love* in the time of plague (and by love* i mean brexit* and other dreary matters of uk politics)

Ah no there's a four year old ok

Not surprised by the comments tbh, if you wanted to design a lightning conductor for rage you could hardly do better than this. If it goes badly for Cummings it's going to be like the expenses scandal x10 and all on the head of one man.

This is doing some numbers right now:

My whole family went into isolation for 2 weeks when I had symptoms including my sons who both have respiratory health concerns. I didn’t send them to my parents despite being petrified I’d pass it on to them. He was wrong to travel & you are wrong to undermine your own advice. https://t.co/jzsfZYDeYq

— 🌈 Angela Rayner 🌈 (@AngelaRayner) May 23, 2020

Lol they took three tough questions in a row and then a transport one, Shapps is sweating lol

Looks like Boris has sent out instruction to die on Dom's hill.

Jenny getting ever-closer to just saying "was the child at extreme risk? no"

Jenny is a disgrace.

Not one person asked if he stopped for a piss, come on now. Total disaster.

Sam Coates actually asked if classic Dom had infected anyone on the way to Durham and did it matter.

“Did he stop to take a piss or are you taking it now?”

They’re retconning the medical advice. It’s amazing.

Follow the guidelines to the best of your ability. You can go somewhere when infected as long as you stay there until you are better. Up to the individual to decide if they have enough support. The guidance has a common sense element.

Q. Are you saying that anyone who becomes ill with the virus, they can go closer to relatives – no matter how far away that is?

Shapps says the rules have subsequently changed anyway.

Q. What are the risks of travelling if you have the virus and would you recommend it?

Harries says if people have symptoms, they should self-isolate immediately and stay in their homes.

The only exception around this is around risk, i.e. the issue of safeguarding for children or adults, she adds.

God help us if there is ever a second wave of lockdown people are supposed to be observing diligently.

‘the rules have subsequently changed anyway’, fuck sake

yes, domcum did beat some puppies to death with a lump hammer but we’ve since made it legal so nbd

Didn’t some people already have to resign over this kind of thing, they must be pissed off lol

God help us if there is ever a second wave of lockdown people are supposed to be observing diligently.

They could have just spun ‘Cummings was concerned about his family and made a good faith error of judgement interpreting the rules but has since apologised’ rather than ‘if you think about it, what really is a law other than some jolly good advice?’. It’s not as though he was actually going to be arrested.

There'd still be calls for his head even then, the govt are just trying to brazen it out now. Doesn't help that everyone hates him.

gallus cunts just trying to see what they will get away with

Saw some people saying the whole Cummings thing is a distraction/won't get traction and the left shouldn't bother...I admit I don't believe he'll get fired either, but I'm seeing so many people I know who barely ever talk politics get angry over this, so many stories of people who didn't visit relatives in dramatic conditions.

Was on the phone with my mum just now and she asked whether we were past the peak here, I actually had to look it up - feels almost irrelevant at this stage, crazy as that might sound?

Dan Davies has an interesting theory - that Johnson might be a lot more unwell than he’s letting on and Cummings is running the country on his behalf atm so is too valuable to be let go.

I just came here to post about that. Seems pretty credible tbh, Johnson disappeared for an entire week not so long ago.

You could argue its been Cummings running the country the entire time. Even a fully healthy Johnson would suddenly need to do a lot more work if he were to resign.

Also any money says Johnson bunks off PMQs next week.

Posting this Alex Massie piece in its entirety before someone at the Spectator inevitably has conniptions and takes an axe to it.

Most aspects of this present emergency are complex and resist easy solutions. Only a handful are elementary but one of these, and quite obviously so, is the Dominic Cummings affair. He must go and he must go now. There is no alternative, no other way out, no means by which this ship can be saved. The only question is the number of casualties Cummings will take with him.

Judged by the cabinet’s performance on social media this weekend, the answer to that question is also simple: all of them. It cannot be stressed too often that the government’s authority during this crisis is moral much more than it is legal. The lockdown measures were presented as a great national collective endeavour and they were accepted by the public on those terms too. Now it seems they were optional so long as, that is, you have the correct connections.

Advisors are, by definition, disposable. When they become the story, you cut them loose. That is the rule and it exists for a very good reason. Otherwise, attention soon shifts from the advisor to their masters. Right now, the government appears to believe Cummings is indispensable and, consequently, more important than the coherence and credibility of the government’s own messaging. That is quite a conclusion to reach and one unlikely to be shared by the general public.

This government now suffers from a credibility gap and the problem with such things is that, once opened and apparent, these gaps never close. The longer Cummings remains in post, the surer it is that the government will become, at best, a laughing stock.

It doesn’t even matter if what he did was appropriate or sensible or a reasonable means by which an awkward or complicated situation might best be managed. All that could be true and it wouldn’t change a thing. Perception is sometimes more important and here the perception is that there is one set of rules for government insiders and another, quite different, set of rules for everyone else. That is not just the perception, either, for it appears to be the reality too and will remain so, and be understood as such, for as long as Dominic Cummings remains in post. You may sympathise with his predicament – an unwell wife, a small child – all you like and it doesn’t change a thing.

Cabinet minister, mysteriously, are setting fire to their own credibility and authority in defending Cummings. There are millions of people across the country who have made considerable sacrifices, borne significant hardship, during this lockdown. They have done so for the greater good, recognising that they must do their little bit as part of a much greater endeavour. Weddings have been postponed; funerals have been left unattended; families have been separated. Little of this experience has been easy and much of it has been hard.

It is baffling that the government appears unable to see the damage this story will do to its already rocky reputation. Cummings’s judgement is one thing – and in the grander scheme of things, neither here nor there – but the longer this story rumbles on so the surer it is that attention will switch to the man who hired him. The point of a human shield is that you must be prepared to lose them if that proves necessary and this is something even Boris Johnson must be capable of grasping. It is his judgement that is now the issue.

The government’s authority during this crisis is moral much more than it is legal

The suspicion remains that somewhere, deep in their hearts, the cabinet’s collective reaction to this scandal – for such it is – is predicated on a still darker appreciation of an unwelcome political reality. Namely that the Prime Minister, whatever his other talents, is not actually up to the job of running the country in a moment such as this. I suspect they know this too and this leads them to a situation in which they decline to concede anything for fear that a single concession might topple the entire rickety edifice.

Perhaps I am mistaken about that but I can see no other logical explanation for the manner in which the government has reacted to this story. There is an old rule in crisis management stating that you should always do quickly what you will be forced to do eventually anyway. That means sacking Cummings now and it is astonishing that this appears beyond Downing Street.

You cannot – and again, this is elementary – run this crisis on a 'do as I say, not as I do' basis. And yet that is what the country is now expected to swallow. It is madness and a blunder of career-defining, perhaps even career-ruining, proportions.

A joke, then, albeit not an especially amusing one. Surely someone in Downing Street can appreciate this? This is a shipwreck and all the smart people who say this will blow over or fail to 'cut through' with the public are, I think, sorely mistaken. This is not a difficult story to understand, which is why it is so very powerful.

Again, and above all, this is a moral matter not a legal one and, by virtue of that, a much bigger and more profound affair. The Prime Minister has a simple choice: cut Dominic Cummings loose or be dragged down with him. This ought to be a pretty easy decision.

No PMQs this or next Weds - Whitsun recess.

Ah sorry, it just doesn't feel like Whitsun, what with the pandemic and everything.

I took one for the team here and had a look at the Soaraway Sun's website. They're leading on "BRITS ABROAD? Spain announces plans to welcome foreign tourists in July as hopes grow for Brit holidaymakers".
Followed by "'WHO CARES?' Dominic Cummings says he DIDN’T break lockdown with 260-mile trip to parents as Boris’s top aide faces calls to resign".
Then "EU'RE GOING NOWHERE France hits back at UK with 14-day isolation rule for Brits as European leaders rage at quarantine measures".
Then "SPREAD SLOWS UK coronavirus death toll grows by 282 in 24 hours – but rise is lowest Saturday total since March".
Then "END GAME Coronavirus study predicts exact date UK will be have no cases of Covid-19".
Then "SALES BONANZA Shoppers to enjoy biggest summer sales EVER with ‘tidal wave’ of bargains as retailers try to flog unsold stock".
Just so we know what the other side are getting in their news feed that isn't The Guardian.

Dan Davies has an interesting theory - that Johnson might be a lot more unwell than he’s letting on and Cummings is running the country on his behalf atm so is too valuable to be let go.

lads lads i think we might be saved

You know, I think the country is angry. This Cummings thing is never going to go away. Shut eyes are being forced open, reality is percolating through. Those voters who didn't re-elect a man of principle & probity, that very different Dominic - Grieve - must surely be waking up.

— A C Grayling #FBPE🕷 #Reform #Rejoin 🐟 (@acgrayling) May 23, 2020

I’d like to see ol doms cumming wriggle his way out of THIS jam

Could I have a link to the Dan Davies stuff please?

lol i didn't see the 🕷in grayling's handle when i read this tweet on twitter bcz (being a goth) i use night-mode

is it a reference to the law-lord lady's brooch (symbol of a hugely pyrrhic victory for the fbpes) or is it just there bcz he too uses night-mode and has forgotten abt it?

I would guess:

1) Johnson is much sicker than he admits and can't put the hours in

2) Cummings is covering and making decisions

3) if DC goes, there will have to be a big fight over who's in charge which nobody is ready for

— Dan Davies (@dsquareddigest) May 23, 2020

Given the hashtags I’d say it absolutely is a brooch self-own

(the full dd discussion is spread in various conversations)

lol bojo dying of plague is the only possible reason the lazy cunt can’t put the hours in

Those things could all be true but Dominic Cummings has a boss: it’s Matthew Kelly and he and his American wife Sarah are up to no good, forging links with far-right figures in the US and elsewhere.

Matt DC's Alex Massie post above is probably the best thing I have ever seen connected to the SPECTATOR.

I hope that many people will see it.

Those things could all be true but Dominic Cummings has a boss: it’s Matthew Kelly and he and his American wife Sarah are up to no good, forging links with far-right figures in the US and elsewhere.

Things have taken a sinister twist since Game For A Laugh ended.

the massie piece is -- to put it mildly -- hurriedly written

Hahaha excuse me, that should say Matthew ELLIOTT.

matthew kelly is famously a trot

Very good, Alex, but moral matters in a goverment headed by Boris Johnson?

They are clearly using the “look, you, the out of touch Westminster bubble can talk about this but the public don’t care” playbook which has worked so well since, eh, 2016 but if this cuts through he’s sunk.

And with 52% (lol) saying he should go in snap YouGov poll it’s not looking great on that front.

Can’t wait to get back to that amazing Rabb administration we had while Johnson was in hospital and Cummings in Durham.

i think massie also subscribes to the dan davies theory and boris is not the readership he is looking to

When I compared it to the expenses scandal I was making a serious point - regardless of the severity of the offence (duck houses lol) there appears to be nothing that enrages the British public more than the political class brazenly doing what they want when everyone else is being asked to make sacrifices.

The thing that makes this particularly bizarre is that this is exactly the sense of grievance that Cummings himself has been successfully exploiting for years. It's also why the typical Cummings playbook isn't going to work.

Dominic Cummings allegedly spotted wandering around Durham in mid-April. This would suggest he had already finished quarantine, returned to London, gone to Downing Street, then later returned back up north again. https://t.co/IssfiOjiL9

— Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) May 23, 2020

I give it 18 months until he's DG of the BBC

He must go and he must go now.

tend to think ppl say this when they really want something to happen but there is no way of making it happen so it comes out as this foot-stamping moralising howl of impotence. johnson has purged most of his enemies from the party & is only 6 months into his premiership. it's called an elective dictatorship bc it's so resilient and they've already got a siege mentality, going to have to be a lot going on behind the scenes for them to feel threatened enough to cave

desperate dans

dan dare>>>dan davies>>>dan hodges>>dan "iron you out" dyer>>>dan brown>>>dan snow>>the desperate dane