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The Conservative Party leadership contest hustings ended in London’s Wembley Arena on Wednesday, August 31.
Did it last too long? We think so only because we are having a cost of living crisis with more Project Fear pumped into our brains every day. Critics should remember that Parliament is in summer recess anyway. If things were normal with the economy, crime levels and the NHS, we wouldn’t have minded so much.
Remember, if this had been a Labour leadership contest, no one would have moaned. The media would have bent over backwards justifying it.
What I do mind, however, is that Parliament will be meeting only for a short time in September then adjourning so that the Conservatives, Labour and the Lib Dems can scuttle off to their respective Party conferences. Surely, parliamentary business can continue in the Chamber during September. Not every MP needs to be at a conference every day. Most of them are held on weekends, and Parliament does not meet on Fridays, so there is no reason why the Commons cannot meet during September.
Back to the hustings.
London
I’ll start with the last one in London, which was excellent:
Nick Ferrari, the host of the morning show on LBC (radio), was the moderator.
The sound quality was good as was the music. It was highly professional and everyone looked as if they enjoyed being there.
The Conservative audience was diverse: all ethnic groups and all age groups. There were even a few hipsters present.
The first hour was not filmed. Author, national wit, Celebrity Gogglebox star and former Conservative MP Gyles Brandreth, 74, opened proceedings. I wish I could have seen him. Amazingly, he broke his elbow the day before in Fife, Scotland, but still showed up at Wembley Arena the next day.
In the video, Nick Ferrari comes on at 4:13 to introduce the format, which is consistent with the other Conservative Party hustings.
At this point in the contest, Liz Truss was seen by pollsters and bookmakers to be way ahead of Rishi Sunak, so the introductory theme was one of unity, meaning: no hard feelings, folks, our next job is to defeat Keir Starmer’s Labour.
That is the message Iain Duncan Smith MP gave in his endorsement for Liz Truss (6:09), reminding the audience that:
she cut her political teeth in London.
Greenwich, to be precise.
Liz Truss’s campaign video followed (13:41), then she appeared on stage, coming out like a winner and invoking the England Lionesses’ ladies football win at the Euros, talking about an ‘aspiration nation’ and pronouncing London:
the greatest city on earth.
After Liz finished her speech, Michael Gove was next (26:08). He endorsed Rishi.
Gove also spoke about unity and had kind — penitential? — words for Boris, which met with a resounding wall of applause. He thanked Boris for ‘the biggest vaccine rollout in Europe’ and for being the first to support Ukraine at the end of February:
Boris, thank you for your service.
Rishi rushed on to the stage after his cringeworthy Underdog campaign video played (34:44).
The crowd went wild with cries of ‘Rishi, Rishi’ (36:00). His parents were in the audience and the cameras got several shots of them when their son was on stage. They sat between Rishi’s wife and Michael Gove.
He said:
We value who you are not what you are.
He paid Liz credit for being:
a proud and passionate Conservative.
In his speech, he mentioned tackling the decades-old problem of grooming gangs and said he would get to grips with public safety and illegal migration.
Then it was time for Liz to answer Nick Ferrari’s and the audience’s questions (51:33).
Afterwards came Rishi’s turn (1:25:00).
Andrew Stephenson, the co-chairman of the Conservative Party closed proceedings (1:58:26) and asked the two candidates back on stage for a final momentary appearance.
With that, the 12th and final hustings came to a close.
The Telegraph has a good recap. Emphases mine below.
Liz has had a good campaign:
… the past seven weeks have seen momentum firmly swing towards Liz Truss, and it would be a major political shock if Mr Sunak were be unveiled as the next prime minister on Monday.
Polling suggests the Foreign Secretary has a lead of around 30 points among Tory members, who have been drawn to her promises to immediately cut taxes and instigate radical economic reform.
By and large, she has also been better received at the hustings events that have taken place around the country, routinely winning applause for her positions on National Insurance, fracking and transgender issues.
Around 6,000 Conservative Party members attended the London hustings and heard Gyles Brandreth’s introduction:
Gyles Brandreth, the broadcaster and former Tory MP whose arm is in a sling, has just given a speech to the Wembley Arena crowd.
“How exciting it is that two people who are intelligent, committed, capable, passionate about their country are actually ready to give service,” he said.
“So whatever the result is it’s going to be a great result for the United Kingdom. And whatever the result is at the end of this election, we are going to come together and support whoever the victor is to the hilt! No question of that.”
He closed with a poem:
From quiet homes and first beginning
Out to the undiscovered ends,
There’s nothing worth the wear of winning
But laughter and the love of friends.
Peter Booth, the chairman of the National Convention, appeared next, giving the audience guidelines on asking their questions.
The video misses out a lone protester, angry about energy charges:
A protester has just run in front of the stage – a man in a dark suit holding a sign that said dontpay.uk, writes Tony Diver, our Whitehall Correspondent, from Wembley Arena.
He was escorted out immediately by two security guards as he ran in front of cameras.
Liz put a lot of blame for London’s woes on Mayor Sadiq Khan’s shoulders:
Liz Truss tells the hustings it is impossible for Britain to succeed with London but it has been “let down by Sadiq Khan”.
“Sadiq Khan is anti-everything – he’s anti-car, he’s anti-business, he’s anti-opportunity and he is holding London back. And I don’t believe those people who say London is a Labour city. No, it is not. London is a city where people opportunities and they want to get on in life.
“And that’s what we can deliver, and we can make London Conservative again.”
Sound familiar?
Nationally:
Ms Truss warns we all face dark times, vowing to reverse National Insurance and impose a moratorium on the green levy, while keeping corporation tax low.
These are her pledges:
I would be honoured to be your prime minister, first of all to deliver for the United Kingdom, to deliver an election victory for the Conservatives in 2024, and to make London a Conservative city again.
The applause for Rishi was greater than it was for Liz:
The cheers in the room are significantly louder and longer for Rishi than Liz. Audience members are on their feet and chanting his name, writes Tony Diver, our Whitehall Correspondent.
“Thank you! Thank you, Wembley!” Mr Sunak responds, after entering to The Weeknd’s Blinding Lights.
He pledged an ethical approach, if elected:
He promises to lead an administration “with integrity and decency at the heart of everything we do”.
Nick Ferrari tried to box Liz into a corner over domestic issues. She ably answered:
I’m the Foreign Secretary and my job is to focus on key foreign affairs issues.
She pledged that there would be no new taxes in her Government.
She also ruled out energy rationing.
She said that she would not refurbish the Downing Street flat:
Liz Truss responds that as a Yorkshirewoman, she believes in “value for money and not buying new things if you’ve got things that are perfectly good to use”.
“I don’t think I’m going to have time to think about the wallpaper or the flooring.”
The papers largely picked up on her possible moratorium for ‘smart motorways’, those without a hard shoulder for emergencies:
Asked if she will restore hard shoulders to motorways and change speed limits from mandatory to advisory, Ms Truss replies: “I absolutely think that we need to review them and stop them if they are not working as soon as possible.
“And all the evidence I have suggests they’re not working. We need to be prepared to look at that. I do believe that the smart motorways experiment hasn’t worked.”
Rishi defended his windfall tax, which the big companies can avoid if they prove they will invest more in the UK:
We’ve got it in place, but as I said in the situation that we’re in it was the right thing to do, and I’m glad I did it, to be honest.
He also said that his plan to tackle inflation was the correct one:
I can guarantee that it will fall far faster with my plan than it will with anyone else’s.
He, too, criticised Sadiq Khan:
Crime has become “intolerable” in London, adds Rishi Sunak, and “the first thing we need to do is hold to account Sadiq Khan for his failings”.
“If you are prepared as a Mayor to do the right things… For example, stop and search. It’s an effective policing tactic“.
Unlike Liz, who was relieved not to have to stand up for audience questions, Rishi stood up and worked the stage.
He brought up ethics again:
In a sentence, does he think Boris Johnson was hard done by? “When it comes to those ethical issues, we can’t be on the wrong side of them. We need to set a clear direction from the top, I would reappoint an ethics adviser because it sends a strong signal from the top.”
The Telegraph‘s article ends with:
Liz Truss seems like a dead cert to become prime minister on Tuesday, and elements of Rishi Sunak’s comments tonight shied away from the personal attacks that have characterised this bitter blue-on-blue campaign to lavish praise on his rival.
The cheers and chants at Wembley Arena tonight – far louder for Mr Sunak than the Foreign Secretary – told a different story from the grassroots polling, which suggests she has a lead of around 30 percentage points …
Boris Johnson’s successor is likely to find themselves facing even greater challenges, and must also unite a party fractured by weeks of public division and disagreement.
Veteran political sketch writer Quentin Letts had this to say in The Times:
Surveying a throbbing crowd of 7,000 Tory activists, Sunak gasped “thank you!” nine times, the stage lights bouncing blindingly off his grinning ivories. He strode the large stage like an American presidential candidate and, for a man who must have seen predictions that he will be slaughtered when the result is announced on Monday, maintained an amazing level of pitch and thrust.
He even had an emotive card up his sleeve when he announced that his “two people who inspired me to go into public service are actually here tonight — my mum and dad”. Jolly proud they looked, too. Rishi thanked his “loving, kind wife — you know what you mean to me, you chose to give up your high heels and take a chance on the short kid with a backpack”. The crowd, audibly more pro-Sunak than some of the regional hustings, shouted: “Reeshi! Reeshi!”
Truss entered to strains of Taylor Swift’s Change but her tactics for the evening were more cautious, playing down the clock. She was less sprightly in the opening spiels but came to life more in the questions that followed. In her opening remarks she pushed her voice hard, making it sound more strident and bunged-up. A reply to a question on Israel flew off the bat and had a Sunak supporter clapping hard. She also dealt firmly with some fluff about what sort of limousine she wanted and how she might decorate the No 10 flat. Where her campaign has succeeded with Tory activists has been in its simplicity: the basic message, whacked time and again, of lower taxes and a smaller state.
And so the campaign ends. What a festival for SW1 wonks it has been, allowing for oodles of analysis and fake crossness. The rest of the country, enjoying (lucky devils) their August, has possibly taken less notice of the contest. Sunak, smoother, more fluent, more the establishment’s idea of a PM, started it as favourite. He ended last night by replaying that dreadful tough-Cockney video film about him being the underdog …
The Wembley crowd’s questions were about smart motorways and advisory speed limits …, trans rights, gas prices for companies, corporate tax dodging, Ukraine, childcare costs, property prices and, commendably, the future of West End theatre.
Like Quentin Letts, I haven’t gone into too many policy proposals because whoever gets in will be hit hard with reality.
There is an illusion that Party members of any stripe are being let into an honest discussion about what they want to see in a new Government. I do not believe this is what actually happens:
As evidence, let’s cast our minds back to July 2019 and Boris Johnson’s campaign.
He was going to ask the Queen if she wanted a new yacht to replace Britannia, which is now moored as a museum:
He also said that Sadiq Khan needed to go. Khan was re-elected in 2021. The Conservatives, for whatever reason, gave no support to their candidate Shaun Bailey. I cannot fathom why not, since Boris was Khan’s predecessor. Shaun Bailey is a level-headed Conservative.
This is from the July 18, 2019 edition of The Express. Note the mention of housing and accompanying infrastructure, too. None of this happened, perhaps because of the pandemic. Even so, it shows how empty campaign promises are:
The Tory frontrunner savaged Mr Khan out of nowhere, branding him “useless” and “invertebrate” and “not a patch on the old guy.” The onslaught was woven into Mr Johnson’s wider solution to a question that had been posed on monocultural housing policies. A member of the audience asked the former London Mayor: “How will you ensure the Government’s housing policies don’t lend themselves into creating ethnic categories inadvertently?”
Without hesitation, Mr Johnson blasted: “You build fantastic housing in the right place.
“And you put in superb transport infrastructure so you can create mixed communities where there are high quality jobs.
“And if you look at the disasters of planning in the ‘60s and ‘70s where monocultural estates were built, it’s because there simply wasn’t the transport infrastructure.
“Look around London and look at the estates outside London – you can see exactly what went wrong.”
That said, in the end, Boris did deliver on these pledges:
Other hustings
I purposely didn’t cover half the hustings in separate posts, leaving off with the August 11 one in Cheltenham.
A summary of the others follows.
Perth
The next one took place in Perth, Scotland, on August 16. It was unfortunate that pro-independence supporters ruined it with verbally violent posters, throwing eggs and by spitting on older Scottish Conservative members. The SNP denied any involvement.
The Mail had a summary of what the candidates said:
Liz Truss tonight vowed to ‘never, ever let our family be split up’ as the Tory leadership frontrunner insisted she would not allow another Scottish independence referendum if she becomes prime minister.
Speaking at the latest Conservative hustings event in Perth, the Foreign Secretary promised to battle Nicola Sturgeon‘s ‘agenda of separatism’ as she condemned the First Minister and her SNP government for having ‘let down’ Scottish voters.
Ms Truss accused the SNP of ignoring issues such as schools, hospitals and public transport as they chase another Scottish independence referendum.
Her rival for the Tory leadership, Rishi Sunak, also used tonight’s hustings to take a swipe at Ms Sturgeon, as he vowed to ‘call out’ the Scottish Government’s record on drug and alcohol abuse.
He claimed it was ‘completely barmy’ for the SNP to be agitating for a ‘divisive and unecessary constitutional referendum’ amid the cost-of-living crisis.
Ms Truss and Mr Sunak addressed Tory members inside Perth Concert Hall after reports of ugly scenes outside the hustings venue earlier in the evening.
Conservative Party co-chair Andrew Stephenson demanded Ms Sturgeon ‘unequivocally condemn’ the ‘vile behaviour’ of Scottish independence campaigners.
Belfast
The candidates converged on Belfast the next day, Wednesday, August 17:
I felt very sorry for the Northern Ireland Conservatives gathered there. The party only has 300 members, and they have no voice in Westminster.
A clear disconnect emerged between the candidates and the Party members. Everyone looked uncomfortable.
For that reason, this hustings is well worth watching.
It became apparent that neither Liz nor Rishi understands the Conservative Northern Ireland mindset. I’m no expert, but even I could have dealt with some of those issues better than they did.
The moment that sticks in my mind was when someone asked why Westminster is foisting abortion clinics on Northern Ireland. Liz matter-of-factly — and rather coldly — responded that the rest of the UK has them, so Northern Ireland has to have them, too.
Abortion is far from being the norm there, and, as Northern Ireland has a devolved government, it should have been their decision, not Parliament’s.
Madeline Grant summarised the disconnect in The Telegraph:
Some English Conservatives might be surprised to learn of the existence of their fellow party members across the Irish Sea, let alone that they had a vote in the leadership contest. Yet seatless and marooned from CCHQ – and perhaps because of this – Ulster Tories are the ultimate Tories. This wasn’t your average Home Counties cakewalk, there were questions on more intractable subjects than you’d get elsewhere – abortion, China, the perils of a cashless society. Some of the questioners began with a little intro about how long they’d been party members, reminiscent of Alcoholics Anonymous.
A flamboyant chap in a maroon vest had made a journey almost as ponderous as Truss’s own political leap from Lib Dem republican to Tory monarchist – he’d moved to South Antrim after heading up ‘Conservatives Abroad’ in South Korea. Making a similarly unexplained leap, he proceeded to compare the fight against abortion in Northern Ireland to Britain’s fight against the slave trade in the 19th century. Would Liz “be a modern day William Wilberforce, and end abortion and infanticide in Northern Ireland?” he asked. Truss politely declined to take up the mantle.
Unlike Madeline Grant, I did not find the Belfast hustings amusing in the slightest. It was the saddest one of the lot.
Verdict: Must do better.
Manchester
On Friday, August 19, our candidates were back on the mainland for the hustings in Manchester, which Alastair Stewart from GB News moderated (start at 6:30):
Alastair Stewart is a television veteran and knows what questions to ask:
He won high praise from Liz:
Rishi’s campaign team launched his second campaign film, The Underdog, at this hustings. It was so awful, I wanted to slip through the floor in embarrassment for him.
He told his family story and said that Conservative values were ‘patriotism, family, service, hard work’:
He turned defensive (again) when he told Stewart that he was winning the war on inflation and being responsible with borrowing:
He told an audience member, ‘We’re standing up to Russian aggression’:
Liz said that the police must fight crime, not patrol tweets:
She also said that left-wing politics dominates today’s socio-political debates:
Rishi, too, was tired of leftist dominance — and Manchester’s mayor, former Labour MP Andy Burnham. GB News reported:
Rishi Sunak has vowed to take on the “lefty woke culture that seems to want to cancel our history, our values and our women.”
… Speaking to the audience, Mr Sunak pledged to “restore trust by delivering on the things that matter to people”.
He continued: “That’s why I’ve set out a plan to finally start reforming the NHS so that we can talk less about how much money we can put into it and more in the healthcare that we want to get out of it.
“It’s why I want to take on this lefty woke culture that seems to want to cancel our history, our values and our women.
“And it’s why we need to restore trust of communities right here by calling out the failures of the Labour mayor Andy Burnham because it simply isn’t good enough.
“Just look at the record, a police force that was put into special measures, the highest rates of knife crimes almost across the UK.”
He also talked about illegal migration, details of which are available on his website:
“… I’ve set out a radical plan to finally get to grips with illegal migration.
“Because for too long we’ve turned on our TV screens and seen the scenes of people coming here on boats illegally and it is wrong.”
His comments come days after the number of migrants to have crossed the Channel so far this year passed 21,000.
Another GB News article about the hustings has more:
He said: “I want to move away from the European definition of what an asylum seeker is, because it is too broad and it gets exploited by lefty lawyers.
“When people shouldn’t be here we must be able to send them back, it’s as simple as that.
Was the next bit a dig at Liz, our Foreign Secretary and former Secretary of State for International Trade?
“We’ve got to toughen up our foreign policy. At the moment we have a situation, I found it bonkers, we will go to a country, we’ll talk to them about a trade deal we want to do with them, but also potentially be giving them actual foreign aid.
“But at the same time we don’t say to them ‘hang on, you need to take back your failed asylum seekers’, that’s clearly wrong.”
Liz also had something to say about illegal immigration:
Promoting the much maligned Rwanda policy, which saw its first planned flight grounded on the tarmac, Ms Truss vowed to expand the scheme to other countries if she was elected as Prime Minister.
She said: “What we need to find is a permanent home for those people.
“The way to solve this issue is to find a way of making sure there is a long term home for people who are involved in illegal immigration.
“The real issue is at present people are able to get on the phone to their lawyers when they get on a plane and evade being sent to Rwanda and that is the issue we have to fix, that is about the ECHR.”
The candidates are not miles apart.
Liz also discussed her vision for the North:
What I want to see is a successful north of England where everyone has opportunities and we link up the great cities of the north.
From Liverpool to Manchester to Leeds and beyond and also of course Bradford.
And that’s why I want to build Northern Powerhouse rail and I want those opportunities to be powered by enterprise and business unleashing investment right across the country.
I want us to make the M62 the superhighway to success.
Unfortunately for Rishi, his attempts at being a man of the people failed, as the Mail reported:
Asked at the hustings event how, as a Southampton football club fan, he could get back to ‘winning ways’ in the battle to become Boris Johnson‘s replacement, Mr Sunak attempted to make light of his woes.
But his effort at friendly banter with the Manchester audience saw him blunder in his football knowledge.
‘I’m going to be unpopular for saying it here – starting by beating United this weekend!,’ Mr Sunak told the event.
It was quickly noted how Southampton are not due to play Manchester United until 27th August and would, in fact, be playing Leicester City this weekend.
Mr Sunak’s own goal came just two days after he was mocked for claiming to always enjoy a McDonald’s breakfast wrap when out with his daughters – despite the item having not been on sale since March 2020.
Yet, the former chancellor’s campaign was handed a boost tonight when Michael Gove backed him to be the next Conservative leader.
Mr Gove, the former Levelling Up secretary who was sacked by Mr Johnson last month, accused Ms Truss of taking a ‘holiday from reality’ with her vow to tackle the cost-of-living crisis by prioritising tax cuts.
Birmingham
On August 23, Times Radio’s John Pienaar, formerly of the BBC, moderated the hustings in Birmingham, the UK’s second largest city:
Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi went on stage to endorse Liz.
Liz then went on stage (5:36) and embraced him to big applause and cheers from the audience.
Andrew Mitchell followed her by announcing his support for Rishi (16:34). Rishi’s newer campaign film, The Underdog, was played.
Rishi then pledged to continue levelling up the Midlands, as he has been doing (21:47).
Of his speech, Pienaar said (33:01):
That was punchy!
Someone in the audience booed when Liz took to the stage for her Q&A (33:49).
Pienaar gave her a hard time in the beginning, but she got a huge round of applause from the audience.
Recall that The Times came out for Rishi almost immediately in July.
However, Rishi also had his beefs with Pienaar. He looked irritated (yet again) and said (1:06:00):
John, you’re acting as if this is already over.
He went on to explain how well his furlough programme worked during the pandemic (1:18:00).
On the subject of Scottish independence, he said that nationalism (1:34:00):
is a romantic ideal.
Then he complained:
There’s not been a single question about tax!
He then expanded on corporation tax and the largest companies. He became really agitated in an oddly friendly way.
This tells us tax is his main consideration, nothing else, no matter what he says.
The man is a technocrat.
Guido Fawkes had an excellent round up of sound bites, starting with Liz (emphases his):
If you want a flavour of the current state of Tory hustings, last night in Birmingham Liz Truss came out with the following two statements within 60 seconds of each other: “I’m not a massive fan of mice”, and asked how she’d feel in the event of having to launch a nuclear weapons strike, “I think it’s an important duty of the PM and I’m ready to do that.” A casually blasé statement committing the UK to potential nuclear armageddon…
Also:
Suggesting she won’t replace the government ethics adviser, saying: “The PM needs to take responsibility – you cannot outsource ethics to an adviser”
Suggesting she would redirect this year’s £12 billion extra funding for the NHS into social care
Asked why she cut funds to the Environment agency as DEFRA secretary she said “I think there’s a way with the way utilities are regulated. We were one of the first countries to regulate and privatise utilities but the world has moved on since then… some of those regulators get mission creep, they don’t necessarily keep the market as properly as they should. I certainly think it’s the case that water companies need to be better are stopping leaks, I think they should be better at dealing with pollution and we need to sort that out.” Sounds a lot like Guido’s story last Friday that she believes in a single utilities regulator…
As for Rishi:
Rishi’s answers last night were less alarming albeit equally newsworthy. Primarily, he refused to commit to voting for Liz’s proposed emergency budget should he lose, saying it is a hypothetical question. He reiterated his belief that her tax cut plans will result in “millions of people facing destitution.” …
Rishi suggested UK aid programmes should be cut in countries that refuse to accept deportations of “failed asylum seekers” from Britain.
Rishi spoke movingly of yesterday’s horrific shooting of a nine-year-old in Liverpool, saying he reacted by calling his wife, and daughter who is the same age as the victim. Rishi says the government needs to finish the Tories’ 2019 policy of recruiting 20,000 policemen.
Let’s go to the Rishi-supporting Times for their journalists’ verdicts.
Daniel Finkelstein said:
Liz Truss is far better speaking without notes and, having delivered the same remarks over and over, she no longer needs them. Both her opening remarks and her answers to what will have been familiar questions were much better than in the early stages of the campaign. There were even flashes of the humour she shows in private …
But, however good Truss may now be, she still trails Sunak, who is just a better performer. Particularly in his answers, he was fluent, tough and compelling. His opening comments about the flaws in the Truss plan — suggesting it would leave many people destitute — were particularly arresting.
… Whoever wins, their policies have to appeal to those who are not Conservatives and need to actually work.
Winner: Rishi Sunak
Katy Balls said:
The state of the Tory leadership contest can be summed up in the video that welcomed Rishi Sunak to the stage. Last week, his team changed it from the montage played in the earlier hustings. It now has a Ray Winstone-style gangster voice boom that the former chancellor is the underdog — and the country loves an underdog. It points to Sunak’s dilemma: if the polls are correct, only something drastic can change the state of play.
Although he was well received in the hall, with some of the loudest cheers, it’s hard to pinpoint a “change moment” from the display. He again depicted himself as the only candidate willing to tell people hard truths about the economy. He tried again to invoke the spirit of Thatcher by pointing out that many of those who had worked with the late prime minister were backing his plan …
It helped Truss that she focused on her own plans. She came across as confident and assured. This also played well to a party growing tired of blue-on-blue. As the frontrunner, she needs only to hold the line — and she did that.
Winner: Liz Truss
Patrick Maguire said that both won but in different ways:
So how did Truss fare? As a rubber-chicken circuit speaker, just fine. They loved the answers on grammar schools, wokery and nukes. But as a prospective PM? On the biggest question — what to do about rampant inflation and crippling energy costs — Truss was revealingly unrevealing. Cagey, even. Asked how pensioners and the poor would be shielded from the coming storm, she said only that she would “look at” helping them. How to fund social care once Sunak’s £13 billion national insurance hike is scrapped? “General taxation.” Her cure for the mouse infestation in the Commons — “more cats” — was more detailed and offered with a good deal more enthusiasm.
Sunak attacked her economics with the kamikaze self-confidence that is likelier than not to lose him this race. It’s telling. He is as sure as Ted Heath was that he will, in time, be vindicated by his rival’s demise. Sunak is embracing the inevitable. Has Truss? She sounded as if she could not admit to herself — let alone the country — that compromise is coming.
Winner: on the clapometer, Truss. But Sunak won the argument.
Norwich
On Thursday, August 25, talkRADIO’s Julia Hartley-Brewer moderated the TalkTV hustings in Norwich in East Anglia.
Hartley-Brewer had a great set of questions for the candidates. One wonders if some came from her and TalkTV’s listeners:
While she was preparing her questions, Guido says that some Conservative MPs were annoyed with Rishi:
Allies of Liz’s have slammed Rishi over his “scorched earth” policy, saying it risks destroying chances of bringing the party back together again when the contest is over. They accuse him of “behaving like a wounded stoat” and “framing us as Tory scum” over the course of the campaign. Given he said the likely next PM’s plans would lead to mass homelessness, they’re arguably correct…
Guido also included a photo of Rishi at his mother’s former pharmacy in Southampton. Stefan Rousseau is an incomparable photographer:
His mother was a chemist you know…
I just checked Rousseau’s Twitter feed, and here’s the exterior of the pharmacy:
The Telegraph had a running commentary on the candidates’ day and the hustings.
This was the day after Rishi’s criticism of coronavirus policy appeared in The Spectator:
Rishi Sunak’s interview with The Spectator magazine – in which he revealed that he was told not to talk about the “trade offs” of lockdown – has prompted a row with former Downing Street employees.
He had more difficulties when he went on BBC Radio 4’s The World at One:
On whether he will quit if he loses the leadership vote, Mr Sunak told BBC Radio 4’s World at One earlier today: “Absolutely not. Of course not.
“And I would dispute the characterisation. I’m working incredibly hard going around the country talking about my ideas for the future, and actually having a very positive reception where I’m going, and I think there’s everything left to play for.
“There’s still weeks to run in this campaign, and that’s why I’m continuing to give it everything I’ve got.”
Meanwhile, Liz visited a food manufacturing plant:
Liz Truss has been out and about in Norwich today, visiting Condimentum Ltd at the Food Enterprise Park in Norwich.
Ms Truss told reporters at the factory near the Norfolk city that tax cuts and boosting energy supply were the key to addressing the cost-of-living crunch.
I think they make Colman’s Mustard there.
Now on to the hustings.
The co-chairman of the Conservative Party defended the length of the leadership campaign:
Andrew Stephenson, chairman of the Conservative Party, addresses the Norwich audience. He defends the leadership contest amid criticism that it has dragged on for too long.
Health Secretary Steve Barclay came out in support of Rishi.
Rishi said that levelling up is for all corners of the UK:
Levelling up is not just about big cities and the north – it is for everyone, including right here in east Anglia, he says and receives a round of applause.
Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey declared her support for Liz:
She ends her introduction by saying: “Back Liz for leader, you can trust her to deliver.”
As Liz, the MP for South West Norfolk, was on home turf, she got a standing ovation:
Huge applause and a standing ovation for Liz Truss as she takes the stage, who is the MP for South West Norfolk so this is very much home turf for her.
“We have travelled around the entire United Kingdon but there is nothing better than being back in my adopted county of Norfolk,” she says, and the audience break out into applause once again.
Rishi had to answer a question about lockdown:
Rishi Sunak defends his interview in the Spectator, saying one of the most “tragic” aspects of lockdown was the damage to children of school closures.
He said it is always important to have an honest discussion about “trade-offs”, adding: “If something sounds too good to be true it probably is”.
Hartley-Brewer presented each candidate with the same series of quick-fire questions.
These were Rishi’s answers:
Can you name a single public service that works well? The furlough scheme.
Macron, friend or foe? Friend
Mask mandates or no mask mandates? No mask mandates
Is a trans woman a woman? No
Who would you rather be stuck in a lift with, Keir Starmer or Nicola Sturgeon? Take the stairs
If not you, who would be a better PM, Boris Johnson or Liz Truss? Liz Truss
Hartley-Brewer had to get tough with a heckler:
Rishi Sunak is heckled by an audience member and Julia Hartley-Brewer intervenes telling him to “Sit down, Sir!”
Meanwhile another audience member asks about housing supply. Rishi Sunak says we need to overcome our aversion to “flat pack” housing.
He says he wants to help young people get on the housing ladder much faster by “turbo-charging” a scheme that allows first time buyers to purchase a home with a small deposit.
I can’t believe he still peddles his daughters’ concern for the environment when he’s just had a full-size swimming pool installed at his home. Egregious:
Rishi Sunak tells the audience that the only thing his daughters ask him about is: “Daddy, what are you going to do for the environment?”
Then it was Liz’s turn.
Hartley-Brewer asked her about lockdown:
I did question lockdown, Liz Truss says.
“Clearly in retrospect, we did do too much. It was too draconian. I don’t think we should have closed schools,” she said. “A lot of children have ended up suffering.”
She adds: “I can assure you that I would never impose a lockdown if I am selected as PM.”
These were Liz’s answers to the quick-fire questions:
Name me a single public service that works well: Our education system has got a hell of a lot better in the last ten years.
Macron, friend or foe? The jury’s out. If I become PM I will judge him on deeds not words
Mask mandates or no mask mandates? No mask mandates
Is a trans woman a woman? No
Who would you rather be stuck in a lift with, Keir Starmer or Nicola Sturgeon? I think Nicola Sturgeon. I’d hope to persuade her to stop being a separatist by the time we got to the ground floor.
If not you, who would be a better PM, Boris Johnson or Liz Truss? Boris Johnson
Hartley-Brewer asked her about unisex changing rooms at Marks & Spencer:
“M&S is a shop, they can decide their policies as they see fit,” Ms Truss said. “I have been to the bra fitting service in M&S and it is behind a curtain. No one has ever tried to open the curtain while I am in there.”
Liz explained why she does not want asylum seekers to work:
The Foreign Secretary says we also have huge numbers of people who are “economically inactive” and it should be our “first port of call” to get those people into work.
The reason why we don’t allow asylum seekers to work is because the UK will become “even more of a magnate” for people to travel here illegally, she adds.
Good answer.
Liz reiterated her support for Net Zero.
Media outlets picked up on the candidates’ responses to the ‘stuck in a lift’ question:
Their divergent answers on Emmanuel Macron also made the news.
Liz got both barrels, from Labour and Conservatives alike. The BBC reported:
… she was asked if Mr Macron was a “friend or foe” of the UK at a Tory leadership hustings.
She added that if elected PM she would judge him on “deeds not words”.
But Labour’s David Lammy accused Ms Truss of “a woeful lack of judgement”, saying she had insulted one of “Britain’s closest allies”.
Ms Truss, widely seen as the clear front-runner to be the next Conservative leader and prime minister, made the remark at the penultimate leadership hustings in Norwich, to loud applause.
Her comment came at the end of the hustings during a series of “quickfire questions” posed by the host, TalkTV’s Julia Hartley-Brewer.
When asked the same question Mr Sunak said Mr Macron was a “friend”.
One Conservative minister said Ms Truss’s comments had “completely undermined our relationship with France”, calling her a “faux Thatcher”, a reference to the infamously Eurosceptic former Tory prime minister.
In a tweet, former foreign minister Alistair Burt said Ms Truss has made a “serious error” and should have struck a more diplomatic tone.
Former Conservative minister Gavin Barwell also questioned Ms Truss’s comment saying: “You would have thought the foreign secretary was aware we are in a military alliance with France.”
Guido reported Macron’s reaction:
Macron replies to Liz’s comments on the French President at last night’s husting:
“The United Kingdom is a friendly nation, regardless of its leaders, sometimes in spite of its leaders”
As for the ‘better Prime Minister’ question, Guido says:
When asked whether Rishi or Boris would be a better PM, Liz emphatically shot back “Boris”. Not unsurprising, though rather awkward given Rishi was asked the same question of Liz and graciously chose his opponent…
Conclusion
So, here we are, at long last.
At 12:30 p.m, on Monday, September 5, Sir Graham Brady of the 1922 Committee announced that Liz Truss will be our new Prime Minister. She will meet the Queen at Balmoral on Tuesday, at which point she will form a new Government. More on that later this week.
Liz Truss is our third Party leader in six years.
Conservative MPs must stop the regicide and support her premiership.
For the past several weeks, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the Conservatives have been lagging behind Labour in the polls.
Boris and the Conservatives held the top spot for most of 2021, apart from one week in January. Their ratings began to sink in November, if I recall correctly. Initially, this had to do with Net Zero policies (far out of reach from the normal Briton), a tax increase to help pay for the NHS and rumours of parties during lockdown at No. 10 Downing Street.
Later, around Christmas, news emerged of parties dating from late 2020. More recently, news leaked about a No. 10 gathering on May 20, 2020 (during lockdown), for which Prime Minister Boris Johnson apologised during Prime Minister’s Questions on January 12, 2022:
Today, it is alleged that parties also took place in Downing Street the evening before Prince Philip’s funeral in April 2021.
For Keir Starmer and Labour to be ahead of Boris and Co for this long is a parlous state of affairs:
On January 8, 2022, GB News reported that the Conservatives were beginning to regain lost ground (emphases in purple mine throughout):
The Conservative Party has recovered some of its lost lead against the opposition Labour Party, an opinion poll showed on Saturday, but Boris Johnson’s personal ratings remain deeply negative as he faces ongoing ethics questions.
Polling company Opinium said Labour’s poll rating held at 39% in a January 5-7 survey, unchanged from late December, while support for the Conservatives rose two percentage points to 34%. The Liberal Democrats were on 11% and the Green Party was on 5% …
Johnson’s own net approval rating in the Opinium poll was minus 24%, up from minus 31% before Christmas but well behind Labour Party leader Keir Starmer at plus 3%.
Soaring inflation was also souring the public mood, with 86% of people saying their living costs had risen, the polling company said.
On Monday, January 10, the Conservatives continued to gain ground, although they still trail Labour:
Guido Fawkes noted that not moving to Plan C coronavirus restrictions over the Christmas period probably helped:
Labour’s 8 point poll lead at the end of last year has halved in the latest YouGov poll. The plunged best PM rating for Boris has bounced 6 points and Starmer’s has eroded a point, though Boris still trails. Making the right call on Omicron appears to be paying off for Boris. Who knows, if the Tories get their act together and govern a bit more like Tories, they might even regain their lead…
Moving on to coronavirus measures, a number of news items broke since the New Year, some of which relate to England only; the devolved nations have their own measures, largely socialist in nature.
Self-isolation time
On Monday, Boris said he was considering lowering the number of days that people have to self-isolate:
Guido Fawkes reported that Levelling Up Minister Michael Gove said that the current Plan B measures are likely to expire as planned on January 26.
Boris’s comment followed Gove’s on Plan B:
This follows Michael Gove’s comments earlier today on the potential lifting of Plan B measures in a few weeks, provided the NHS continues to keep Omicron under control. Looking increasingly likely that pandemic measures will – finally – wind down sooner rather than later…
On self-isolation being reduced from seven days to five, as the US is doing, Boris said:
We’re looking at [it]… we will act according to the science as we always have. But what I would say to everybody is that Omicron is still out there, it’s incredibly contagious. Everyone will know somebody who has had it, it can be pretty unpleasant.
Boris was likely reconsidering because British scientific advisers ‘misread’ US self-isolation guidance. Dr Jenny Harries, head of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), is pictured:
Guido Fawkes showed the difference between the UKHSA guidance on January 1 and January 10.
Guido concludes:
The US Centres for Disease Control has now clarified their isolation periods do start after the first appearance of symptoms, giving further credence to Tory backbenchers’ calls for a cut. This country has had enough of experts…
Indeed, we have had enough of experts. Unfortunately, Jenny Harries is receiving a damehood, having been on the New Year’s Honours list.
The move for a shorter isolation period is to enable those with coronavirus to return to work as soon as possible.
It is a curious thing that, since the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020, I have seen the same shop assistants week after week. By contrast, when I watch the news, there is a plethora of public sector workers — the NHS and teachers, to name but two groups — who are constantly sick.
This tweet expresses the phenomenon well:
On Thursday, January 13, Health Secretary Sajid Javid announced in the House of Commons that self-isolation will be reduced to five days beginning on Monday, January 17, provided that the person involved can provide two negative lateral flow test results on Days 4 and 5:
The end of mass vaccination?
On Sunday, January 9, Dr Clive Dix, the former chairman of the UK’s vaccine taskforce, said that it was time to end mass vaccination and begin urgent research into antibodies as well as T-cells.
The Observer reported:
Covid should be treated as an endemic virus similar to flu, and ministers should end mass-vaccination after the booster campaign, the former chairman of the UK’s vaccine taskforce has said.
With health chiefs and senior Tories also lobbying for a post-pandemic plan for a straining NHS, Dr Clive Dix called for a major rethink of the UK’s Covid strategy, in effect reversing the approach of the past two years and returning to a “new normality”.
“We need to analyse whether we use the current booster campaign to ensure the vulnerable are protected, if this is seen to be necessary,” he said. “Mass population-based vaccination in the UK should now end.”
He said ministers should urgently back research into Covid immunity beyond antibodies to include B-cells and T-cells (white blood cells). This could help create vaccines for vulnerable people specific to Covid variants, he said, adding: “We now need to manage disease, not virus spread. So stopping progression to severe disease in vulnerable groups is the future objective.”
On Wednesday, Professor Jeremy Brown of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) echoed Dr Dix’s call for a post-pandemic plan. He rightly pointed out that we do not test for influenza:
Schoolchildren suffering
I do feel for children having to wear masks, undergo regular testing at school and for being persuaded — with parental consent — to get vaccinated. My commiserations also go to their parents.
On Sunday, Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi said that the rate of children’s vaccinations must speed up:
The topic of mask-wearing, although confined to secondary school students, came up on a recent instalment of ITV’s This Morning programme. Author and television presenter Gyles Brandreth explained how difficult this is for children with learning difficulties:
I am glad to see that pupils are refusing to wear masks: sensible kids showing common sense.
Vaccines
Having watched all the coronavirus briefings on television, I remember when either then-Health Secretary Matt Hancock or one of our senior health advisers told us that not everyone would need to get vaccinated in order to put the pandemic at bay.
This historical example from the smallpox era shows that a only relatively small percentage of people need a vaccination in order to eradicate the disease. In the case of smallpox, this was 32%:
Yet, the UK is now jabbing children, mandating vaccine passports as well as threatening loss of employment in April 2022 to unvaccinated NHS and care home workers. WHY?
The biggest news story on this subject appeared on Friday, January 7.
The Telegraph reported that Steve James, a consultant anaesthetist at King’s College Hospital in London told Health Secretary Sajid Javid that he had had coronavirus and has the antibodies. He said he had no intention of getting a vaccine.
He said that the science does not warrant a health worker vaccine mandate:
Here is a clip from The Telegraph‘s article:
NHS is doing well
On Sunday, Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi said that the NHS is coping well. Eight Nightingale facilities will also be opened in the coming weeks:
Socialist policies in Scotland and Wales do not work
On Monday, January 10, talkRADIO’s Kevin O’Sullivan said that vaccine passports are not working in Scotland and Wales. He rightly wonders why Boris Johnson wanted to extend their reach in England.
Wales’s rate of infection is three times higher than England’s. Scotland recorded its highest ever number of coronavirus ‘cases’:
Dan Wootton of GB News also had plenty to say on the Welsh and Scottish approach to coronavirus:
The chilling reality of the United Kingdom under a Labour/SNP coalition was laid bare over the New Year period.
And it’s not something any of us should want to become a reality.
More on that below.
Wales
On Sunday, January 9, Prif Weinidog (First Minister) Mark Drakeford (Labour) said that Welsh coronavirus rates are lower than England’s. Note that, at one point, he did specify Welsh rates were lower than those in England’s hotspots, not the whole country. In that sentence, he told the truth, less so overall:
Drakeford came up with a few more new rules before Christmas. People couldn’t work in an office, but they could go to the pub.
Dan Wootton said:
In socialist Wales, Mark Drakeford – seemingly so intent on smashing the economy to smithereens – has started to fine honest folk £60 for going to work in an office.
Genuinely. I’m not making that up. Doesn’t matter if you’re perfectly healthy, either.
But Drakeford is the man who forced supermarkets to cordon off aisles selling toys and clothes, remember. Now the Chief Medical Officer in Wales Sir Frank Atherton is hysterically proposing that we should all self-isolate for days on end if we have a common cold.
And, with Labour’s love of restrictions, circuit breakers and draconian laws controlling our behaviour, have Welsh Covid rates been any lower than the rest of the UK? Nope!
According to government data across the pandemic, Wales has had the second highest total rate of cases per 100,000 – just under Northern Ireland – at a rate of 20,386.2.
That compares to England’s 20,174.2 and Scotland’s 17,673.4.
In the last seven days, Wales remains the second highest, again just behind Northern Ireland.
The following tweet shows another absurd aspect of the situation, with an English non-league football (soccer) club, Chester, wondering how it can survive under Drakeford’s draconian rules. Chester’s stadium lies just over the border in Wales:
This exchange shows how complicated the situation is:
Scotland
North of the Border, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon (SNP) has implemented some of the strictest coronavirus restrictions in the UK.
Dan Wootton says that these are a smokescreen for the lack of a second independence referendum. Nonetheless, he details how totalitarian they are:
In Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon prizes her role as a Covid dictator using press conferences broadcast to the nation by the BBC to spread fear and introduce harsh controls on poor Scots.
She insists it’s to keep them safe.
But in my opinion, it’s to keep the Covid crisis running for as long as possible, so she doesn’t have to face the fact her dream of a second independence referendum lies in tatters.
So to Sturgeon omicron has been a blessing, allowing her to impose new social controls essentially killing off the Scottish hospitality industry once more for months. Compare and contrast today’s [January 3] Times front pages.
The English edition reports that ministers in Westminster are confident new curbs won’t be needed, given Plan B has already been imposed and Omicron is a far less severe variant.
The Scottish edition, by contrast, reports that large public gatherings could be forbidden in Scotland well into the spring, with National Clinical Director Jason Leitch saying April will still be too early to host a postponed Hogmanay celebration in Edinburgh.
And it’s these draconian policies propagated by Sturgeon that resulted in ridiculous police overreach and brutality in Scotland that you won’t see reported in the mainstream media.
Case in point: police raiding the Avant Garde gastropub in Glasgow on New Year’s Eve, where there were around 50 folk, most of them over 60-years-old, simply trying to enjoy their night.
Then, for some reason, two large police vans carrying more than 20 officers, according to witnesses, turned up because they were suspected of breaking Sturgeon’s outrageously over the top Covid rules.
The pub may have been targeted because it displays this poster on its door saying…
“We have no discrepancy over whether you want to wear a mask or not.” This is what happened when multiple cops stormed the pub…
The footage is included with this interview of the man who filmed it:
What a despicably unnecessary show of force from Scottish police who routinely fail to investigate muggings and burglaries.
But it’s not their fault, it’s Sturgeon’s for introducing such authoritarian laws, banning bar service and enforcing social distancing between groups.
Sturgeon has implemented these measures despite only ONE patient with omicron having been admitted to intensive care in Scotland. Only one!
The police claim they were simply making a ‘routine visit’, but, come on, it should never have come to this.
Sturgeon is criminalising people drinking and having a good time.
This month — and we’re less than two weeks in — she has had to backtrack on her stringent restrictions.
When the editor of the Scottish Daily Mail, Mike Blackley, asked her on December 17 if she could reduce the number of self-isolation days, she turned caustic:
Yeah, because that’d really help ’cause that would spread infections even further and that would not be doing any favours to businesses.
Guido Fawkes has an update from Wednesday, January 5:
On 22nd December, England’s Covid rules changed so infected individuals can stop isolating after seven days rather than ten, so long as they test negative on day six and seven. Six days ago Wales followed suit, and a day later Northern Ireland copied the change. Leaving one obvious outlier…
It now looks like Sturgeon will confirm the cut, with a statement expected later today and her deputy John Swinney saying yesterday that their administration is “actively considering” reducing the self-isolation period. There’s just one problem with the move if it goes ahead – it’ll be a very embarrassing U-turn on Sturgeon’s part…
So, will she now apologise to the Scottish Mail‘s Mike Blackley?
Unlikely.
Late last week, SNP MP Stewart Hosie appeared on the BBC’s Politics Live to say that Scotland had a lower number of coronavirus cases than England.
The SNP then tweeted this news, which was based on out of date statistics:
Guido Fawkes rightly called out the SNP, including a graphic of the updated statistics.
Not only does England have a lower prevalence than Scotland, it has the lowest prevalence of all four UK nations despite having almost no legal restrictions. The lockdown lovers always say they’re following the science… except when they aren’t.
Last weekend, England still had a lower prevalence of coronavirus than Scotland, which demands mask wearing and vaccine passports:
Last week, Sturgeon took exception to Boris Johnson’s idea to scrap free lateral flow tests. He wants to reserve them for ‘high-risk settings’:
On Monday, January 10, Sturgeon apparently decided Scotland will have to live with the virus. We’ll see:
The Scottish Daily Express reported:
Nicola Sturgeon is under mounting pressure to scrap crippling Coronavirus restrictions after she admitted for the first time that Scots will need to “learn to live” with the virus.
The First Minister is due to announce whether an extension to Scotland’s restrictions will occur in Holyrood today, with critics claiming they have made little difference to infection rates.
Currently the rules put in place on Boxing Day to rein in the Omicron Covid-19 variant include curbs on spectator sports, the closure of nightclubs and the resumption of table service in pubs.
But speaking ahead of her statement to MSPs, the First Minister said that Scots would have to ask themselves “what adaptations to pre-pandemic life” would be required in the longer-term to “enable us to live with it [the virus] with far fewer protective measures.”
Ms Sturgeon also warned the NHS would need to be managed differently to cope with Covid in the long term with more patients treated away from hospitals.
In an interview with STV Scotland Tonight, she added: “Covid will change all of our considerations of how we manage our health service, and that will be part of the way in which we all learn to live with it over the months and years to come.
“We are in a position where we all want to get to as much normality as possible. All of us, me included, really crave that.
“But we need to recognise that this virus, although we hope Omicron is milder than previous variants, this virus still takes lives and it still causes significant health impacts for people.
“So we have got to treat it seriously and not underestimate the damage that it can do.”
It comes after Ms Sturgeon last week said the SNP-led Scottish Government would unveil a blueprint for Scots to live with the virus in the long term that would be “more proportionate and sustainable and less restrictive”.
Opposition parties in Scotland are particularly keen for these restrictions to end.
The Scottish Conservatives are the main opposition party in Holyrood:
Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross said: “The Scottish public need to see some light at the end of the tunnel, so it’s time for the First Minister to produce a timetable on the new strategic framework that she promised.
“People want reassurance that restrictions won’t stay in force for a moment longer than absolutely necessary.
“After almost two years of sacrifice, the public need to see a bold timetable from the Scottish Government that will enable us to live safely with Covid.”
Labour are the next largest party in opposition:
Anas Sarwar, Scottish Labour leader added: “Almost two years into the pandemic, I don’t think we have yet built the resilience in the system in order to respond appropriately to Covid.
“I think we accept that Covid is a risk to people’s health and wellbeing and we’ve also got to accept that how we respond to Covid is also a risk to people’s health and wellbeing particularly their mental health.
“I think this day by day decision making and waiting to see what may and may not be said at a press conference is not actually a good way of responding to the pandemic.
“I would like to see a framework in place that builds resilience, that sets quite clearly what the trigger mechanisms for any potential restrictions are and what those restrictions maybe and also then what the trigger mechanisms are for financial support for individual businesses …
“I don’t think the government has done that work here in Scotland and across the UK and I think we urgently need to do that work.”
The Liberal Democrat response was the best:
Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP, leader of the Scottish Lib Dems, said: “I’ve been concerned at the absence of data offered to Parliament by the SNP.
“We still don’t have a firm idea of those who are in hospital because of Omicron or who just test positive when they go in for something else.
“Without that information, Parliament can’t take a view on whether restrictions are appropriate.
“There’s no clear evidence that the enhanced restrictions in Scotland have reduced the rates of infection compared to other parts of the UK.”
Too right!
Conclusion
If Boris can return to a rational outlook on coronavirus measures, England can be the first to exit the dystopia we have found ourselves in since March 16, 2020, with lockdown implemented one week later on March 23.
Let those who wish to take precautions do so.
Let those of us who wish to live and work again do so freely, without hindrance.
On Monday, June 14, Prime Minister Boris Johnson postponed Freedom Day from Monday, June 21 to Monday, July 19.
Quelle surprise!
Although the data for hospitalisations and deaths look better than ever thanks to the vaccine rollout, SAGE modelling shows that if figures of cases — positive tests — continue to increase ‘exponentially’, then we could be in for a big problem:
However, the reality is more like this:
Incredibly, Britons support the delay:
Protest at Downing Street
Earlier in the afternoon, when it became clear that Boris was going to delay England’s reopening, a protest took place outside of Downing Street.
The BBC’s Nick Watt got caught up in it on his way to the mid-afternoon press briefing for journalists. I have no idea why the crowd harassed him, but the Metropolitan Police did not seem bothered:
Coronavirus briefing
Boris held his televised coronavirus briefing at 6 p.m.
Boris should have had Matt Hancock, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, go to Parliament first to make this announcement, then give his press conference. Hancock poled up in the House of Commons two hours after Boris’s press conference. More on that below.
At the coronavirus briefing, Boris was accompanied by Sir Patrick Vallance and Prof Chris Whitty. Here are the highlights:
Sure, just as he announced June 21 would be a few months ago. I’ll believe it when I see it.
Some restrictions have been lifted for weddings and funerals:
The delay is partly because of the Delta variant from India:
Sure thing, Chris. By July, there could be another variant:
Even though Boris is trying to keep us hopeful, there is no way we would open in two weeks’ time instead of four:
This is because — as has been explained at previous coronavirus briefings — it takes four weeks for a full cycle of effects to complete before a decision can be made: cases, hospitalisations, deaths.
Keep in mind that our vaccination programme has been wildly successful. The elderly and vulnerable have had their second shot and 18-24 year olds are now invited to get their first inoculation.
The vaccines used thus far — AstraZeneca and Pfizer — are said to be highly effective against the virus, especially after two injections:
One of the three men said that we would have to ‘learn to live with this virus’. We know that, fellas, so open up.
We know that people are going to die, just as they do from flu:
That’s exactly what they said in April.
Labour are quite happy with an extension of restrictions. No surprise there:
Matt Hancock’s statement in the House of Commons
Matt Hancock announced the delay in the Commons that evening at 8:30.
Once again, the Government evaded going to Parliament first, followed by the media and public.
The Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, was not happy. This is not the first time Hoyle has reprimanded Hancock:
Sir Lindsay said that he is ready to arrange a private meeting with the Prime Minister to discuss these continuing evasions of Parliament:
Hancock said:
That tweet is spot on. In March 2020, it was about ‘squashing the sombrero’ of hospital admissions, as Boris put it.
Then we had the rest of the list in that tweet.
Now it seems to be about zero COVID.
That’s quite a leap.
Hancock’s statement and the subsequent debate are available on Hansard. Excerpts follow. All MPs below are Conservative.
Jeremy Hunt MP, the chair of the Health and Social Care Committee and former Health Secretary, said (emphases mine):
May I start by saying that I totally agree with your expression of disappointment, Mr Speaker, that in a parliamentary democracy Parliament heard about this news after the media, and much as I respect my right hon. Friend it should be the Prime Minister who is here this evening?
I happen to support these measures and the caution the Government are showing, but may I suggest to my right hon. Friend that one of the reasons for the disappointment many people feel is the use of words like “irreversible”? Tonight, Sir Patrick Vallance said that we will be living with covid for the rest of our lives. If there is a vaccine-busting variant that threatens another 100,000 lives, these measures will not be irreversible, and we have a duty to be completely honest with people about the bumpiness of the road ahead. So may I urge the Health Secretary to be as cautious with the language we use as he rightly is with NHS bed capacity?
Mark Harper is one of the few MPs who wants England to open up now. He said:
Before I ask the Secretary of State my question, I should just say—as a former Government Chief Whip, it does not give me any great pleasure to do so—that I wholly associate myself with your remarks earlier, Mr Speaker. This statement should have been made to this House by the Prime Minister before it was made to the media. I hope that we do not see a recurrence of it and I wish you well in your meeting with him.
The Secretary of State has set out that it is not the Government’s policy to get to zero covid—indeed, that is not possible. Can he say whether it is the Government’s policy to maintain a low prevalence of this virus? If it is not, can he confirm the Prime Minister’s sentiments today that 19 July is a terminus date, and can he rule out bringing back restrictions in the autumn and winter when we see an inevitable rise in what is a respiratory virus?
Hancock replied:
Well, it is not inevitable—I do not think it is inevitable. It may happen, but it is not inevitable because we also have the planned booster programme to strengthen further the vaccination response. But it is absolutely clear, based on all the clinical advice that I have seen, that a goal of eradication of this virus is impossible. Indeed, there is one part of this country that tried it for a bit in the summer and found it to be impossible. Therefore, we must learn to live with this virus and we must learn how we can live our normal lives with this virus, so I reflect the Prime Minister’s words, which, of course, I concur with entirely, on 19 July. Our goal is to make sure that we get as much vaccination done between now and then—especially those second doses—to make sure that we can open up safely, even if there is a rise in cases, by protecting people from hospitalisation and especially from dying of this awful disease.
Steve Brine was, rightly, unhappy:
Last week, the Secretary of State told me:
“Our goal…is not a covid-free world…the goal is to live with covid”.—[Official Report, 7 June 2021; Vol. 696, c. 678.]
Well, you could have fooled me, and many of our constituents. There is dismay out there tonight. The reopening of the wedding industry is not a meaningful reopening and I think it is cruel the way some are being misled. The Prime Minister and my right hon. Friend have been very clear today that 19 July is not a new “not before” date but an end to all this, so will the Secretary of State tell the country his assessment of risk and personal responsibility and whether he feels that as a country we remotely have that right at this time?
Hancock replied (in part):
Once we have the offer of a vaccine to everybody, and once we have protected and mitigated the large part of that risk, we do need to move back to a world based on personal responsibility. That is right, and that is where we intend to go. I think that we have made steps already in that direction in steps 1, 2 and 3. This country is freer than almost any other in Europe in terms of our economy and of our society. That is partly because of the very rapid vaccination effort here, but I hope that my hon. Friend can take from that the direction we intend to go.
Peter Bone made excellent points on the Government’s disrespect for the Commons:
I am sure, Mr Speaker, that the Secretary of State for Health heard what you said at the beginning of this statement. May I ask the Secretary of State how we got ourselves into this position? He has been very good at coming to the House and making statements on covid, but on the biggest, most important day, the press were given an embargoed statement at 3 o’clock and the Prime Minister had a big showy press conference at 6, yet he could not be bothered to turn up until 8.30. This is a clear breach of the ministerial code. How did it happen? Who thought it was a good idea, and who actually broke the ministerial code?
Hancock had little to say in response but said he would continue answering questions.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown asked on what basis the decision to delay was made. Hancock said:
… Central to the judgment today is the fact that we are seeing a rise in hospitalisations, especially over the past week, and especially among those who are unvaccinated or have just had a single jab. Those people are not largely those who are unvaccinated out of choice; it is those who are unvaccinated because they have not yet had the opportunity because they are younger.
Until about a week ago, hospitalisations were basically flat. We thought that the link might have been completely broken between cases and hospitalisations or that it might be a lag. Sadly, hospitalisations then started to rise. For deaths, we have not yet seen that rise, which I am very pleased about; hopefully they will never rise, in which case the future will be much easier. It may still be that there is an element of it that is a lag, and we will be looking out for that very carefully over the couple of weeks ahead, but nevertheless our goal is to get those vaccines done in the five weeks between now and 19 July in order to make sure that this country is safe. I will commit to publishing anything further that we can that underpinned the decision, but I can honestly say to my hon. Friend that most of it is already in the public domain.
The morning after with talkRADIO’s Julia Hartley-Brewer and guests
On Tuesday, June 15, Israel ditched its mask mandate:
They vaccinated quicker than the UK, which they could do as a much smaller country:
TalkRADIO’s Julia Hartley-Brewer interviewed three interesting guests, whose videos are all worth watching.
Clearly frustrated by this delay, she asked her audience about their mood:
She opened her show with an editorial on selfishness, because many people say that her civil liberties stance is ‘selfish’. She turned the tables on her accusers:
She interviewed David Paton, the Professor of Industrial Economics Nottingham University Business School. He has been running his own models and studying the national statistics since the early days of the pandemic last year.
This is his take. He observes that we are doing much better than SAGE models suggest:
He also told Julia that we are doing much better than the SAGE models purport:
Next up was Hugh Osmond, the founder of the Punch Taverns chain. He said that the medical experts wanted to remove all joy from our lives. He also pointed out that hundreds of pubs have closed because of the government’s handling of the pandemic and that if the pub summer season is short this year, hundreds more will go to the wall by the end of 2021:
Julia’s next guest was Mark Harper MP, chairman of the parliamentary Covid Recovery Group, quoted in the aforementioned Hansard excerpt. I agree with him in that these restrictions might never end:
He cannot understand why the Government is not more positive about the success of the vaccine rollout. He also discussed the negative fear-mongering from the media. Note the reply tweet which is spot on re the G7 get-togethers:
Julia’s third guest in her coronavirus segment was barrister Francis Hoar, who has been anti-lockdown from the start:
Before his interview, he reiterated his concern about increased government control via a (Chinese style) social credit system:
He also retweeted the following:
This appears to be a quote from Sir Charles Walker MP (Conservative), who is also against lockdowns:
It is hard to disagree with him as the Government keeps moving the goalposts:
Francis Hoar told Julia Hartley-Brewer that Boris looked as if he had been taken hostage at last night’s coronavirus briefing and that he is deeply concerned about the future of young people today because of continuing restrictions. He is very much a supporter of having our personal freedoms restored yesterday:
Conclusion
I really do hope that England reopens on July 19. I wanted the nation to reopen on June 21.
However, if it does not, then it is unlikely to reopen until Spring 2022. That could be June 2022.
My reasoning is as follows. September is the month when schools reopen, so that is a risk factor. Then comes flu season when coronavirus will worsen. The experts and the Government will say that we shouldn’t have big Christmas celebrations at home, in the pub or in a restaurant because it’s just too risky. Winter is always a bad time for illness, and we don’t want to overburden the NHS, so we have to wait until sometime during the springtime.
Therefore, if reopening does not take place on July 21, 2021, then the next possible date is between mid-March (after the Cheltenham Festival, likely to be a ‘pilot’ event) and June 2022.
I hope I am wrong. I truly do.
On Monday, January 18, 2021, former Supreme Court Justice Lord Sumption appeared on Julia Hartley-Brewer’s talkRADIO show to discuss the perils of lockdown:
From early last year, Lord Sumption has been a calm, rational opponent of lockdown.
Breitbart has a summary of the three-minute interview clip. Excerpts follow, emphases mine.
I am pleased that his stance has not changed:
Lord Sumption, who last month branded lockdowns “profoundly immoral” and “useless”, told talkRADIO’s Julia Hartley-Brewer on Monday: “We are in the process of turning a public health crisis into an economic, social, and educational disaster.
“We didn’t have to do this. One of the problems is that the government has never been prepared at least to acknowledge that it is necessary to weigh up one thing against another. We cannot have both: lockdown and a prosperous economy. The fact is that no country ever managed to reduce deaths by making itself poorer.”
He warned that this will have a long-term, generational effect:
Lord Sumption continued: “What we have is a lot of people in this country that because they are frightened, or in the case of the government because they are manipulative, are only prepared to look at part of what is actually a very complicated problem.
“You can’t just look at it as a public health issue because it’s a major economic issue. I’m not talking just about the prosperity of businesses, I’m talking about jobs, and how a generation of young people entering the job market is entering a void and the consequences of that are terrible.
“It’s going to live with them for years and years. Long after we’ve forgotten about COVID, they’ll be suffering from the consequences of this. The problem is that emotion is a tool for avoiding difficult choices and the idea that there are no difficult choices — in this case, that the answer is simply to lock down — is frankly absurd.”
Using independent sources, Breitbart supports Lord Sumption’s views about the economy and about the effect on NHS services in other areas:
A survey conducted by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) found that it is expected that around a quarter of a million small businesses will collapse as a result of the lockdown this year.
Reports since the beginning of the lockdowns have also revealed the cost to the nation’s wider wellbeing as NHS hospitals prioritised COVID care and cancelled other services, including a fall in chemotherapy attendance and early cancer referrals, and people dying on transplant waiting lists. There has also been a rise in people feeling depressed or suicidal.
The following graph shows that lockdown was — and is — not necessary. It shows deaths in England between 1971 and 2020. There was hardly an uptick last year:
LBC’s talk radio show presenter Maajid Nawaz has also been an outspoken opponent of lockdown.
Last Sunday, he put together an exhaustive thread — excerpts of which follow — about the dangers of lockdown worldwide, especially for children:
Lockdown is made for the middle class a) who have houses with gardens and b) who never have to worry about losing their jobs — public sector employees:
Ten months on, this is a never-ending downward spiral, where the rules change every few weeks and are often contradictory. More on that in another post.
Despite record-breaking heatwave this week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson lost no time on his first full day in No. 10:
On Thursday, July 25, 2019, he held his first cabinet meeting. The Press Association (PA) reported:
Boris Johnson will preside over his first meeting of his new Cabinet after a brutal cull of Theresa May’s top team.
Within hours of taking office on Wednesday, the new Prime Minister moved to stamp his authority, putting Brexiteers into key Cabinet posts as he vowed to take Britain out of the EU by the October 31 deadline.
He took his pledge to Britain seriously in his first address outside of No. 10 the day before:
Sensible people welcome his approach:
I do hope that journalist Lloyd Evans is correct:
Political pundit Guido Fawkes has been getting record-breaking social media stats:
Even the dress that Boris’s girlfriend wore on July 24 was selling out that same day:
Let’s look at the Cabinet reshuffle, which, for the most part, had me cheering.
In short:
This is also worth keeping in mind:
The new Cabinet will actually carry out the 2017 General Election Conservative Party mandate:
Conservative MP — and former Party leader — Iain Duncan Smith (IDS) says that leaving on October 31 is possible. I already knew this, but for those who do not, there is little danger of ‘crashing out’ with ‘no deal’:
Ultimately, the true nature of our MPs emerged with the stalling this year:
He is not wrong. There was a protest in Whitehall as Boris was preparing to make his first speech as PM. Please pardon the language below, but this has to be shown:
Now for more detail on the new Cabinet — which is diverse. By way of explanation, Michael Howard is also a former Conservative Party leader and Jewish:
Pundits think that Boris’s senior adviser Dominic ‘Vote Leave’ Cummings (in the tee shirt below) …
… had a lot to do with it:
Guido Fawkes posted a comprehensive list on July 24 of firings and hirings. Highlights follow (emphases and red in the original):
Earlier: Hammond, Stewart, Lidington, and Gauke pre-emptively announce resignations.
16:44: Penny Mordaunt sacked as Defence Secretary. Penny drops…
17:00: Liam Fox sacked as International Trade Secretary. Out-Foxed…
17:11: Chris Grayling quits as Transport Secretary. Grayling bailing…
I was really happy about this one:
17:24: James Brokenshire out as Communities Secretary. James Broken-fired…
James Brokenshire fired conservative philosopher Roger Scruton, who was deliberately misquoted in a New Statesman interview earlier this year. Scruton did not find out he had been sacked until he returned home from Paris the evening the article was published. He had been lecturing on architecture in Paris that day. Brokenshire did not even ask Scruton about the interview. Later, he admitted he was wrong in having jumped the gun, but he never rehired Scruton until July 23.
So, Brokenshire is out …
… and Scruton is back!
Incredibly, Brokenshire rehired Scruton the day before his own sacking! Perhaps Brokenshire thought that would put him in Boris’s good books. Wrong!
Scruton’s new boss is Robert Jenrick.
But, wait, there’s more.
Boris’s rival for Conservative Party leadership quit:
17:58: Jeremy Hunt quits as Foreign Secretary after turning down Defence. Shunt for Hunt…
Now for a few names of the new Cabinet members. I’m happy about all except for Dominic Raab, Grant Shapps and Amber Rudd, as I do not trust them nor believe they respect the British people:
18:35: Sajid Javid appointed Chancellor.
18:43: Priti Patel appointed Home Secretary.
18:52: Dominic Raab appointed Foreign Secretary and First Secretary of State.
18:59: Stephen Barclay remains Brexit Secretary.
19:10: Michael Gove appointed to Cabinet Office, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, no deal coordinator.
19:26: Liz Truss appointed International Trade Secretary.
19:55: Matt Hancock remains Health Secretary.
20:11: Theresa Villiers becomes Environment Secretary.
20:24: Gavin Williamson becomes Education Secretary.
20:29: Andrea Leadsom becomes Business Secretary.
20:46: Amber Rudd remains at DWP, adding Equalities brief.
20:59: Robert Buckland becomes Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary.
21:07: Alok Sharma becomes International Development Secretary.
21:12: Grant Shapps becomes Transport Secretary.
21:39: Baroness Evans remains Leader of the Lords.
21:51 Geoffrey Cox remains Attorney General.
22:11 Rishi Sunak becomes Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
22:43: Jacob Rees-Mogg becomes Leader of the House of Commons.
23:02: Oliver Dowden becomes Paymaster General and Cabinet Office Minister.
23:58: Kwasi Kwarteng appointed Business Minister.
This is Boris’s brother:
22:55: Jo Johnson returns as Universities Minister in BEIS and DfE.
I’m really happy about this appointment:
22:32: James Cleverly becomes Tory Party Chairman.
James Cleverly replaces Brandon Lewis, who is now Home Office Minister.
Here is the entire set of appointments. You can tell The Sun‘s political editor, Tom Newton Dunn, is not a Boris fan:
Everyone appointed attended Thursday’s Cabinet meeting:
Afterwards, Boris addressed the House of Commons:
He did a splendid job, on the last day that the House of Commons meets before summer holiday. (They return in September.)
This is what happened, as tweeted by Dan Hodges, ex-Labour member — and former actress/Labour MP Glenda Jackson‘s son. He noticed the effect that Boris’s pusillanimous attacks were having on Labour, including party leader Jeremy Corbyn:
As for Jacob Rees-Mogg (JRM), who sat next to Boris during the Prime Minister’s Statement:
Re Brexit and the EU, he said (emphasis mine):
The days of supplication are over.
Well said!
In fact, even the Germans noticed, calling Boris ‘the blond bulldozer’. Wow:
Meanwhile, Theresa May — and some of the cabinet ministers Boris sacked — enjoyed a day of cricket:
Pundits wonder where Boris will travel first: Europe or the United States. Although President Trump hasn’t yet issued an invitation, it will surely come soon:
In closing, for anyone wondering about living arrangements:
According to the comments following that tweet, Tom Newton Dunn has exaggerated about the size of the No. 10 flat, which is larger than he makes it out to be. He has also conveniently forgotten that Boris has children, too: four, to be precise.
We can expect more Boris-bashing and sniping in the weeks ahead. The media and the rest of the Left will make sure of it.
I am cautiously optimistic for Boris’s tenure as Prime Minister.
Churchmouse Campanologist 