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

Read that as Dominic Cummings didn't actually know where he was - which would explain the phone conversation with Johnson that neither could remember any details of.

I must admit I can absolutely believe Cummings shitting himself, freaking out and losing his marbles when he thought he had the 'rona.

That's pretty much what happened.

Looks like it. Have a word with him, Tracer Hand.

That would have been totally survivable though – "I panicked when I got the Rona and made a bad mistake and I'm sorry" would have more than done the job (and might have covered the birthday trip when it inevitably came up). It's the arrogance that's done for him

My mum: “Are you going to be doing more stuff defending Cummings”. Me: “Yes”. My mum: “Then you’re an idiot”. So that’s going well then...

— (((Dan Hodges))) (@DPJHodges) May 26, 2020

if he apologised he would be failing in his mission to act as a lightning rod, trolling the media & making them look incompetent, & making everyone talk about him instead of rona

Talking about him is talking about rona though.

Tory MPs in marginals getting jumpy is one thing, Tories in safe seats is another.

indirectly, it's a sideshow, an outlet for public anger that might otherwise have a more politically useful target, as he gets to play the maverick villainous arrogant bad egg while making clear none of the rest of the govt had any idea. whether he eventually gets sacrificed or not the longer this goes on the less time the uk death toll is in the headlines

I note starmer is really going hard on the nandy-concerned-eyebrows in his rona-related weirdly slow, cloying announcements. this shows more humility than the more imperious, disdainful furrowed brow of blair

if I was starmzy I’d be tempted to just bunt johnson’s line back at him by saying “people can make their own minds up and don’t think any reasonable observer would support what he’s done, particularly in light of all the sacrifices ordinary people have made for two months up and down the country.”

There is no way this shitshow is 5D chess. The rona isn't going anywhere while this plays out; it's just waiting in the queue

Not really convinced the sacrificial lamb tactic is viable when everything is about the pandemic. Public anger at Cummings' behaviour is directly connected with the government's handling of the crisis.

meh, while Cummings stays in post it kind of is, if he goes over this - sacked, resigns, shot by concerned passerby with silver bullet - it'll not be thought of as a government failing by anybody who matters after a fortnight

Well he isn't going is he?

and the effect will be broadly the same i suspect, forgotten given time, not directly linked to poor, too loyal BoJo and way down the list of this government's demonstrable faults and failings by the time another election comes round

it's not that he shouldn't be sacked and it's not that people aren't angry but it's not the kind of anger amongst the kind of people at the kind of time that will effect much political change. it slots neatly into the one-thought-at-a-time functioning of our news media, is all

Sorry, I forgot that everyone itt is thinking about the next election when I'm thinking no further than the end of the week. Mea culpa.

sadly enough the likely best outcome from a Starmzfront Labour point of view would be for him to stay in post and then this to be revisited in a legit post-Rona enquiry but i can't build up much excitement for that prospect

I've not recovered from the last election, I feel like my synapses, or whatever, have been so burnt out I can barely even process the word 'election'.

yeah i'm not saying anybody is "wrong" to be angry. i broadly agree that this kind of public anger is fuel to a Cummings and distracts from what the government are actually doing and what they want to do but i wouldn't make a whole shtick out of that.

also this thread is for bad jokes and howling it isn't the Fifth International so

Yes, it's distracting from what they're doing – but even if we were focused on that nothing would change there this week, they'd brush it, say the comparisons were wrong, etc etc. You might get a bit more attention on Brexit, but the country isn't interested in that now.

Meantime there's a big scalp up for grabs, one which Johnson has glued himself to in a way that has cost him 20 points already. Even if nothing more comes of it than a love-to-see-it resignation, it's worth a bit of a distraction to get it.

I think this is only a minor distraction. Anyone see video of that huge queue for the food bank in Elephant & Castle shopping centre? I mean, the economic contraction and fall out has potential to really blow up this summer and beyond xp

If Cummings really is holding the different factions of the cabinet if not together, then in check, it's hard to know what kind of impact keeping him / turfing him out is going to have on all of the more important stuff.

someone said if domcum goes, BJ will have to deal with a load of resignations. who will resign? domcum's staff or cabinet ministers?

5D chess is nonsense bc it suggests a level of control and order which is impossible. this is just 'flooding the zone with shit', in keeping w/ the disruptive agent of chaos modus operandi that has characterised this wing of the right.

Pretty obvious that Johnson doesn't think Cummings leaving the government is a minor distraction.

that strategy doesn't usually call for the shit to be yr own suicide, but xp

i’d venture a guess that the economic consequences of many millions of people out of work will be more severe, and more transformative long-term(for better or for worse) than anyone is yet grasping. it’s absolutely massive and the characteristics of this virus mean no quick solutions. this government is absolutely not up to the challenge. a scandal of this size and shape will look, in retrospect, like a day out at, er barnard castle.

TS: 'flooding the zone with shit' vs. 5D chess

5D chess but all the dimensions are indistinguishable from shit

someone said if domcum goes, BJ will have to deal with a load of resignations. who will resign? domcum's staff or cabinet ministers?

it's the birthday present from me to you

Btw I agree with the theory I saw earlier on twitter, which is that this whole thing has fucked what most of us assume is the government’s intention to shift the blame to the public.

Gove will tie himself in knots trying to decide whether to go. Obviously if he goes before DC he cuts off someone he has really put his neck out for and looks like a moron. But if he goes after, he looks pro-DC and has the country hate him more — sacking DC would be a popular move right now. I think he'll stay.

and yeah, any blame at all that could have landed on the public goes straight to DC now

he's a wrecking machine

Yes, Dominic Cummings specifically will be blamed for it and the government after that. It still makes him a human shield.

They don't even need to flood the zone with shit in order to keep the death toll off the front pages, the death toll has been off the front pages for weeks now. They could just drop SHOPS OPEN YAY type announcements for weeks and most of the press would happily play ball.

he's been caught out, has reasoned he doesn't need to fall on his sword & can further aggravate the media and help johnson spend less time talking about tens of thousands of deaths while also acting as a pressure valve for public anger. the most important public feeling is apathy, and the main tactics to increase it are division and delay. lots of ppl are sick of lockdown already and the intensity of feeling is likely to gradually fizzle out over time with the risk coming from spikes if particular issues emerge around which public sentiment galvanises. if during the peak of the crisis public anger is focused on trying to get one person to resign then that's not too bad for the govt considering how appalling their handling has been, it is at least something they are in control of

Their own failure at handling this has fucked them, though, and shops opening isn’t going to make people forget that? How many of us here know people bereaved who couldn’t attend their loved ones’ funerals? I know several people. The numbers I know who were actually sick with this horrible thing were higher.

So many social posts angry about being able to visit Primark before family.

Yeah, not saying the cunts won’t get away with this, but this has spread too far and affected too many people who have been enduring it for the common good they were told we are all working towards.

when you can't keep people happy you focus on managing their anger

Yes I'm not saying that easing lockdown measures will distract from the Cummings thing, that's taken on a life of its own that they can't control. But prior to that they had been distracting from the death toll for some time with reasonable success, in the press at least.

PREM FOOTBALL IN JULY pages 1-3, another 150 dead tucked away on page nine, that sort of thing.

It's also possible that Cummings just lacks the self awareness to adequately manage the anger when he himself is the story.

they can fire cummings whenever they want

they don't want to, and that's what's damaging them

It's also not clear that Johnson thinks he can fire him and maintain control of the cabinet.