Brexit, according to The Evening Standard. And enough want to stay in it so as to deny Theresa May a majority, apparently. Dominic Cummings, the supposed brain behind Vote Leave goes […]
The challenge of Trump and Brexit for the “mainstream” – we’re being out-thought
I count a pretty senior UKIP person as a friend. Yet whenever I tell that to some liberal lefty pro-EU contacts of mine they are repulsed and perplexed. They assume the person in question must be a Paul Nuttall or Roger Helmer, someone so hopelessly dim, racist or inconsistent that they cannot […]