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

Bears reiterating that Labour is a fundamentally authoritarian party, always has been and probably always will be.

yeah, i take comfort when that gets exposed. a slogan isn't a programme was my point really. even if the electoral maths was different i wouldn't expect much change to structural inequalities to come out of a political party currently riddled with them. also it's just nice to see the right kind of people shaken up.

'Labour has no interest in discussions around defunding or abolishing the police but we recognise the ongoing work that needs to be done to ensure that policing reflects the values of...., etc, etc'.

This would have been so easy that you have to wonder if yesterday's interview as given was the point, rather than a reflexive kneejerk. And yeah I haven't really heard 'defund the police' used much over here at all.

it was the point and the point was “fuck you”

He could also - though he didn't - have pointed to a report from his own Shadow Justice Secretary, who is black.

Just heard Jonathan Ashworth say the reason UK was late to lockdown was because we thought this epidemic was going to be like swine flu. This statement is patently ridiculous. The genome of SARS-CoV-2 was published in January and we knew then it was a coronavirus, not swine flu.

— richard horton (@richardhorton1) June 30, 2020

jesus wept

A positive of Starmer rubbishing BLM like this is that it pushes 'defund' more and more to the conversation as a thing.

Surely Ashworth meant it like it would have the same impact in the UK as swine flu did. He's still a chump.

I'd want to hear it in context as it's not a reason for why the UK was later than other countries. That was a political call.

he's fucking awful and when mostly the rest of Europe were locking down it was pretty clear this mofo was no H1N1

tbh it's been tempting to flip 'defund the police' back at Tories given their policy over the last ten years was to do exactly that

there is line between treading carefully because "the GBP don't like to see pols making cheap political capital from the Rona" and just being a complete fucking useless idiot.

"We also clap for those who make our NHS possible: our innovators, our wealth creators, our capitalists and financiers." https://t.co/hve0sI2ea4

— alex hern (@alexhern) June 30, 2020

omg clap for Branson!

(xxp) Yes, ironically, the Tories have been defunding the police for years.

was just listening to the press conference while making breakfast, glad i missed the clap for billionaires bit

Covid had been fucking Italy for almost a month before they eventually locked down here. Was very clear it wasn’t on the same level as swine flu.

Ashworth a dick but at the same time:

A call for caution please. Media are escalating anxiety by talking of a “killer virus” + “growing fears”. In truth, from what we currently know, 2019-nCoV has moderate transmissibility and relatively low pathogenicity. There is no reason to foster panic with exaggerated language.

— richard horton (@richardhorton1) January 24, 2020

Clap for capitalists! #Clapitalists

He really went there huh

It might, *might* have explained why the government was so lackadaisical in preparing for the threat in January and February, perhaps they also thought it would be like SARS and not really make its way over here. It is the absolute flimsiest excuse for not locking down early given what had already been happening in Italy, France and Spain.

Ashworth really shouldn't have said "we" there, as if he had anything to do with it.

I think what Ashworth was groping for is that they were following the pandemic flu playbook, which is basically true (but they were always doomed because they'd cut the knees off even the flu response with austerity)

100 staff working in 13 care homes across Leicestershire have been told 'you're sacked' unless you accept two weeks less paid holiday, a 30% cut in wages, scrapping sick pay scheme plus more. This is the reality of a broken, privatised system where profit trumps people.

— Chris Jenkinson (@UNISONRegSec) June 29, 2020

"Why then, is the new national security adviser a political appointee with no proven expertise in national security?" asks former prime minister Theresa May

Michael Gove says not all national security advisers have been "steeped in the security world"https://t.co/7R5crkq6sE pic.twitter.com/aQE810tiBp

— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) June 30, 2020

O_o

"Bad experts still bad, experts suggest"

The post has apparently only existed since the Cameron government which is probably a factor in why Cummings and Gove think it's so open to them fucking with.

Fucking hell, the look of loathing and contempt on May's face. I know she looks like that most of the time but she really hates Gove.

a rare moment of alignment with the rest of the human race

Yes.

Quite remarkable.

It's amazing. I also think there are going to be more Tories that hate the announcements today, too. I wonder how long he keep this lot together – signing a pledge to GBD is different from agreeing to all the other shit

Love too see it.

Though I'm sure Starmzy will put her in her place soon.

I wonder how long he keep this lot together

it would be a shame if the tory party split, then there wouldn't be any more "countdown to inevitable tory party split" thinkpieces that i've been enjoying since 2016.

https://i.imgur.com/P88TmoE.png

We need ZS to add some laser beams shooting from her eyes

a bunch of spooks and wannabe spooks fighting over spook stuff is the kind of political stand the country needs right now

On a fundamental level Tories understand power and will do virtually anything to get it and hold onto it, it's not in their nature to split, although as we've seen they can be a big man for a purge on occasion.

(xpost - tbf if this appointment fucks up it's going to do so very badly indeed)

glad to see she's still wearing weird shit around her neck

Also they've got a big fuck off majority they can afford to carry some disgruntled backbenchers.

They don't really, though - SBush OTM with the "Labour had a landslide loss, but the Tories didn't get a landslide majority". They've already had some lossees to backbenchers, can definitely see this getting messy with what's to come.

meanwhile in 20pts ahead corner:

New from Labour NEC. Lara McNeill asks Keir Starmer if he will uphold same zero tolerance approach on antisemitism to Rachel Reeves' praise for Nancy Astor

He said "I'm not going to discuss that"

Also refused to be drawn on BLM - one source says he is in "no mood to compromise"

— Gabriel Pogrund (@Gabriel_Pogrund) June 30, 2020

lmao

"There is a balance that must be struck, between law and order..."

Lol don't question the big boss even if he is a hypocritical dickhead.

the real blue labour was the friends we lost along the way

Struck in particular by this ... Lab-to-Con switchers in 2019 are to right of even most *Tory* voters on social values issues. It is not going to be easy for Lab, with its current metro-liberal, soft Corbynny base, to get these people back. pic.twitter.com/JYvUscfZNR

— Rafael Behr (@rafaelbehr) June 30, 2020

no fan of landlordism, but i'm going to have to get the bailiffs round to evict sir keiron starmer from my head and collect 5 months of unpaid rent

— Stan The Golden Boy (@tristandross) June 30, 2020

fuck me the difference here between the blue bars (which the govt publishes) and the red (which it doesn't) is stark. This graph is for Leicester:

But the govt is sitting on a much more complete dataset including pillar 2, which tells a completely different story

More than 90% of new cases in Leicester are now under pillar 2, yet these numbers are not public. If you’re a local biz owner in Leicester, you only see the blue. pic.twitter.com/aZY20EuOGc

— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) June 30, 2020

Jesus Christ.

So what exactly do the blue and red bars represent, ie what is the diff?

Possibly a good question in there for the next PMQs. Oh no never mind, let's not politicise this and no questions!

uhhhh can we get the pillar 2 data for glasgow pls

Why oh why didn’t I take the blue pillar

Blue is positive tests handled in hospitals, red is positive tests outside of hospitals iirc.

Have literally no idea what that graph means, but I'm going to go with yikes!

Xp okay yikes! confirmed