New advisers

As the Prime Minister looks for new advisers he needs a select cast who will help him develop and communicate his strategic vision of our country and our future as we leave the single market and customs union and learn to live with the virus.

He needs help to build more bridges with Ministers and backbench MPs and to shape the resources and powers of government for a distinctive and positive approach to the future. There is plenty of talent and experience on the backbenches which needs enthusing and mobilising in many ways.

There are three immediate priorities, which have to be tackled together and are critically interlinked. The first is the secure a clean exit from the EU, with or without the preferred free trade deal, with no more slippage. Indeed, there will not be a free trade deal of an acceptable kind unless the clear resolution of the UK to just leave is believed by the EU.

The second is to put in place a full range of approaches to the virus as we await further breakthroughs from medical science, so we can live more normal lives and get the economy back to work whilst protecting the vulnerable and limiting the spread of the disease. I have often commented here on the initiatives we need to extend or develop to winnow down the impact of this virus.

The third is to do everything we can to promote and sustain recovery. We need more and better paid jobs, more and more profitable small businesses, more home grown food and home produced goods.

The Prime Minister needs to appoint those advisers who he thinks best meet his needs. He also needs to continue to take advice from leading members of the Cabinet who should also enjoy his trust .

374 Comments

  1. Peter Wood
    November 15, 2020

    Good Morning,

    As a pundit said, it’s about time there were some experienced grown-ups in Bunter Boris’s cabinet, to curb the wilder and profligate side of his character.

    There is no clearer confirmation of the truth of ‘Parkinson’s Law’ than the time wasted in negotiating with the EU.

    1. Martin in Cardiff
      November 15, 2020

      I’m not so sure that the PM or many in government would agree with John’s opening assertions.

      Why should we have to “live with the virus”?

      Billions, in countries from New Zealand to Senegal and from Ireland to Taiwan do not accept that, and in many cases do not have to anyway, having virtually eliminated it.

      And we all await the vaccine(s).

      We will see what happens about arrangements with the European Union too.

      1. No Longer Anonymous
        November 15, 2020

        I take the virus seriously.

        What are the costs in lives and health by ‘eliminating’ it ?

        Once New Zealand takes herself out of economy damaging quarantine will she have to learn to live with it ?

        The model of a CV-19 response … so which political ideology is to blame for the incalculable damage New Zealand has suffered ? The biggest drop in GDP on record which will cost New Zealander lives.

        1. No Longer Anonymous
          November 15, 2020

          ‘…virtually eliminated it’

          Even you’ve said it, Martin. It’s still lurking. So we have to live *with* it.

          1. Hope
            November 15, 2020

            Cameron appointed former Labour Ministers including EU fanatic Adonis!! Did he listen to you! Good grief JR, get real.

            We had Mitchell MP talking about social liberal Tories what on earth does that mean. Your party of MPs need purging not just advisors. Onward left it marches.

            People voted for a conservative govt.! Look what they got!

            Reply Mr Cameron listened to me over the EU referendum and agreed with much of my Economic Policy Report written with Simon Wolfson.

      2. Lynn Atkinson
        November 15, 2020

        We should live with the virus because the alternative is suicide. The virus will remain, the question is will you?

    2. Peter
      November 15, 2020

      This article is a valiant attempt to move on from a complete disaster in the last days of Brexit negotiations.

      We all know the three challenges outlined. Most of us did not vote for a green agenda and a ‘reset’.

      Boris says he will hold fast and not yield to the EU.

      Nobody believes him.

      1. Lynn Atkinson
        November 15, 2020

        He better walk this week to prove it, because I agree, nobody believes him.

        1. Hope
          November 16, 2020

          Not possible. You need a back bone to walk.

      2. glen cullen
        November 15, 2020

        +1

      3. Stephen Priest
        November 15, 2020

        Dear John

        “R Rate 0.9” Say Official CSS 😳 WHY Are We In Lockdown Boris?
        youtube – Alex Belfield

    3. Stephen Priest
      November 15, 2020

      Emergency Laws to Stamp Out Free Speech đŸ€ | Carl Vernon
      On you tube

      This is a Labour idea that must be fought

      1. M Davis
        November 15, 2020

        I wholeheartedly agree! More control-freakery by the Socialists.

  2. Lifelogic
    November 15, 2020

    It seems we are going to get his ‘No time to waste’ on climate change agenda and his ten-point plan – expected to focus on alternative energy sources and promising green jobs this week.

    It will certainly be a great way to destroy jobs, export jobs and damage the recovery. As would/will be Sunak’s plans to increase CGT tax rates that are far too high already even above the Laffer point. The best advice to Boris is ditch the lock down, ditch the green subsidies and green crap agenda in general, get off the backs of the productive and stop pissing taxpayer’s money down the drain. Reduce the size of government by about 50% and get real freedom and choice into healthcare, education, housing, energy and the rest.

    Find people who think like this. Ignore your fiancee who seems to be wrong on almost everything. Allegra Statton sounds like a lefty, green to me too.

    1. Lifelogic
      November 15, 2020

      Just read this in the Telegraph. Allegra Stratton admitted to The Sunday Telegraph she had previously voted for Labour and the Green Party and had once considered a job offer from David Miliband.

      She sounds like another big mistake to me.

      Janet Daley asks – Why won’t No 10 say that a vaccine will end this dystopian lockdown?
      The PM’s failure to present this breakthrough as our way out of repressive restrictions is baffling

      Well Janet it is not really a “breakthrough” yet. It needs to prove to be very, very save indeed for it not to cause more harm than good. I think on balance that if rolled out it will cause more harm than good. we are after all near herd immunity now anyway and for most people it is not a dangerous disease anyway.

      1. Cynic
        November 15, 2020

        An informative guide to understanding how vaccines work and the bodies defence system is: Covid False Alarm. It can be downloaded as an e-book.

        1. Lifelogic
          November 15, 2020

          Thanks, I will take a look.

          They do not even seem to have tested it on the very elderly yet how will they react? How will it work with people suffering from various conditions – either ones they know about or do not (in which case you cannot every advise them not to take it).

          You might well have to give it to perhaps 10,000 people per life saved (even more in very young people). So we would need to know that it will not cause serious reactions not even in say one in 20,000 or more people.

          Plus by the time we get sufficient delivered many people will already have immunity and we will have herd immunity in most places. Plus perhaps more and better hospital treatments too so survival may be even higher.

      2. Lifelogic
        November 15, 2020

        The fact that Allegra Stratton was appointed by Sunak rather brings into question his judgement even further. She is clearly a lefty Guardian/BBC think person. But then Sunak certainly seems to be too. Cutting entrepreneurs relief to 1/10 of what it idiotically was almost the first thing Sunak did.

        1. a-tracy
          November 15, 2020

          I think Allegra Stratton, said to be a flip flopping leftie being appointed as communications chief by this Conservative government tells us everything.

          John is trying his best to stop us getting spooked but HQ allowing this ‘Carrie (who we find out is also a leftie green) and Allegra are now in charge’ narrative all weekend is causing too much damage.

          MiC keeps letting the cat of the bag, it is thought the red wall and Brexiteers are all ex UKIP/BNP people, they don’t know them at all on either side, frankly its just more insults on insults after four years of being allowed to spread these malicious statements, they won’t like it when the boot is on the other foot in America and the right turn their weaponising of debate against them with ‘Chinese Hoax’, ‘Lies’ ‘harvested votes’ ‘conspiracy’ ‘lock them up’. Just remember who allowed the shouty man on the BBC news and C4 news every night for years and who allowed Soubry and Femi on every news program.

          At the end of the day John, you, all you conservative MPs are letting us down over the virus, Brexit, truth, trust and transparency the three pillars of leadership are broken. Why do we need this women to tell Boris what to do when you have elected MPs that should have skills that can be used at a cost we’ve already paid.

          1. Hope
            November 16, 2020

            A-Tracy,

            What selection process did Stratton go through- equal ops and all that? Why were BAME candidates not allowed to apply?

            Employment legislation applies to No. 10 because last week it settled with a former staffer that Cummings through out on her ear!

          2. a-tracy
            November 18, 2020

            Hope, these politicians and advisors never seem to have to follow the employment rules they set for the rest of us to follow. Whether it is Cummings or Ed Balls when he mishandled the Shoesmith dismissal, he had grounds to do this properly. They don’t pay the taxpayer pays.

            This is perhaps why they should use qualified MPs to act as advisors as they can let them go at will and swap them out it seems.

        2. Paul Cuthbertson
          November 15, 2020

          LL – Add to the list, Carrie Symonds.

        3. Know-Dice
          November 15, 2020

          And we hear that the ROI are still insisting on a “level playing field” I guess that is one with 12.5% Corporation tax and 25% tax relief on R&D doesn’t sound very level to me…

          1. Lifelogic
            November 15, 2020

            Just leave why on earth should the UK agree to remain uncompetitive.

      3. Martin in Cardiff
        November 15, 2020

        Your posts are actually counter-Enlightenment, superstitious, mumbo-jumbo, dressed up in modern language.

        You appear to believe in magic, and that if you believe hard enough, then your fantasies will become fact.

        There are plenty like you mind, and it is why this country and the US are in the shambles that they are over this virus, along with others.

        1. a-tracy
          November 15, 2020

          But…but Martin they told us the day after the day the media announced Biden/Harris had won that the virus would be extinguished with a new vaccine? This Country is a shambles over the virus because of the NHS not knowing how to deal with virus the scientists telling the government to send people into care homes to release beds in the NHS, overly long lockdowns (16 weeks!!!) now a month more but children can go to school, and teens to college and young adults to Uni. Small shops can’t open, supermarkets can open and Amazon can make a killing. It’s not just the UK sales that have been lost it is the tax on the profits, tax on the wage bill, the business rates when they go out of business, the parking revenues, all of these lockdown policies are supported by you and you want more!

          1. Lynn Atkinson
            November 15, 2020

            Landlords pay the business rates on empty property. Did you see Cafe Nero are demanding 3 years rent free? My WHSmith tenant demanding 75% reduction in the rent – in perpetuity.
            No support from Government for landlords!

          2. a-tracy
            November 16, 2020

            I believe the government are trying to put small private landlords out of business I’ve got no skin in that game but I feel for you.

            What a shambles the Councils make of being landlords though and those Housing Associations that are councils really with all the old staff and leaders that were ex-councillors. They have signs and posters up congratulating themselves on what a good place they are to work, best employers in the World but their properties have falling down fences, rotting houses, they allow tennants to turn their front gardens into waste dumps, leave litter everywhere, don’t make sanctions about people filling the gardens with broken down trucks and cars – let windows rot, properties stand empty.

          3. Stred
            November 17, 2020

            They are making private rentals difficult in order to force landlords to sell and then collect increased CGT without indexation. BTL has been a good investment over 20+ years and hundreds of billions could be raided. The latest is the need to have an electrical certificate before letting. This leads to installation of the latest standards such as larger earth bonding cables. One landlord is having to pay ÂŁ1200 to update a bathroom installed four years ago. Next in line they are likely to insist that all rentals are to grade C energy certificate, which is very difficult in existing housing and requires very thick insulation or solar panels costing thousands.

          4. Narrow Shoulders
            November 17, 2020

            @stred

            Suggest you come and view the property I rent. Passed said electrical certificate with dodgy plugs and switches that don’t work.

            Evidently just need to find yourself the right organisation to pay for the certificates.

        2. NickC
          November 16, 2020

          Martin, It is a shambles. You got your lockdowns, your facemasks, your shutdown of schools, universities and businesses, your social distancing your home imprisonments, your extra deaths from the NHS concentrating on “eliminating” covid, the economic disaster. And it is a shambles. Your shambles. You seem very proud of yourself. You shouldn’t be, because the tide of covid hysteria, fomented by people like you, is turning.

      4. Sea_Warrior
        November 15, 2020

        I wonder how much she’s paid. As much as a minister, I’d wager.

    2. ian wragg
      November 15, 2020

      I read this week on Conhome 2 articles about alternative energy.
      One on Air Source Heat Pumps which failed to mention that they don’t work below 5 degrees cent. and above 40 degrees cent.
      The second was about using hydrogen which quote ” must be stored at high temperatures”.
      Both written by government advisors with qualifications in history and PPE.
      If this is the caliber together together with Carrie Symons that are advising Boris then it’s time he was gone.

      1. Lifelogic
        November 15, 2020

        I have even heard BBC environment reporters who confuse ‘positive feedback’ in the engineering sense so lacking in science are they.

        Also heat pumps may give twice or perhaps three times as much heat as energy input but electricity cost three times as much as gas anyway. They are very expensive to buy and maintain too, slow to heat a cold building (so often has to be kept on), need larger radiators and much of the energy is wasted at the power station or in transmission and voltage conversion.

        1. Lifelogic
          November 15, 2020

          Air source ones (especially) are rather noisy too. Plus the issue of the refrigerants used. Plus when you get a power cut you have no heating at all.

          1. dixie
            November 16, 2020

            It may come as a bit of surprise but in a power cut you get no heating from a gas boiler either – the pumps need power.

          2. Lifelogic
            November 17, 2020

            I have a back up battery system for the gas heating & heating pump and a gas fire too in one room. Plus a gas cooker and oven.

      2. anon
        November 15, 2020

        Does your fridge, freezer work below 5c?

        The efficiency may reduce ie the multiplier effect “free heat”. The efficiency cant drop below 1 as that’s the input electrical source from the grid. Supplemental heat source may be available for those periods as well.
        Heat pumps make sense and if climate warming change is believed being below 5 c will be less common.

        Nothing wrong with gas boiler in a colder latitude or those that prefer extra heat in a well insulated abode. Probably less a good idea in a dense urban flat/block complex, where safety regulations etc are pushing gas out.

        As the cost of electricity falls to the marginal cost of “fuel” gas,coal will eventually become uncompetitive.
        Nuclear is just uncompetitive but may have its place to reduce dependence on gas & energy imports. Unless “WTO Brexit” UK state owned will never be anything but high politics involving the EU.

        Remember a number of suggestions emanating from both the EU & the US are intimating potential interuptions to supplies and slow progress on any trade issues.

        With an agressive EU and a potentially anti UK US administration. We need to adjust and use the WTO clean break freedoms to mitigate any issues like that. So they just are able to be misused by anti-democratic force of the left.

        1. anon
          November 15, 2020

          not able

      3. NickC
        November 16, 2020

        Ian Wragg, Exactly so. Air source heat pumps are so poor that in the winter you might as well just use the electricity straight to your electric fire. Ground source heat pumps, properly installed, are better and can give about 4KW heat for every 1KW of electricity, but again electricity is about four times the cost of gas. And not enough electricity anyway.

        Then there’s the battery electric cars with no fuel either. Then the lunacy of non-dispatchable windmills. Then the lockdown when the “cases” and deaths were already showing signs of reductions.

        Frankly this Conservative government is such an embarrassment in all its main policies that I’m not surprised Boris has gone into hiding.

    3. DavidJ
      November 15, 2020

      Indeed LL but will his chief advisor, the unelected Carrie Symonds, allow him to implement any common sense policy?

      1. NickC
        November 16, 2020

        No, but she’s got nice teeth.

    4. James Bertram
      November 15, 2020

      ‘Find people who think like this.’ : They are to be found in the Reform Party. In the past 11 days, 3,000 people have applied to be candidates.
      You will not find them in the Conservative Parliamentary Party.

    5. turboterrier
      November 15, 2020

      L L
      Allegra Stratton sounds like a green leftie? You had beĂŸer believe it.

    6. Julian Flood
      November 16, 2020

      Is it really true that Ms Stratton was reduced to tears by… what, people being nasty? And this is someone who is trusted y the government? Good grief.

      JF

  3. Lifelogic
    November 15, 2020

    Hannan in the Sunday Telegraph is sound today.

    “Tax rises will kill off any chance of a recovery – but almost no one is prepared to say so.”

    Studies seem to suggest the Laffer rate for CGT is about 10% in the UK we already have up to 28% and without even any indexation! Putting it up further would be economic lunacy Sunak. Sensible countries have no CGT or Inheritance Taxes.

    1. Martin in Cardiff
      November 15, 2020

      Laffer’s theorem does not support the silly claims made which rely on it.

      The turnover points are way, way higher, and this has been widely shown now.

      1. Martin in Cardiff
        November 15, 2020

        In any case they vary enormously from country to country.

        In France and Scandinavia say, with high civic consciousness, and where citizenship carries substantial quality entitlements, the points are utterly different from backward, regressive places like the US.

        1. Narrow Shoulders
          November 15, 2020

          France – Hollande’s experience would suggest your claims are incorrect.

          Scandinavia – it has been shown that communities are prepared to support “people like them” and pay higher taxes to ensure that “people like them” thrive alongside them. This was the case in Scandinavia for generations as a homogenous population looked after each other.

          Diversity within the population dilutes this desire, Sweden with its large immigrant population now finds satisfaction with public services and taxation at an all time low. Similar trends are seen in other Scandinavian countries whose ethnicity is changing.

          The UK and America are already well down the diversity path and so desire to be taxed to pay for other communities is lower.

        2. Edward2
          November 15, 2020

          Tell that to the tens of thousands of wealthy French people who left and came to England to avoid the very high taxes.
          Many Scandinavians too.
          PS
          When the rate of CGT went up to 28% the revenues fell.
          Experts, like you, predicted a big rise.

        3. a-tracy
          November 15, 2020

          So Martin, if this is true, why aren’t the refugees content to stay in France if life their is sooo superior? Why aren’t they all working their way up to Scandinavia the land of milk and honey. I suppose you support the French shoot to kill policy with their terrorists. Don’t you read the UN reports about France letting down their immigrants and people in squats and tents without facilities. You tell us they have a high civic consciousness – so why are there so many protests, so many cars set on fire, so many strikes?

        4. acorn
          November 15, 2020

          Even Laffer gave up on his “curve”. There is no government that uses Laffer to maximize tax income. To try and do so would demonstrate a total lack of understanding of what taxation is meant to achieve in a fiat currency economy.

          What would the Laffer tax rate be on cigarettes for instance, currently 400% of the pre-tax price?

          1. Lifelogic
            November 15, 2020

            I do not know the rate for cigarettes but clearly there is one. The higher the taxes the more smuggling and black market you get and the fewer cigarettes people choose (or can afford) to buy.

            At some point increasing it further will raise less revenue not more.

          2. Edward2
            November 15, 2020

            There is a deliberate policy to stop people smoking by placing extremely high rates of tax on packets of cigarettes.

            If that wasn’t the policy, governments would reduce the rate of taxation to increase revenues.

          3. Lynn Atkinson
            November 15, 2020

            The fact that no government uses Laffer rather confirms its accuracy. It’s the govt’s out of alignment, not the curve.

        5. Stred
          November 17, 2020

          Sweden has zero CGT and France has zero after 30 years reducing through indexation. UK has already the highest CGT taking inflation into account.

      2. Lynn Atkinson
        November 15, 2020

        ‘Now’ is when we are in a stamp duty (CGT on home residences), that’s why there is greater turnover.

        1. Lynn Atkinson
          November 15, 2020

          Oops, left out ‘holiday’

    2. Nigel
      November 15, 2020

      +1 to that.

    3. No Longer Anonymous
      November 15, 2020

      High taxes with nothing to show for it is the future, Lifelogic.

  4. steve
    November 15, 2020

    JR

    “The Prime Minister needs to appoint those advisers who he thinks best meet his needs”

    ============

    Assuming he needs advisers, because he can’t think for himself ?…..then how about advisers who best meet the needs of the majority who voted to leave the EU ?

    We don’t trust Boris Johnson, and certainly wouldn’t trust any advisers meeting his needs and not ours.

    It is obvious Boris Johnson seeks to have a team around him who can best advise on how to dress up BRINO whilst getting away with their lives.

    Get rid of Boris Johnson, now.

    Give us SJR, IDS or JRM right now, or be sure we will annihilate the conservative party.

    1. SM
      November 15, 2020

      I’m not a fan of BJ, but you are being somewhat naive, Steve.

      No modern prime minister manages without advisers, and I wouldn’t expect any PM to manage alone while dealing with Brexit and the pandemic on top of the normal exigencies of running a country.

      Could BJ have put together a Cabinet that would be managing the health and economic crisis far more efficaciously? Yes, in my opinion and probably yours, particularly if our host had been involved at the top level, but my advice would be: don’t hold your breath.

      1. steve
        November 15, 2020

        SM

        ‘WE’ are the PM’s advisers…..we elected him to do as we say.

        1. glen cullen
          November 15, 2020

          +1

    2. Old Salt
      November 15, 2020

      Steve
      +1

    3. Lynn Atkinson
      November 15, 2020

      None of those! Only JR will do!

      1. steve
        November 15, 2020

        Lynn

        I have known John Redwood on an electoral level for decades, he was my MP before I moved and I can confirm he is a gentleman of very high honour – therein lies my reason for not placing him as N0 1 contender.

        We need a fighter, and someone cunning as a fox yet ferocious as a lion when it comes to dealing with enemies like ungrateful Macron and his EU. Those are not necessarily gentlemanly attributes.

        There is too much at stake right now to be talking nicely to the french and the EU.

        That said, I would not rush to dismiss Sir Redwood as a potential PM. He has his head screwed on, knows what he is talking about, is very highly qualified and importantly he is not a liar…..politicians of his calibre are an extremely rare breed these days.

        I think he would make an excellent PM, but at the moment we need one capable of absolutely terrifying Macron and the EU, someone whom Macron will perceive as an evil b*****d and be scared of going anywhere near, then we will know we’ve got the right man in N0 10.

        Currently, Macron and the rest of the EU see Boris Johnson as a complete wuss, just as his electorate do.

        1. Lynn Atkinson
          November 15, 2020

          JR is a very gentlemanly fighter. No fisticuffs crying and screaming. But he wins, can’t be fooled, is decisive, I know from his record as Welsh Secretary, when he was very much less experienced than he is now. He’s battle hardened.
          Mrs T did not yell and scream either. JR will be better than Mrs T.

    4. glen cullen
      November 15, 2020

      Wise words Steve

    5. The Prangwizard
      November 15, 2020

      Sir John’s comment which you quote is complete double-talk or fence sitting.

  5. Stred
    November 15, 2020

    He already has advisors who meet his needs. They’re called Symonds and Stratton. If he needs any more he will probably advertise in the Guardian.

    As regards the wrecked economy, could someone tell him that the PCR testimg is picking up a very large proportion of false positives and most of the deaths are caused by lack of treatment for other diseases because of the closing of hospitals for five months and not isolating covid patients properly.

    1. Ian Wragg
      November 15, 2020

      Well said. We now have a green looney at the heart of government who is probably a remainer.
      Any backsliding on the exit from the EU and your party will be toast.
      Farage already has over 3000 people willing to stand for election.
      Beware

      1. Sea_Warrior
        November 15, 2020

        3001!

        1. Dennis
          November 15, 2020

          How many of those picked to stand will stand down just before the next election?

          1. Mark B
            November 15, 2020

            None ! He will probably do the same as he did last time and save them the bother.

      2. Simeon
        November 15, 2020

        There was never any backsliding as such. The Conservative leadership have consistently lied about their true intentions. But at least this consistency has allowed us to perceive their true intentions.

        1. glen cullen
          November 15, 2020

          We didn’t want to believe it – just the idea of our government working against the wishes of the voters doesn’t seem british….its what you hear about the 3rd world politics

          1. Simeon
            November 15, 2020

            The truth is often brutal, which is I am sure why most people close their eyes to it. British decency, at least at the highest levels of our society is an anachronism, and has been for many years and even decades.

            (I’m familiar with your posts and understand you’ve seen the light of their lies.)

      3. Leslie Singleton
        November 15, 2020

        Dear Ian–All in favour of a new team in No. 10 but I, once an avid early supporter (letter in Telegraph to prove it), now very much think the less of Boris for not having the wit to have brought Nigel (Should be Sir Nigel) in to it. Cannot begin to understand what he is doing allowing it to be so widely known with no attempt at contradiction that his girl friend has any influence whatsoever. Should not be allowed.

        1. Leslie Singleton
          November 15, 2020

          PS–So far from that, I now see the headlines say that said girlfriend is being actively defended by those who should know better. And the new Press Secretary (ever so American a thing) spent the morning crying. Great, just great.

        2. Nigel
          November 15, 2020

          If he can’t live with Farage, then bring in Daniel Hannan. His article in today’s Torygraph is spot on.

          1. Lynn Atkinson
            November 15, 2020

            Hannon also very weak. He thinks he is a South American! I have known him a long time. Has not got the wherewithal according to Norris McWhirter.

      4. Mary M.
        November 15, 2020

        Anyone still keen to remain in the EU needs to explain why the mink farms for the Chinese market have been allowed to continue in Denmark, years after the trade in mink fur was discontinued here.

        Moreover, have any remainers ever asked themselves why bacon from Denmark is cheaper than that from pigs reared in the UK?

        1. Sea_Warrior
          November 15, 2020

          Or how much Danish fishermen will be paying for our sand-eels.

        2. Andy
          November 15, 2020

          Turns out that Denmark is a sovereign country. Ask them.

          (Who knew EU members were sovereign? Me for a start).

          1. Lynn Atkinson
            November 15, 2020

            😂😂Denmark does not exist! Fur is not banned in the EU! Did you not know that? My cousin has a Danish mink farm. Anyone been to Italy in the winter – did you see any woman in polyesterđŸ˜±?
            Danish pigs are farmed in a way that turns your stomach. No space at all. Our pigs roam = more expensive. FYI We developed and bred the low fat pigs farmed in Denmark.

          2. Edward2
            November 15, 2020

            Sovereign in the sense that the EU courts have supremacy over them?

          3. John C.
            November 15, 2020

            The EU is doing its best to stamp out sovereignty. That is its aim.

        3. Fedupsoutherner
          November 15, 2020

          Mary good points. I raised this very issue with my MP but didn’t get an answer.

        4. A.Sedgwick
          November 15, 2020

          Quite so, many who are Remainers, environmentalists and Greens conveniently forget the cruelty to animals the EU turns a blind eye to and prevents us from banning their torture and disgusting demise.

        5. Lifelogic
          November 15, 2020

          Their bacon seems to be mainly water rather than bacon I find. I avoid it.

          1. Lynn Atkinson
            November 15, 2020

            They inject the saline water into the carcass rather than submerge it (quicker) on the pack it states how much water has been injected, look for it. However the EU allows I think 15% by weight to be injected before having to declare any water injection, so if your pack says 10% it’s actually 25% injected salt water – that is the nasty white stuff that seeps out when you fry the bacon.
            Great food standards the EU, and animal husbandry! The only abattoir I ever had to walk out of was in France.

        6. Dennis
          November 15, 2020

          Cheaper in Denmark – perhaps they put even more water/liquid into their bacon than UK farmers do.
          I need at least 10 large size kitchen roll sheets to soak up the water from 8 rashers and then leave them unwrapped in the fridge for a few days to dry out more. Yes I know that’s supermkt stuff and butcher’s bacon is less watery.

          I don’t remember any of this crap in the 1940/50s.

          1. Ian Wragg
            November 15, 2020

            I buy Wiltshire from ASDA. Excellent.

      5. Martin in Cardiff
        November 15, 2020

        Three thousand?

        I didn’t even know that there were quite that many illegal dog breeders.

        Something must be done.

        1. Fred H
          November 15, 2020

          your comments have always been blinkered but increasingly frantic. You need to calm down, stress is bad news for the elderly.

        2. No Longer Anonymous
          November 15, 2020

          Alas you thought lowly of the working class before UKIP and before Brexit… which is why you got UKIP/TBP and Brexit.

          It’s a visceral hatred of us and we felt it.

          1. DavidJ
            November 15, 2020

            +1

        3. Martin in Cardiff
          November 15, 2020

          I’m working class.

          Just not a cigarette-end chucking, aggressive dog-owning, ukip-voting, education-rejecting example of it.

          1. No Longer Anonymous
            November 15, 2020

            17.5 million aggressive dog-owning, ukip-voting, education-rejecting examples then.

            Oooo-kay.

          2. Fred H
            November 15, 2020

            I think we all realised you aren’t our normal ‘meet you in the pub’ sort of chap. Letters to the Guardian, maybe?

          3. NickC
            November 16, 2020

            Martin, You need a word with your mate Andy. He thinks there were 17.4 million angry Tory pensioners; you think there were 17.4 million working class, cigarette-end chucking, aggressive dog-owning, education-rejecting, UKIP voters.

        4. Fred H
          November 15, 2020

          Doesn’t this count as abuse?

          1. Martin in Cardiff
            November 15, 2020

            “Jo Brand not funny, Mark Steele not funny, Jonathan Pie not funny, News Quiz not funny, Stewart Lee not funny, Andy Hamilton not funny, Russell Brand not funny, Frankie Boyle not funny, Sue Perkins not funny, Eddie Izzard not funny, Ricky Gervais not funny, Steve Coogan not funny, Now Show not funny, HIGNFY not funny, Stephen Fry not funny, Sandy Toksvig not funny, Arthur Smith not funny, Steve Bell not funny, Private Eye not funny, DaiIy Mash not funny, comments here not funny – European Union will never take away English Sense of Humour”, boasts Fred

          2. Edward2
            November 15, 2020

            Calm Martin.
            Soon the American election and Brexit will be resolved.
            Life goes on.

          3. Narrow Shoulders
            November 15, 2020

            Apart from Jonathan Pie and Ricky Gervais I think you could certainly add “as” in front of funny in your each of your musings Marty.

            They all pull their punches these days for fear of “identity”. Before they didn’t and they were great comedian(ne)s. I used to watch Jo Brand at the Red Rose club in Islington, even joining the Labour party in order to get in as she and Mark Lamarr were so cuttingly funny.

            Mark Lamarr refused to tone it down and is no longer seen but he was fearsomely funny on his day.

          4. Lynn Atkinson
            November 15, 2020

            Martin they are NOT funny. Our British sense of humour tells us so.

          5. Mike Durrans
            November 15, 2020

            Poor Martin! however he confirms what I always suspected, the Welsh have no sense of humour

          6. dixie
            November 16, 2020

            @Mike Durrans, MiC is not Welsh, he has explained in a couple of previous blogs that he is in Cardiff but not of Cardiff nor of Wales.

            The Welsh do have a sense of humour, perhaps MiC is so grouchy because they don’t take him at all seriously.

      6. Andy
        November 15, 2020

        Farage had 650 willing to stand last time. He took money from them – and from party members – and then backed Boris ‘2nd worst deal in history’ instead.

        Farage’s party won 2% of the vote, no seats – and we still don’t know where the money went. But we can probably guess.

        In the past he’s lost an election to a dolphin. Whilst he has a small band of devoted supporter most recognise Farage for what he truly is.

        1. NickC
          November 16, 2020

          Andy, Most people on here recognise Andy for what he truly is.

      7. Paul Cuthbertson
        November 15, 2020

        Ian Wragg – I agree but the People are very fickle. They have voted Conservative they have voted Labour and they have been decieved by both. They have NOTHINg to lose by voting for the Brexit/Reform party of Farage but they will not. They listen to the MSM and remain with the
        status quo. Another point is that the UK Establishment are afraid of Nigel Farage and will ensure he is never voted in.
        My MP is Carolyn Lucas so what chance do I have???

        1. Lynn Atkinson
          November 15, 2020

          The people can see that more UKIP MEPs have the whip withdrawn within weeks than happen in a decade in other parties. You need to accept that Farage can’t even select candidates.

        2. rose
          November 15, 2020

          Farage put me off when he was on LBC and casting about for anything and everything to throw at the PM for the sake of it. Before that I thought him a gentleman and very principled and patriotic. Now I don’t.

    2. Lifelogic
      November 15, 2020

      Indeed and excess deaths are slightly higher than the 5 year average but still within the normal range.

    3. BeebTax
      November 15, 2020

      Agree. It looks blindingly obvious what is going wrong from the outside.

      Perhaps we need a rule that Ministers must always have a mixture of advisers, including some who disagree with each other and with the Minister (even if it means some of those advisers are batmuck crazy). Currently they just seem to seek groupthink from within the ministerial bubble, to cover their backsides.

    4. Old Salt
      November 15, 2020

      Stred
      Whatever happened to the old isolation hospitals? Sold off for housing no doubt. With so many catching CV19 in hospital causing many to be reluctant to go in for treatment, is it not time to bring them back or at least have separate dedicated wings?

      1. Paul Cuthbertson
        November 15, 2020

        Care in the Community was the slogan. Unfortunately the Community does not Care.

    5. MartinB
      November 15, 2020

      Hear hear!

    6. czerwonadupa
      November 15, 2020

      ….. his strategic vision of our country and our future…..
      Johnson’s strategy & vision has always been & always will be what’s best for him & damn the rest. He’s shown in 2020 he’s not even qualified to clean let alone step into the shoes of his hero Churchill. As can be seen by his personal affairs he is also permanently incontinent in his political life.

      1. rose
        November 15, 2020

        Has he ever said Churchill is his hero? How do we know it isn’t Disraeli? Far too many people pretending they can read his mind.

    7. Lynn Atkinson
      November 15, 2020

      ‘He already has advisors who meet his needs.’
      We were thinking of his political needs really.

  6. matthu
    November 15, 2020

    Has parliament had any open debate about The Great Reset and what it means for property ownership (or lack thereof) and democracy (or lack thereof)?

    1. Sharon
      November 15, 2020

      “He needs help to build more bridges with Ministers and backbench MPs and to shape the resources and powers of government for a distinctive and positive approach to the future.“

      I said as much to Boris in a recent letter to him.

      Reading a couple of Con Home articles yesterday, it occurred to me just how many right wing platforms there are with people discussing lots of political topics. My point is that previous and current governments have gone their own sweet way introducing quietly, all manner of leftist socialist ideals.

      The global alarm seeks to replace the infrastructure with inefficient, costly to install and costly to run substitutes. These apparently ‘green’ replacements are at best no better than their counterparts and st worst, far more harmful to the environment.
      As I’ve said before, when leading experts in their field are discredited or sacked or refused publication of their research – which has been happening – it’s certain to be a scam!

      And it would seem Carrie is very much a greenie, so now Boris’ admin is going down this route.

      NONE of this has been voted in by the electorate – is just quietly being implemented! It had to stop and at least be discussed! There needs to be honest and accurate information given not just the ‘settled science’ version!

      1. Narrow Shoulders
        November 15, 2020

        I support a new people’s vote – on climate alarmism. No better poll than one voters have to put an X.

        The questions could be Do you wish to pursue policies which make the UK Carbon neutral by 2050? Yes or No

        The No side can argue that carbon neutral is a false god, the UK contributes not very much on a grand scale, this will affect your standard of living.

        The result will put the crusties back in their box, or not, but at least we will know.

        1. Mike Wilson
          November 15, 2020

          You would lose that poll. 70% or more would vote to be carbon neutral by 2050. I think you’d even find a majority would vote to be carbon neutral by 2030. The brainwashing has been effective.

          1. Lynn Atkinson
            November 15, 2020

            How many have voted with their feet and scrapped their cars? If you are intent on ‘saving the planet’ why wait another month? Maybe Prince Charles can give us a lead and close all the palaces and live in his Welsh cottage, big enough for the 2 of them.

          2. Narrow Shoulders
            November 15, 2020

            Then at least there would be a mandate for it.

            At present there is no argument against. I should like the opportunity to have the debate.

        2. dixie
          November 16, 2020

          “UK Carbon neutral by 2050” was the fifth of Boris’s six guarantees in his 2019 GE manifesto. He could argue he has already asked and got a large mandate.

      2. hat man
        November 15, 2020

        Johnson bid for Conservative Party leadership with a reputation already for incompetence (‘garden bridge’, water cannons), lack of integrity and downright lying unequalled by any previous PM. Those in the party now kicking themselves for having voted for him should keep doing it, long, hard and well-aimed.

        1. Dennis
          November 15, 2020

          hat man – I agree with that.

          1. rose
            November 15, 2020

            I don’t agree about the garden bridge or the water cannon. Let us hope we can get by without the latter.

        2. Lynn Atkinson
          November 15, 2020

          The Remain May Parliament presented the members with Hobson’s Choice!

      3. glen cullen
        November 15, 2020

        This government isn’t in coalition with new labour and the green party – IT IS labour and the green party following all their policies

        Does Carrie seat in the cabinet

      4. Stred
        November 15, 2020

        For God’s sake don’t suggest building any more bridges. He’ll be trying to build one across the Channel, Irish Sea and Atlantic next.

  7. Mark B
    November 15, 2020

    Good morning.

    I found our kind hosts second paragraph very telling, especially the line that says :

    He needs help to build more bridges with Ministers and backbench MPs . . .

    It really supports what I and others have been thinking and saying:

    http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2020/11/09/when-the-evidence-changes-the-policy-should-change/#comment-1175915

    I do not hold out much hope. This is a one term PM, assuming he lasts the full term, and it will finally put an end the Tory Party. They have betrayed those that regularly support them, and they have betrayed those who recently lent them their votes.

    I think it is a fair prediction that the next GE, should we actually be allowed to have one, will result in the lowest turnout in our history.

    1. Fedupsoutherner
      November 15, 2020

      The Tories will never get support from the North again if they screw a real Brexit up. Do not sell out our fishermen. Create jobs in the north from fracking

      1. Julian Flood
        November 15, 2020

        +1

      2. Martin in Cardiff
        November 15, 2020

        By the same measure, how does one “screw up” a train wreck, of slurry tankers, on a line running through a historic little tourist town?

        1. NickC
          November 16, 2020

          What on earth are talking about, Martin? Again.

          1. Fred H
            November 16, 2020

            pass – – but it bothers him!

      3. Lifelogic
        November 15, 2020

        Exactly, but they are clearly going to cave in very soon.

    2. Alan Jutson
      November 15, 2020

      Mark B

      Indeed he has over 350 MP’s is that not enough people to ask for advice.

      I appreciate sometimes you need to harvest information from “experts” for detail and specialist knowledge on perhaps the odd limited subject, but to rely upon so many outsiders for day- day stuff just means you do not trust your own MP’s, or you have too many with similar minds. In which case they should not have been selected/picked to stand in the first place.

      If 350 Mp’s all from different parts of the Country cannot give Boris and his so called Ministers the right feedback, then either they are incompetent at their job, or he is.

      1. Martin in Cardiff
        November 15, 2020

        He got rid of those with the most experience, knowledge, learning and wisdom.

        Don’t you remember?

        1. Edward2
          November 15, 2020

          I never realised you rated Dominic Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain so highly Martin.

      2. Dennis
        November 15, 2020

        A J – very good point.

      3. Lifelogic
        November 15, 2020

        650 MPs but only about 50 have any grasp of physics, maths, logic, common sense, engineering, energy or real (not magic money tree) economics. Plus many do not care anyway they just want to career and perks or have vested interest “consultancy” incomes.

        1. Paul Cuthbertson
          November 15, 2020

          Life Logic you have hit the nail on the head. I have said this for years.

    3. Christine
      November 15, 2020

      Here’s hoping that both the main political parties alienate the electorate so much that a new party emerges that puts the wishes of the majority of people in this country first. If I were younger I’d be signing up to serve in the Reform party. I’m sick of being conned and lied to by the current batch of useless politicians. There are a handful of talented and trustworthy MPs on the backbenches but the fact that Boris doesn’t give them a place in his cabinet speaks volumes.

    4. Duyfken
      November 15, 2020

      I would have thought he needs to build more bridges with the electorate, or rather those who voted Conservative at the GE. His performance so far has been abysmal. A clear Brexit is the first priority, regardless of Ministers and MPs.

      1. Lynn Atkinson
        November 15, 2020

        +1

  8. Sea_Warrior
    November 15, 2020

    We certainly do not need any more Spads. Advice to the PM should come, individually, from his ministers and, collectively, from the Cabinet. If he needs another layer of advice beyond that then HE is the problem.

    1. Lifelogic
      November 15, 2020

      It seem to me that his fiancée is much of the problem and he is the main problem for taking any notice of her daft lefty views and war on CO2 plant food lunacy.

      Boris was once fairly sound on climate change and climate alarmism.

      1. Lynn Atkinson
        November 15, 2020

        Just depends who ‘sat on him last’.

    2. Lynn Atkinson
      November 15, 2020

      +1 we all know he is the problem.

    3. glen cullen
      November 15, 2020

      We’re always being told that our esteem MPs deserve their huge salaries and expenses because of their level of expertise, knowledge and intellect 
so why so many advisers (civil servants advice ?)

  9. Lifelogic
    November 15, 2020

    Labour are demanding the government to introduce emergency legislation to criminalise and censor distribution anti-vaccination information. Jo Stevens MP said “we cannot let anything undermine the roll out of the Covid 19 Vaccine” 1st item on BBC radio news this am.

    Why not Ms Stevens – it might well be a very dangerous vaccine indeed. Many experts think it will be. It is certainly far from clear that this vaccine will not do far more harm than good as yet Jo. The idea of censoring one side of the argument by using criminal and civil law is absolutely appalling. By the time we know it if it is safe enough to roll out it is likely we will have herd immunity (We nearly have already) plus better treatments anyway – so the vaccine might indeed cause far more harm than good. For the young especially the risks of catching the virus might be far lower than those of taking the vaccine. One has to consider both risks not just one.

    Why are lefty lawyers and the likes often so totally lacking in reason, balance and logic, so very foolish and very potentially very dangerous indeed?

    1. RichardP
      November 15, 2020

      +1
      The Orwellian State draws closer everyday.

      1. DavidJ
        November 15, 2020

        I have long wondered if “1984” and “Brave New World” were being used as manuals for government. We should consider if they were intended as a warning of plans already made but not openly declared.

    2. James Bertram
      November 15, 2020

      Yes, absolutely shocking Stalinist attitude.
      Time to kick these people out for good.

    3. Stred
      November 15, 2020

      The American vaccine has to be stored at minus 80C.
      Where are the thousands of vaccination centres going to find the special freezers?

      My Mrs is high up in the medical trade and tells me that we already have DNA with bits of RNA from viruses in the sequence. The American vaccine uses RNA and is produced using shark organs. Normally a new vaccine would be introduced slowly over years in order to check that there are no unforseen consequences. Labour would have this information banned and the writer punished.

    4. rose
      November 15, 2020

      Funnily enough, the Queen of the Authoritarian Left blew on the vaccine during her “debate” with the Vice President of America. She said she wouldn’t take it while the President was still there or some such illogicality. Pence ticked her off for discrediting the vaccine and she repeated her position. Another left wing authoritarian, the Governor of New York did the same thing, subjecting public health to his private bigotry. You can guarantee they won’t be punished.

  10. Fedupsoutherner
    November 15, 2020

    Please put yourself forward. Without a common sense change and a swift exit from talks with the EU we are dead. The future with Boris looks bleak and the green junk will sink us. Come on Farage. In fact he would be a great advisor.

    1. BeebTax
      November 15, 2020

      +1

    2. turboterrier
      November 15, 2020

      F U S
      At least Farage seems to be closer to what the critical mass of this country want and expect. I do not think he would take the position even if offered. People are talking about Symonds and Stratton as a behind the scenes double act , they should be kicked into the long grass before the PM moves another step. How about Redwood and Farage? At least that way there would be crossings of all the divides and plenty of thinking outside the box. They would be a perfect foil for one another. At least they have genuine concerns about this country and its future and relate to the public.

    3. J Bush
      November 15, 2020

      Sadly, our host would be unsuccessful. He applies far too much common sense. And Symonds would never allow anyone to interfere with her control and her green lunacy.

      1. Lifelogic
        November 15, 2020

        The silly Tory MPs even preferred Major to JR by 2 to 1. Thus predictably destroying the party for three + terms.

        1. Lynn Atkinson
          November 15, 2020

          +1

    4. Lynn Atkinson
      November 15, 2020

      Farage has no idea! He said Trump was ‘dangerous’ and that the ‘U.K. should take its share of Syrians’. Off the Brexit words we taught him he’s hopeless. Utterly. You people will push the U.K. into the fire if you persist.

      1. Old Salt
        November 15, 2020

        Lynn
        I think he said Christian Syrians.

        1. Stred
          November 17, 2020

          Correct. And.we hardly took any Christians.

  11. oldtimer
    November 15, 2020

    The Johnson government is like a dead man walking. I did not vote for the Symonds-Stratton axis to be running government policy. Their Green agenda will ruin the nation, cause immense job losses and push more and more families into poverty. The sooner the Conservative party passes a vote of no confidence in him the better. They had better have a replacement ready who is hard headed in the ways of the world, actually understands how the economy works and is not swayed by false, arrogant promises that they can control the climate.

    1. Julian Flood
      November 15, 2020

      Clearly expressed common sense. So HMG will ignore it.

      JF

    2. Fedupsoutherner
      November 15, 2020

      They obviously think there is room for more than one God.

    3. Lifelogic
      November 15, 2020

      +1

  12. George Brooks.
    November 15, 2020

    Your 3 main priorities are absolutely right Sir John, with a clean exit from the EU being right on top. There will not be a deal until Barnier et al understand we are leaving completely on December 31

    I think we are beginning to know enough about this virus for our scientists and ministers to plot a clear path towards living with it and creating every opportunity for our economy to recover.

    Last night on Sky news a reporter was interviewing a couple in the Trump demo’ on the streets in Washington and one had a placard that said it all.

    ” THE MEDIA IS THE VIRUS ”

    And as an example, the media has been slamming the government on ‘test & trace’ for months but now it is beginning to work as planned and finding more and more positive cases every day, they are trying alarm us that everything is getting worse. They are a bunch of scare mongers that contribute little towards the common aim.

    1. No Longer Anonymous
      November 15, 2020

      Indeed. An Amish leader was asked why his community didn’t have the virus and he responded “Because we don’t have computers nor TV.”

      1. Martin in Cardiff
        November 15, 2020

        But they do have the virus.

        1. No Longer Anonymous
          November 15, 2020

          Who was it banging on about lack of sense of humour a few posts ago ?

          And no. The programmes and ‘comedians’ you listed aren’t funny. They’re safe, uninventive, predictable and boring. Whatever will they do without Trump ?

        2. Fred H
          November 16, 2020

          Do they feel strongly about education, enjoy their pubs and breed savage dogs then?

      2. glen cullen
        November 15, 2020

        +1

      3. Mike Wilson
        November 15, 2020

        Nothing to do with living in an almost closed community then.

        1. No Longer Anonymous
          November 15, 2020

          Nor eschewing fast food and gluttony.

  13. Simeon
    November 15, 2020

    Sir John,

    The first priority is not Brexit. As important as it was, and, in principle at least, still is, it has been supplanted by the response to the virus. It is disturbing that you don’t see this.

    To address other of your points…

    There isn’t plenty of talent in your party.

    Your para on Brexit is unflatteringly revealing. You implicitly accept that there has already been slippage, but then you claim the UK is clearly resolved to ‘just leave’. Nonsense! No one with a functioning brain believes the UK government has any intention of just leaving, never mind the EU, and the slippage is just one piece of evidence of this.

    I’m disturbed by you saying that a return to ‘normal life’ is contingent on further medical breakthroughs. Very unsound! No medical breakthrough is needed! The NHS needs to return to normal operations so that those suffering from ailments other than ‘the virus’ get the treatment they need. And obviously, the government needs to withdraw all virus-related interference in people’s lives. Individuals can judge and manage their own risk. It is this simple.

    All the good stuff you mention at the end is most likely to happen if government gets out of the way. ‘Promoting’ these things sounds suspiciously like government interference…

    I say all this for the benefit of those who would be keen on you rising to a position of power and influence, as if this were a panacea for our ailments. By your own sayings this is evidently not so. But of course this isn’t going to happen because, to give you some credit, you are not up to your neck in nonsense policies to the same degree as those around the PM – and I don’t just mean Symonds, but the likes of Sunak and the rest of the cabinet lackeys.

    Finally, I think we can be confident that Blowers will certainly turn to people that best suit his needs. It’s just that his needs are not aligned with the national interest. One might think this were grounds to depose him, but apparently Conservative MPs generally have no regard for the national interest, but only for the Party’s, because this aligns with their own.

    1. Simeon
      November 15, 2020

      As ever, whatever your own views, credit to you for allowing others.

    2. JoolsB
      November 15, 2020

      +1. Spot on Simeon.

    3. turboterrier
      November 15, 2020

      Simeon
      No talent in your party?

      About 95% correct.

    4. Fedupsoutherner
      November 15, 2020

      Great post Simeon. Nothing has or is being done for the good of the nation. It all just benefits those with a woke agenda and many with noses in the troughs of subsidies.

    5. Lynn Atkinson
      November 15, 2020

      Without Brexit we have no control, and nothing can be addressed.

      1. Simeon
        November 15, 2020

        I do agree that without the sovereignty that independence from the EU allows there are clear limits on what can be achieved. However, Brexit was settled at the last election, when the people voted for a Tory Brexit. That isn’t to say that it couldn’t be settled in a different way by a new government given a democratic mandate to reverse the virus response – but it is this latter issue on which a party would have to campaign.

        1. Lynn Atkinson
          November 15, 2020

          We have to be free of the constraints of the WA that Good Old Boris pushed through the House. Another year in purgatory! We are within week of resolving that major 47 year battle, must not lose now!
          Then we need to upgrade the HOC bigtime!
          No more playing God. Just try to be a good PM. Achieve something, even just 1 thing – squash the slave trade, forget the sombrero!

    6. Jim Whitehead
      November 15, 2020

      +1

    7. James Bertram
      November 15, 2020

      Excellent post, Simeon.

    8. No Longer Anonymous
      November 15, 2020

      Simeon

      Good points

      We were told lockdowns were needed to save the NHS from collapse and to avoid scenes like Lombardy.

      Well.

      Those scenes did happen but were hidden away in care homes.

      The NHS DID collapse. Over 40% of patients have gone untreated for other illnesses and many have died. Two of them my friends who died young on waiting lists for otherwise treatable illnesses.

      I know of no-one (old or otherwise) who has died or been hospitalised for CV-19.

      1. Simeon
        November 15, 2020

        It is always worth being reminded that the statistics are comprised of individual tragedies. I’m sorry for your loss. I wish, first, that an immediate stop would be put to the government’s madness or badness, and second that they would be held to account for their actions. I don’t hold out any hope for either.

    9. Mark B
      November 15, 2020

      +1

    10. Mike Durrans
      November 15, 2020

      +1

  14. Ian@Barkham
    November 15, 2020

    Clean exit – yes. Already 4 years later than promised

    1. glen cullen
      November 15, 2020

      +1 what of democracy

  15. JayGee
    November 15, 2020

    Does Boris Johnson have a “strategic vision of our country and our future”? If so, please share it with the most important people of all – the electorate. The one bridge in need of buildng but missing from your blog today is – the bridge to the electorate, the public, who have been ignored and treated with contempt. Our trust in him, and parliament is fairly important, don’t you think? Or don’t we count? You, the government, MPs all appear to be giving yourselves permission to carry on regardless of public opinion. What arrogance.

  16. jim
    November 15, 2020

    Very nicely written Sir John, but these are nicely written platitudes, of no use to anyone. They lack detail.

    You and your boss seems to have forgotten the maxim ‘Strategy is nothing without tactics’. Perhaps you would remind him and not with platitudes. Tactics require detail and so far attention to detail seems very lacking. Without such detail any talk of strategy is mere froth.

  17. Fedupsoutherner
    November 15, 2020

    And forget all the NGO’s.

  18. margaret howard
    November 15, 2020

    JR

    The phrase to ‘fiddle while Rome burns’ comes to mind.

    1. Lynn Atkinson
      November 15, 2020

      Boris is not fiddling, he’s running around with matches, have you not noticed?

      1. glen cullen
        November 15, 2020

        …and a can of petrol

  19. Bryan Harris
    November 15, 2020

    Cummings promised so much – he seems to have barely started on civil service reform — SO what happened?

    The PM certainly needs better advisors, but what I’m expecting is that he will insist that they are of the same persuasion on the important subjects… To avoid future internal conflicts.

    Boris badly needs someone who can tell him how things really are without the green bias from alleged experts. someone who can open his eyes……

    1. Keith
      November 15, 2020

      What happened is that Biden got elected in America- changed the dynamic

      1. Bryan Harris
        November 15, 2020

        Now that would be depressing – If Boris is supporting Biden then we are in a dire state….

        As for his kitchen cabinet! — (Remember Wilson’s?)
        The mother of Boris’s child has too much power so it seems. Time he reconnected with the electorate and obtained advice from MPs that had been round the block a few times…!

        I dread to think what he will screw up next.

      2. Paul Cuthbertson
        November 15, 2020

        Biden has NOT been elected, but the UK Establishment and many leaders are hoping he is. Should Biden be confirmed as president then it will be curtains for all of us as the staus quo will remain and the Globalist Agenda will continue.
        However, Donald Trump will be inaugurated as the President of the USA and PANIC will ensue in London.

        1. westward
          November 15, 2020

          Another one with his head stuck in the sand- Biden already has more than 300 Collegial votes and is therefore elected and so what? Democrats have been elected to the presidency for more than half the time since the year dot and I don’t see the sky falling. However this time we will see a change to the “America First”policy of Trump- a change to a more benign global friends and hands across the sea pursuit – provided we behave ourselves- it will be like back to the good old days- but in saying that I also recognise populists and would be populist leaders won’t be too happy and are going to have to pull their horns in to allow for decency and thoughtfulness- I even see Boris has taken to wearing masks the last couple of days- time to curry favour I suppose- no more of ‘let them whistl’e stuff I guess even he recognises the shift in the way the wind is blowing-

          1. Bryan Harris
            November 16, 2020

            It will not be over until Trump concedes — and he isn’t going to do that because the votes that allegedly went Biden’s way were stolen from Trump.

            Watch over the next couple of weeks how Trump has been planning to expose the worst crime ever against democracy

        2. Bryan Harris
          November 16, 2020

          That’s an interesting viewpoint Paul – One I can agree with ….

          Trump’s administration will be going after all of the big crooks in the USA, and the rumour is that this will not stop there… So yes, The global elitist establishment should be concerned.

          Boris lending support to Biden is totally unacceptable, but it seems he has shown his true colours?

    2. DavidJ
      November 15, 2020

      +1

  20. agricola
    November 15, 2020

    It would appear from all the reports that are freely flowing around the Cabinet Office that Boris needs to get a grip. The first step needs to be the detachment of his girlfriend from it and I mean absolute detachment. They could both take a lesson from Margaret and Dennis Thatcher. She thrashing the opposition on the field and he at best keeping score well out of sight. It may on the face of it have given him the appearance of insignificance, but I do not buy into his comedic portrayal in the media. He was probably her prop, out of sight.

    When Boris has sorted that one he needs to gather none political, in a career sense, people of talent just like Mr Cummins who can ask the questions that beholden politicians would not. My final comment is that it needs to be done rapidly, before the reality of Brexit is known. Such ruthless decidedness might make the EU sit up and realise they are not dealing with a pushover. House of Cards and a bit of stick come to mind.

    1. Fedupsoutherner
      November 15, 2020

      And stop appointing by gender. Just experience and good common sense is what is needed. Not whether you wear a skirt or trousers.

      1. Mark B
        November 15, 2020

        Agreed. And not by any other metric. ie “We haven’t had an ‘x’ as PM, lets be the first. No ! As Fedupsotherner says, ” . . . experience and good common sense is what is needed.”

  21. ukretired123
    November 15, 2020

    A new or renewed Prime Minister who has backbone and can show leadership to the country and EU by delivering 4years overdue Brexit.
    Advisors are wasted on many recent PMs sadly as they have to fight to get heard it seems.
    Boris really doesn’t need advice it seems just like Theresa May, both rely on their nearest and dearest. Human nature but not professional as in business.

  22. Mike Wilson
    November 15, 2020

    We have a crude and inefficient form of democracy. We elect a party, on a minority vote, to form a government. We have a Parliament and 650 MPs. The leader of the biggest party becomes Prime Minister and appoints Ministers to run each department. But then a couple of people are hired as advisers and their advice seems to run the country. I don’t get it. Democracy? Really?

    1. Mark B
      November 15, 2020

      And on to that the unelected HoL, QUANGO’s and Civil Serpents. We are just adding a thin veneer of democracy to legitimise them.

  23. NorthernManv2
    November 15, 2020

    You would have to be a moron to take a pretty much untested vaccine for a mainly harmless virus.

    The MHRA (the regulatory body for medicines) has recently bought an artificial intelligence-based system to handle the expected high volume of adverse reactions to the virus (all such procurements have to be published). They have never had to do this for any other vaccine before.

    The government has removed any way to prosecute the pharma companies for any adverse effects – why?

    1. beresford
      November 15, 2020

      Indeed, 99 point something percent aren’t affected so why do they need an untested vaccine? If my immune system recognises covid19, why would I want to potentially compromise it? Apparently there is now a pill which prevents serious effects in 70% of those with the virus. Offer vaccination to those at high risk (who are mainly elderly and therefore less worried about long-term effects) and let the rest of us get on with herd immunity. We don’t know if the Pfizer vaccine affects transmission (Jon Ashworth) or how long protection lasts, and we can only guess at future effects. Are we going to vaccinate children?

    2. Caterpillar
      November 15, 2020

      I think we can be confident the Govt will issue a very clear risk-return appraisal as a function of age and underlying health condition. The Govt has, after all, kept us fully informed on CV19’s implied infection fatality ratio as a function of age and underlying health condition. The Govt has kept us fully informed of its cost-benefit appraisal of its response to the epidemic. The transparency of the Govt’s data and rigour of decision making have been remarkable.

      1. Mike Durrans
        November 15, 2020

        Is this a joke

        Minus 1

        1. Caterpillar
          November 16, 2020

          Yes.

    3. RichardP
      November 15, 2020

      +1
      Strange they didn’t mention the need for this monitoring system when reassuring us about the vaccine’s safety!

    4. Sea_Warrior
      November 15, 2020

      I was very interested in the Five Live Science report this morning. The Pfizer vaccine is unique, in how it tackles the problem. That’s another reason for me not to get an early shot.

      1. Lynn Atkinson
        November 15, 2020

        +1

      2. Caterpillar
        November 15, 2020

        Sea_Warrior,

        To be fair, President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed chose 2 vaccines in each of four platforms, with results progressing quickly across 3 of the platforms.

        This means as well as the Pfizer vaccine using the mRNA platform, the Moderna vaccine does as well.

        (The AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine uses the replication defective live-vector platform.)

        There is a short paper by Slaoui and Hepburn published at end of October ‘Developing Safe and Effective Covid Vaccines – Operation Warp Speed’s Strategy and Approach’

        But, no matter how impressive this is … and it is incredibly impressive … I still want to see comparable data on risk-return compared to the disease itself as function of age. The companies are doing a great job on the vaccinations, but the UK Govt. is not providing reliable data on the disease itself for comparison.

      3. Fred H
        November 15, 2020

        I shouldn’t worry – it will be so cold it will be frozen in the container or needle!

  24. formula57
    November 15, 2020

    So he is not the people’s Blue Boris any more? Oh dear! – for it was that that made all the difference.

    1. glen cullen
      November 15, 2020

      Only 12 moths ago ”You may only have lent us your vote, you may not see yourself as a natural Tory”

  25. Alan Jutson
    November 15, 2020

    I remember well your Political referral about Traffic lights, and Roundabouts JR.

    Describing Traffic lights for Labour as stop go total control, and Roundabouts for Conservatives where more freedom is allowed to move forward.

    Unfortunately we now have traffic lights on too many roundabouts, and “GREEN” means further controls with inevitable slow down and more costly movement, and not always forwards.

    1. SM
      November 15, 2020

      To continue your metaphor, it appears that the idea is to install yet more Magic Roundabouts, like those in Swindon and Hemel Hempstead, which delight the chaps in white coats, but which are deeply confusing for the ordinary motorist who has to use the darn things!

      1. glen cullen
        November 15, 2020

        Don’t forget the empty cycle lanes popping up everywhere

        1. Fred H
          November 16, 2020

          not quite right. On our usual game of spot the cyclist when driving from Winnersh towards Shinfield, we recently saw one. But outnumbered 3 to 1 – joggers to cyclists. Still, when the gyms are shut….

      2. Mike Wilson
        November 15, 2020

        The one in Hemel Hempstead, which has been there for donkey’s years, is very easy to use if you were one of those people that deserved to pass their driving test. Unfortunately, one often observes drivers who, clearly, must have bribed the examiner to pass.

  26. Richard1
    November 15, 2020

    Trade deal or no deal with the EU the main question at the next election will be has Brexit been a success? The main criterion for deciding in the mind of the public will be has the U.K. clearly outperformed the eurozone. The answer needs to be yes. If it’s a clear no Starmer may well stand on a platform of Rejoin. So no time to waste on fatuous virtue signalling policies. There needs to be a relentless focus on competitiveness and the promotion of entrepreneurship, innovation and investment. Starting in January.

    1. Julian Flood
      November 15, 2020

      And cheap reliable energy.

      JF

    2. Will in Hampshire
      November 15, 2020

      I expect that you’re going to be disappointed Richard. As far as I can tell, Mr Sunak is preparing for a wide-ranging set of tax increases including a new “work from home” tax and substantial increases in the tax levied on the sale of assets.

      1. Lifelogic
        November 15, 2020

        Indeed and it will kill the tax base, destroy jobs, deter investment and lower tax revenues. Shooting the economy in the foot. Taxes are far too high already.

      2. Richard1
        November 15, 2020

        That certainly will be a disappointment. And a bad error.

    3. oldwulf
      November 15, 2020

      @Richard1.

      “Trade deal or no deal with the EU the main question at the next election will be has Brexit been a success?”

      It may be the remainers would prefer the UK to leave the EU on WTO terms. That way, if the UK underperforms the EU in future, the leavers will be unable to blame it on a lingering connection with the EU ?

      1. Richard1
        November 15, 2020

        Yes could be. I think we all need to see whether Brexit can be made a success. So we need a clean Brexit, FTA or no FTA.

    4. Martin in Cardiff
      November 15, 2020

      Having seen the problems for the project of the UK’s membership, I think that a condition for new ones – or for rejoiners – will, understandably, be that they must have a properly-codified constitution, of which membership becomes a part.

      I think that this is already the case for the remaining countries of Europe in any event.

      1. Sea_Warrior
        November 15, 2020

        So, you want to lock them in forever?

    5. Lynn Atkinson
      November 15, 2020

      The main question will be ‘has Brexit been achieved de facto’?

  27. Mike Wilson
    November 15, 2020

    I tend not to agree with some of the more extreme views expressed here about the creeping police state etc.

    That said, it is difficult not to worry when calls are made to make it illegal to express an opinion about the effectiveness of a vaccine. Or to question the data.

    I do find it of concern that a suggestion like that, from Labour (as it happens) is not immediately treated with derision. But, no, in this mad world dominated by social media, it is being taken seriously and will no doubt be enacted.

    1. Enigma
      November 15, 2020

      Well said Mike Wilson. Who decides what is ‘fake’ news? Is it those with vested interests?

    2. Lifelogic
      November 15, 2020

      Indeed. Plus it would be extended to climate realists, sound economics, not being sufficiently woke and countless other things in no time at all.

    3. DaveK
      November 15, 2020

      We also read that without a vaccine pass, employment and travel will be curtailed H/T Mt Tugenhat. He has single handedly proven all the conpiracy theorists right. Hand in hand with the Law Commision promoting blasphemy type laws in our own homes and the abject failure re the school meals, you definitely need a better media team. Unless we are just being market tested for the Great Reset.

  28. Caterpillar
    November 15, 2020

    It is not clear that the PM has a strategic vision to be developed, rather he seems to parrot random fad phrases.

    I do not believe he is capable of choosing a “select cast”. This P.M. has kept Hancock and Sunak in the Cabinet as they run a remedy worse than disease strategy. To me, this is extremely strong evidence that the P.M. does not have the ability/integrity (it is hard to identify the failing from outside) to pick the best team. There is no reason to expect this to be different in appointing new advisers.

    I will hope that the P.M., and hence the U.K., just gets lucky with his recruitment.

    1. Sea_Warrior
      November 15, 2020

      Sunak: the man who gave the supermarkets a rates holiday when they clearly didn’t need one. Well, it’s only taxpayers’ money, isn’t it?

  29. Fred H
    November 15, 2020

    what on earth is ‘his strategic vision of our country ‘? I’ve no idea anymore. Please explain if you know Sir John.
    ‘talent and experience on the backbenches which needs enthusing’ – I think you are suggesting those who should be in Government are not, and no longer see Boris as the route forward.
    ‘The Prime Minister needs to appoint those advisers who he thinks best meet his needs. ‘
    Absolutely NOT. He needs to appoint advisers who can feel the pulse of the nation’s mood, and for a long while it has been ‘how much more can we take’ and ‘will no one rid me of this turbulent PM’.
    There is no way back for Boris, just a matter of time, sadly.

    1. Sharon Jagger
      November 15, 2020

      Fred H

      Depends which part of the electorates ‘mood’ he goes with, the minority squawking left or the majority silent right?

    2. glen cullen
      November 15, 2020

      Correct in all respects – this government is lost, no vision, and no plan apart from doing the complete opposite of the manifesto and the wishes of the voters

  30. Ginty
    November 15, 2020

    The difference is that Cain and Cummings could be sacked whereas Symonds can’t.

    We now have a Blairist government.

    1. Fred H
      November 15, 2020

      Wives, girlfriends, fiancĂ©s – Quelle DiffĂ©rence.

  31. Sir Joe Soap
    November 15, 2020

    I can’t imagine Farage needing these type of people to guide him along, quite the reverse.. Would you need them? As a sounding board, perhaps, or to implement policy, but not actually formulating policy ideas, surely? Otherwise why would we be paying and electing you and not them?

    1. rose
      November 15, 2020

      Sir John was the best adviser Mrs Thatcher had.

  32. Bryan Harris
    November 15, 2020

    Will the new advisors be taking the PM in this direction?

    Emergency laws to “stamp out dangerous” anti-vaccine content online should be introduced, Labour has said. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-54947661

    WHAT ARE THEY SO AFRAID OF IF THE VACCINES WORK? — If they are shown to be effective people will come around… BUT how can anybody trust a socialist inspired government that seems determined to force something on us that may be more harmful than the virus, and have no plan-B!

    The willingness with which this parliament is willing to impose itself on the British people goes well beyond ‘1984’ – We are now in dangerous territory whereby total control of the masses appears to be the ultimate aim.

    1. rose
      November 15, 2020

      They have seen just how much censorship is already being carried out by Big Tech and Big Media, and they are emboldened to add even more. Communist attitudes all round. It will be like living in China soon..

      1. Bryan Harris
        November 16, 2020

        +++

    2. Mark B
      November 15, 2020

      I said here a while ago that they will use this virus to ration health care and other government services and jobs. People will go along with it just like they are going along with the useless muzzles. We are being salami sliced into surrendering all our freedoms and rights in exchange for State protection and services.

      1. Bryan Harris
        November 16, 2020

        +++

  33. Julian Flood
    November 15, 2020

    Energy. Everything we rely on as a civilisation depends on cheap reliable energy. When I get into my car — rural Suffolk, you try waiting for a bus — I need my travelling to not cost the earth. Making that car took energy. When winter comes I need my central heating to work at minimum cost. The farmers need cheap energy to till the fields and harvest the crops, sewage engineers need reliable energy (not just delivered when the weather gods permit) to keep the solids flowing away from my front lawn.*

    If we must we can get to the Green nirvana of zero carbon energy via UK fracked gas, using the breathing space that that clean, low CO2 fuel gives us to develop UK-made zero CO2 small modular reactors. Only then does it make sense to use the National Grid to deliver energy for cars, central heating and everything else.

    But what will we actually get? Johnson’s (well, not his) vision of wind turbines amazingly defying physics by churning out the juice we need 24/7/52 WILL NOT WORK.

    Try turning off all heating by fossil fuels in public buildings, starting with the Houses of Parliament. At the end of the winter, have a look at what it has cost. Then try to imagine what that would do to UK industry.

    Cheap energy Unless HMG commits to that we are well and truly scuppered.

    JF
    *We had a week without electrical power after the Michael Fish hurricane. The village sewage overflowed through my front garden. It was unpleasant at the time, but the lawn was beautiful for a couple of years.

  34. James Bertram
    November 15, 2020

    Sir John, Boris is not up to the job.
    Every major decision he has taken has been wrong.
    He has listened to the wrong people because he wanted to; he chooses the wrong advisers because he wants to.
    He is a globalist at heart. And follows, not leads. He does not care for an independent Britain, nor for small business. He believes in big government, grandiose plans; not minimal government.
    Two of the three priorities you list can be solved within 5 minutes.
    He can address the nation and tell them that we are ripping up the treacherous WA/PD, leaving on WTO terms at end of year, and keeping NI as part of, and no different from, the UK. It is easy – but he just won’t do it.
    Regards the virus, he can tell the people the pandemic was over in the summer, that it now should be lived with like flu, that it is not that dangerous (currently only 19th on the list of major causes of death; and that’s with the highly exaggerated figures), that he will discontinue testing the healthy, that the PCR tests are faulty, that his lockdown policy was wrong, and to apologise for his panic – but he just won’t do it.
    He can scrap HS2; he can scrap Huwaei 5G; he can stop spending money on entirely unnecessary vaccines, testing, and all the other stupid measures introduced this year; he can reform the NHS; he can reform the Civil Service and Quangos; he can give us back our liberties – but he just won’t do it.
    There’s no two ways about it – he has to go.

    1. Lynn Atkinson
      November 15, 2020

      +1

    2. Mike Durrans
      November 15, 2020

      +1

  35. Narrow Shoulders
    November 15, 2020

    As the lock down leaker has never been identified publicly, does this sudden clear out suggest that the leak came from the Prime Ministers office rather than from one of the other three?

    1. The Prangwizard
      November 15, 2020

      Mr Speaker demanded a report. Will liar Boris respect the tequirement?

  36. Dave Andrews
    November 15, 2020

    BJ doesn’t have a strategic vision for the country. His advisers supply the vacuum that exists between his ears, so the country will go in the direction they advise.
    He can’t bring in members of the cabinet into policy-making, as they will soon be looking to replace him on the valid grounds they have more brains than him.
    George Eustice on Marr right now. What an example of clear thinking. If only he were PM methinks.

  37. Adams
    November 15, 2020

    Get rid of bonkers Boris . That is what you MPs need to do . We do not want the fascist gov that this Parliament and you are supporting . Replace him with a cardboard cutout of Stalin and let cabinet deliberate but only with consent of the Commons .
    Let’s keep the H o Lords out of it .

  38. Everhopeful
    November 15, 2020

    Boris’s Big Betrayal writ large.
    A carefully choreographed charade.
    And no one noticed??
    Really???

  39. RichardP
    November 15, 2020

    I’ve had more than enough of The Prime Minister’s “strategic vision of the country”. He has destroyed our freedom, jobs, wealth and health, and now he wants to deny us transport and reliable energy supplies!
    Your party needs to get him out of Downing Street before he does any more damage.

    1. glen cullen
      November 15, 2020

      +1

  40. Fedupsoutherner
    November 15, 2020

    Great post Simeon. Nothing has or is being done for the good of the nation. It all just benefits those with a woke agenda and many with noses in the troughs of subsidies.

    1. Lifelogic
      November 15, 2020

      Seems so.

  41. Roy Grainger
    November 15, 2020

    I thought Carrie had already announced the agenda: green energy, women’s rights and infrastructure. Mustn’t want to get re-elected obviously.

    1. Lifelogic
      November 15, 2020

      Talking of women’s and men’s right. Then if the vaccine can be shown to be sufficient safe (rather a big IF) then it is clear that as men are far more likely to get it badly or die as are women then there should be different qualification ages for the genders for access to the vaccine. No mention of this in their priority list so I assume more indirect anti-male discrimination is planned.

      BBC is all in to the No 10 changes being another sexist thing against Allegra Stratton and Carrie Simmons. No it is just that they are both deluded climate alarmist pushing lefties. Allegra has even admitted to voting for Labour and even the Green Party. surely she was a remainer(?) she worked for the BBC and the Guardian – what more proof is needed that she is not a sound Conservative?

    2. Lifelogic
      November 15, 2020

      Nor for the economy to recover with that mad agenda.

    3. Fred H
      November 16, 2020

      She’s after Woman of the Year, maybe a statue, in competition with Saint Greta.

  42. Dorothy Johnston
    November 15, 2020

    My main concern at the moment is all the talk of the Great Reset. It doesn’t sound great from what I hear. Maybe this is Boris’s “stratiegic vision of our country”. With Prince Charles promoting it.

    1. Lifelogic
      November 15, 2020

      Will prince Charles who is generally anti-science, pro climate alarmism, pro “protector of all faiths”, anti-GM foods and pro quack medicines (even when provided at other taxpayers expense on the NHS) be pro or anti the covid vaccines I wonder?

      Personally I remain far from convinced yet it will do more good than harm on average. Also by the time it is freely available the problem will largely be over anyway as herd immunity will have been reached anyway. Marr’s interview this morning with the chap involved with the development was rather pathetic as we have come to expect. No real attempt to address the safety issues in a serious manner.

      1. rose
        November 15, 2020

        The Royal Family do very well on homeopathy.

        If the vaccine is a revolutionary one, inducing our bodies to produce antibodies of their own etc., should it be given to children? How will it affect their development? These things should take a long time to test.

        1. Fred H
          November 15, 2020

          The Royal Family – – – homeopathy. That explains a lot!

        2. Enigma
          November 15, 2020

          Well said Rose. Suggest more research required Lifelogic. As you have discovered this year, all is not always as those with vested interests would have us believe. Any idea of the % spent on homeopathy on the NHS compared to the amount spent on drugs? You may be shocked! Any idea how effective it is? Again you may be shocked. Try and be a bit more open minded.

      2. graham1946
        November 16, 2020

        GM foods are a way to give US companies dominance over food production. As I understand it, seeds cannot be reproduced and are supplied by same firms and only certain chemicals (supplied by same companies) can be used. Whether GM foods are good or bad, this must preclude their worldwide use. A short term increase in production for long term loss of varieties etc. We had enough of that standardisation in the EU where most old varieties are banned. We will pay in the end when crops fail. No thanks.

  43. Original Chris
    November 15, 2020

    This excoriating article about Johnson on Conservative Woman website should give Tory MPs pause for thought. It is a damning indictment of Johnson and reveals why the UK is never going to get out of the very grave situation it is in, with Johnson at the helm.

    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/wholl-grab-the-steering-wheel-from-out-of-control-johnson/
    Who’ll grab the steering wheel from out-of-control Johnson? By Daniel Miller November 15,

    I personally think that Tory MPs do not realise the seriousness of the situation in which we are in, having been drawn into it step by step, and accepting each little power grab by Jonson from the people. MPs should take a step back, look at the nonsensical policies (globalist dictated) that Johnson is pushing through, and ask “How on earth have we got here?”

    1. Ginty
      November 15, 2020

      A stunning critique of the PM.

      I’ve been sending it everywhere.

    2. Mark B
      November 15, 2020

      I’ve read it. Fantastic read.

      Believe it or not, you can tell a lot of a person by the kind of car, and the condition they keep it in. Oh, and whether or not they pay their fines ! 😉

    3. Enigma
      November 15, 2020

      Well said Original Chris

  44. Keith
    November 15, 2020

    Too late for new advisers at this juncture- there is too much happening- He will just have to grab the reins himself and get us through the next few weeks up to Christmas and thereafter see about advisers that’s when we have the new normal in place. Not long really- only six weeks to go

    1. Mark B
      November 15, 2020

      Over two years ago I was counting the days until we finally Leave the EU. I am still counting.

  45. Lynn Atkinson
    November 15, 2020

    You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, and if ever there was a sows ear it’s bumbling Boris.
    But JR sets out his plan for Government and if he is put in place to deliver, I will fight for the Tories with all my heart.
    Without JR I’m set to destroy them.

    1. steve
      November 15, 2020

      “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear”

      I have to do that every ay at work.

    2. steve
      November 15, 2020

      Lynn

      “I will fight for the Tories with all my heart.
      Without JR I’m set to destroy them.”

      ==========

      +1 I’m of similar sentiment, though I think JR is too much of a nice bloke for No 10.

      1. Lynn Atkinson
        November 15, 2020

        He’s a nice bloke if you are on his side. I would hate to stand before him and try to trick him. Enoch was the same. He could work out what your motivation was. Then he engaged – or not.

        1. dark winter
          November 15, 2020

          What a strange post. Every word of it.

        2. clear
          November 17, 2020

          I understand it now ( takes me a while ).

      2. dark winter
        November 15, 2020

        Games people play !

  46. Stephen Reay
    November 15, 2020

    It’s warming to read in The guardian this morning that out of all the cabinet Boris is the most reluctant to accept a bad deal. This what Brexiteers want t0 hear. The government should communicate the plan for this country if no deal occurs, this is what we want to know, how will it be managed , how will Great Britain’s rise be achieved .

  47. Pieter C
    November 15, 2020

    “Climate change”and the “Green Agenda” is a belief system foisted on us by the IPCC’s use of propaganda techniques worthy of a totalitarian state, not based on “science”, but manufactured hysteria based on flawed computer-based modelling and the highly selective use of historic temperature data, and supported by gullible politicians in the EU, Australia and Canada and now again most probably the USA. The developing nations, led by China and India, have steadfastly refused to countenance the economic destruction that the West is planning. The UK accounts for 1% of global CO2 emissions, the economic self-harm being contemplated by this Government will make no difference to global climate and the costs will be unaffordable. Truly “a belief is not an idea which the mind possesses, it is an idea which possesses the mind”, as Robert Bolton wrote.

  48. William Long
    November 15, 2020

    Let’s hope he appoints people who have the sense to realise that one of the biggest obstacles to recovery would be higher taxes, and that we need a major reform of the whole Tax system, not a series of inept and uncoordinated ‘Reviews’.

  49. Everhopeful
    November 15, 2020

    So what has been the impact of the virus then?
    Oh yes…we have no economy now.
    That’ll help all the ill people.

    1. glen cullen
      November 15, 2020

      Yes Yes Yes
      Covid-19 = seasonal flu

  50. DOM
    November 15, 2020

    Laura Perrins article today should provoke fear of what these criminals have in store for us –

    ‘Laura – you should check out the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change website.

    There is a ‘paper’ there that proposes total control of the population through ‘test, track and trace’ with ‘solutions’ such as the issue of ‘privileges’ to those who are proven not to be infectious.

    This grotesque paper has been signed by Jeremy Hunt and William Hague.

    They’re not even hiding it now.’

    And now the BIT unit proposes stopping access to the NHS system to force compliance with ‘track and trace’ forcing social compliance

    No Tory libertarian can tolerate this appalling intrusion into our privacy. They must speak out NOW

    We are under attack by bigots intent on destroying our freedoms. Hopefully, they damages us to the point where millions wake up and vote for a party of libertarianism that finally destroys Labour-Tory bigotry

  51. Derek Henry
    November 15, 2020

    That 3 point plan is excellent John

    Bravo ! Hip Hip……..

    But we need to learn from Thatcher’s one big mistake.

    I’ll try and explain using common sense.

    As Thatcher moved millions of skills as real resources from underground the miners. Away from the docks the ship builders into service sector jobs and turned low end manufacturing jobs into high end manufacturing jobs I think we can all agree it was the right thing to do.

    However, she left a trail of destruction behind her that would last decades. She made a very simple mistake. We all make mistakes we need to learn from them.

    If Thatcher had introduced a job guarentee in 1980 to help with that HUGE transition of skills and real resources into the service sector and high end manufacturing. The country would have been fully employed since 1980. A got bed of foreign direct investment that strengthens the ÂŁ and a breeding ground for entrepreneurs.

    A job guarentee

    Would have given everybody a living wage who needed one and allowed them to transition between the different sectors of the economy easily.

    Kept demand up as the transition took place keeping businesses healthy and growing.

    Competition would have remained between capital and labour keeping wages higher.

    Communities would have survived the worst of it as productivity improved.

    Thatcher used the interest rate to keep humans unemployed to try and control inflation.

    Because she had the whole interest rate thing backwards she made things worse. She was causing inflation instead of fighting it. She didn’t break the back of inflation she broke the economy. If she had set the interest rate to zero it would identify where the inflationary pressures were coming from. Could be fixed by fiscal adjustments and if things really started to heart up budget surpluses might have become be necessary to ease the transition.

    With brexit and on top of that moving to a greener economy. HUGE amounts of skills and real resources are going to have to be moved around the UK economy again. Moved into various sectors where they are needed. Just like Thatcher did before us.

    We have to learn from her mistake.

    That the government’s budget constraint is the wrong constraint—the correct constraint is whether or not a particular budget position will raise inflation.

    Indexing marginal tax rates to the inflation target rather than the inflation rate. Indexing spending to the target rate. What if the thousands of economists currently working on understanding monetary policy started to try and understand how to build automatic stabilisers?

    We don’t need to adjust tax rates in real time as much as build in a significant amount of stabilisation automatically. The job guarentee Does that.

    In brexit Britain Let’s stop pretending that replacing a budget constraint with an inflation constraint is so hard. It involves a change in perspective, nothing more and nothing less. It doesn’t give license to policy makers to do whatever they want. It does mean the Budget office will finally be doing something useful with its deficit projections—namely, building models to understand how deficits will affect the macroeconomy.

    If we don’t learn from Thatcher mistake. we will again be Leaving some communities hollowed out for decades as skills and real resources are moved about around them.

    Believing they we can reach full employment with price stability simply by adjusting a single interest rate. Keeping a group of humans unemployed just to control inflation. Those days should be over. We should fight until they are over in brexit Britain.

    Those that believe in a” basic income ” should explain how it is useful in solving these huge transition of skills and real resources above. How a basic income will move stuff around and provide jobs.

    It doesn’t and never will. That’s why neoliberal globalists love the idea.

    1. steve
      November 15, 2020

      Derek

      “I think we can all agree it was the right thing to do.”

      ==========

      No it wasn’t.

      Because of that we have no foundries hence no heavy engineering industry, and natural resources were thrown away or sold off to foreign competitors.

    2. anon
      November 15, 2020

      A job guarantee offer and a non-means tested non taxed basic income underpining it if one cannot or chooses not to accept the job offer.

      A mandatory job guarantee by the state, please no, they would waste the human resource, better incent and let individuals choose between any and all legal options. Part-time work or study for skill. Or accept a very utilitarian life. A non means tested basic income would allow that.

    3. Will in Hampshire
      November 15, 2020

      As far as I can tell, Derek is proposing MMT here although he doesn’t discuss the likely challenge of financing the implied deficit in the long-term. It would be interesting to hear what our host thinks of that policy.

      1. Derek Henry
        November 16, 2020

        HI Will,

        Hope you are well.

        MMT just describes the monetary system 100% accurately. It is neither left or right. Once you understand how it works anybody can use it. Instead of lying about it. Oh boy do most lie about it either using fixed FX analysis of when we where on the gold standard. Or struggle to get it as they have never studied The govt accounts. I have for 12 years every inch of them.

        The deficit is just everybody’s savings. So it would be good jettison all the macroeconomic theory that construes the government budget constraint as an ex ante financial constraint. It isn’t.

        Instead of seeing it as it is an ex post accounting statement, Taxes do not fund it we don’t use the Euro. Neither does borrowing. Borrowing is a monetary operation not a fiscal tool. Borrowing is just swapping a reserve balance for a bond to drain the reserves or increase the reserves by swapping a bond for a reserve balance. As soon as the spending Bill is passed the Treasury just instructs the BOE to start crediting bank accounts.

        Govt spends 100 collects 90 in taxes and leaves 10 in the economy

        Govt spends 100 collects 20 in taxes and leaves 80 in the economy

        Govt spends 100 collects 150 in taxes takes 50 out of the economy

        Govt spends 100 collects 100 in taxes and leaves nothing in the economy

        You can’t project it because you don’t know how much everyone is going to save. Once you know how much everyone has saved you need to know if it will cause inflation.

        If you increase spending or cut taxes or do both are their enough skills and real resources available to absorb the increased demand.

        Funding is never a issue we can’t run out of blips or assets to swap. We can run out of skills and real resources. Saying their is a budget constraint is nonsensical we use the ÂŁ not the Euro. Saying is there going to be inflation is the right question to ask. We need a change of perspective.

        The JG would replace the automatic stabilisers we have now which are quite frankly useless. All they do is just increase the drop in aggregate demand. Make things worse not better.

        1. Derek Henry
          November 16, 2020

          We can improve the automatic stabilisers As described originally to let us know when things are too hot or too cold.

          Instead of just jumping the gun and killing things off by raising or cutting interest rates prematurely which central banks do all the time. They kill growth before it gets started.

  52. Dave Ward
    November 15, 2020

    As long as Boris is in thrall to Carrie, it makes little difference which “advisors” he employs. I don’t recall voting for even more extreme “Green Crap” (as David Cameron called it) – so why the hell is he pushing down this road? Anyone with a smidgen of engineering knowledge should be very alarmed that National Grid issued two “Electricity Margin Notices” within the space of one week recently. This was thanks to “Renewable Energy” failing to provide the power it gets paid large subsidies for. And we are being (effectively) forced to switch to EV’s when the system can barely cope now…

    1. Sea_Warrior
      November 15, 2020

      Would they have been on the two (cold) days last week when I looked out of my lounge window and noticed a complete absence of wind? Still, at least we all have our smart-meters to fall back on.

      1. Stred
        November 16, 2020

        Barny is threatening to stop selling us spare nuclear power if we don’t cave. Does anyone think they will supply electricity anyway when there is a mid wintet lull over western Europe and they’re facing blackouts too?

        1. Fred H
          November 16, 2020

          But EU manufacturing is down on its knees, with UK orders stopping -that is what we still foolishly buy, it will get worse. Result -plenty of power left in the EU unwanted. I wonder if Germany committed to a certain level of purchasing from our Russian novichok friends? That will hit Putin too.
          Always a silver lining somewhere.

      2. Dave Ward
        November 16, 2020

        They were issued on the 4th & 5th of this month, for the following days, respectively. And yes, wind was providing barely 5% of UK demand, solar even less. I trust your “Smart Meter” comment was in jest – how many customers realise that part of the specification includes a Remote Switch Off facility. This facilitates “Demand Side Response” – In other words, you can be cut off at any time, without warning…

    2. Fred H
      November 15, 2020

      Unlike some wet behind the ears on here, most will remember families stocking up on candles and battery torches in the winter. Power cuts were common but we had no internet to lose, landlines generally still worked powered from telephone exchanges and if you lived near hospitals the local grid kept you on power.
      Just a warning that as the Green lobby takes over the world we live in, you had better get used to all sorts of inconveniences you never realised could happen.
      ‘The Future is Electric’ – what an unfortunate slogan. I suppose whole areas will abandon houses and go live in their cars while the outage takes place – or it gets windy again!

      1. Fred H
        November 16, 2020

        Winter approaching – the above very topical?

  53. Ginty
    November 15, 2020

    There is a great push in the printed media to make out that this is a sex issue. Women taking over males.

    No it isn’t.

    This is a Blairist putsch. Allegra Stratton is the BBC at the heart of government. Nobody voted for this. (At least Cummings/Cain could be sacked.)

  54. Barbara
    November 15, 2020

    Dr Mike Yeadon, ex Chief Scientific Officer of Pfizer and the man who founded what later became pharmaceutical giant Novartis, a very experienced scientist in this field, says that the pandemic is all but over in the UK and has been since March.

    Here he is being interviewed by Julia Hartley Brewer, on Talk Radio, if Sir John will allow the link:

    https://youtu.be/4FQUmw5QljM

  55. Original Chris
    November 15, 2020

    His “vision” is that of the globalists: Agenda 2030, using COVID to engineer The Great Reset. Trudeau explains it perfectly in a recent announcement. They are not afraid to speak about it openly now that they believe Biden has won.

    1. steve
      November 15, 2020

      Original Chris

      “His “vision” is that of the globalists: Agenda 2030, using COVID to engineer The Great Reset.”

      ========

      Which is why he needs to be taken out now, before he can pull it off.

  56. margaret howard
    November 15, 2020

    Today’s main article in the FazNet carries the headline:

    “A wake up call for Washington and Brussels”

    Dealing with the trading agreement that has just been signed between China and Japan. It will be the largest worth $26b guaranteeing it world domination consisting of about 30% of the world’s population.

    It will surpass the EU bloc and that of the US/Canada/Mexico NAFTA.

    And we have just left one of the most prosperous, important blocs. What perfect timing.

    1. steve
      November 15, 2020

      MH

      It depends on political landscape in the west, which is yet to be determined. Everything’s in a state of flux at the moment but depending on how things settle China could find itself not trading with anyone, and the CCP going well and truly down the pan.

      Personally I think they will do something stupid like having a crack at Taiwan.

    2. Edward2
      November 15, 2020

      But the rest of the world isn’t involved in the Japan China trade deal.
      It has no connection to Brexit nor the USA.

    3. Lynn Atkinson
      November 15, 2020

      What – China?

  57. Alan Hill
    November 15, 2020

    I was a Boris supporter but I’m running out of patience . If he flunks Brexit there will be hell to pay and it will be the end of the Tory Party the internal dissent will become unmanageable.

  58. Harkin
    November 15, 2020

    Here’s how things will probably play out- there will be no deal- Boris will reinsert the clauses removed from the IMB by the Lords- so the transition period will finish on 31st December- and advisers will be appointed in January in time to assess the new situation.

    1. glen cullen
      November 15, 2020

      I wish and hope you’re correct

      However Boris will never leave without a deal

  59. Alan Jutson
    November 15, 2020

    I see we are now going to get a tunnel to bye pass Stonehenge.

    So we are going for the most expensive form of construction, which will limit any further capacity (widening not possible) has been chosen.

    A simple and less expensive cutting with banking would have been a far more sensible option.

    Who dreams up these expensive and extravagant proposals John, another minority group I guess.

    1. Fred H
      November 15, 2020

      There has always been ample space both sides of the A303 at Stonehenge. Ideally so there would be less disruption, the south side land could be compulsorily purchased – the pigs can be moved. Build a 2 lane carriageway at a lower level and put a vision/sound/safety barrier between old and new. That sorts out traffic going west and the rubber-necking element.
      Once completed work can begin on the existing but redundant going west side to prepare for a 2 lane carriageway. Finally that new lane can be used going east to allow the most northerly stretch of road to be uprated in sections to become the final 2 lane side. Add another vision/sound/safety barrier to complete the job.

      1. Stred
        November 16, 2020

        That’s exactly what I suggested. But Tom Holland, who is leader of the Stonehenge worship society and a luvvie, says that they shouldn’t even build a tunnel in case it upsets the Druids manque.

    2. glen cullen
      November 15, 2020

      We can afford a bye-pass (circa ÂŁ400 million) but my council has just gone to forthnightly bin collection because they’ve got no money…..you makes your choice

  60. Newmania
    November 15, 2020

    The “….full range of approaches to the virus as we await further breakthroughs from medical science…..” alluded to with the usual slippery deniability are irresponsible distractions.
    Science has found an answer to Covid 19, objections to lock down are irrelevant and any further loss of life unnecessary.
    The plan has always been to fling our own money at next year so as to obscure as much of the Brexit damage as possible until cause and effect could be obscured. That cannot happen now We may be struck with the disaster but the guilty are struck with the consequences of their own mendacity.
    Learn to live with it.

    1. No Longer Anonymous
      November 15, 2020

      Lockdown kills too. And a lot younger and a lot more indiscriminately !

  61. Lindsay McDougall
    November 15, 2020

    I’m not too sure that, Brexit apart, the Prime Minister has got a strategic vision. Here is one.

    To get COVID-19 under control and also to restore fiscal prudence, we need to introduce a budget early in the New Year for a 2 year period to the end of 2022.

    With continued furloughing until the end of March, the ratio of State debt to GDP is likely to peak at about 120%. We need to get that back down to 100% by the end of 2022.

    Some increases in public expenditure will be inevitable. Subsidies of train, bus and aeroplane transport will be necessary until sufficient members of the population have vaccinated against COVID-19. NHS expenditure will need to increase to catch up the back log of non-COVID treatments. Expenditure on the criminal justice system will need to increase to catch up on prosecutions of villains, particularly scammers. Investment in modernising the prison system will be needed. With an increase in unemployment, the cost of Universal Credit will increase. Green projects need to be financed.

    More will need to be spent on care in the community for the non-sick elderly and some with mental health problems. Unitary authorities should have this responsibility and two new high end Council Tax bands I and J should be created to enable them to raise extra finance.

    Clearly, there are going to have to be some fairly hefty cuts to projected public expenditure. Options are:
    – Slipping the implementation of one or more of HS2, Heathrow third runway, 5G infrastructure
    – Reducing the Universal Credit cap and increasing the minimum wage so that work always pays
    – Reducing the number of tiers of Government from 5 (EU, national, county, district, parish) to two (national, county or district)
    – Privatising the railways into regional or corridor companies in such a way as to eliminate the need for subsidies and get them off taxpayers’ backs
    – Introducing modest charges for GP appointments, non-emergency attendance at A&E and an annual hospitals utilisation fee
    – Forcing the BBC to raise revenue from advertisers and/or viewers

    It’s going to be difficult but do-able. Note: NO tax increases.

  62. ferdi
    November 15, 2020

    My great concern is that the Prime Minister and too many of the Cabinet have been completely hoodwinked over the need limit CO2. A Conservative ex Minister said he thought CO2 was 60% of the atmosphere. When I told him he was fifteen hundred times too high, he said I must be wrong. If that is how other MPs think then that is why we are wasting fortunes on windfarms and other expensive energy projects. The PM must get a grip on this fraud as soon as possible. It must be one of his immediate targets.

    1. Mark B
      November 15, 2020

      CO2 is the fourth most populous gas in the atmosphere (0.03%). I pointed out to one of our former contributors, Uanime5 and was treated with derision. Such is the ignorance of many.

      1. ferdi
        November 16, 2020

        Ignorance amongst those with power is far more dangerous than ignorance amongst the rest of us.

    2. Fred H
      November 15, 2020

      At 60% we’d all be dead.

    3. Lynn Atkinson
      November 15, 2020

      I bet he thinks CV19 is the biggest killer too đŸ€Š

    4. graham1946
      November 16, 2020

      CO2 is around 400 parts per million in the atmosphere – at 200 parts per million life on the planet cannot exist. On the other hand life does not become untenable until 100,000 ppm is reached, so still a bit to go. How much do they want too reduce it to? Never heard anyone offer a figure. I doubt Saint Greta followers have any idea.

      1. hefner
        November 16, 2020

        If you had followed more attentively you might have noticed that the problem is not so much the CO2 per se but the increase in temperature.

        There are obviously people who claim there is no relationship whatsoever between increase in CO2 (and other greenhouse gases, methane in particular) and increase in temperature, particularly all the palaeontology specialists on this blog who know everything between the intensity and spectral distribution of the solar radiation at the top of the atmosphere, the temperature distribution, the CO2 concentration, the exact position of the continents, and the meteorology in those days.

        Some other people however point out that the increase in greenhouse gases slightly increases temperature, which further increases the specific humidity, which by itself increases temperature (a positive feedback), enhances the water cycle (air more humid, more precipitation, higher sea surface temperature, higher evaporation, possibly stronger large-scale systems (hurricanes, tornadoes, …).

        So the problem is ‘they’ (the second batch of people) do not want to reduce the concentration of CO2 (as the timescale for the presence of atmospheric CO2, its potential transfer as dissolved CO2 into the ocean, its possible transformation into carbonates, … is between several tens possibly hundreds of years), ‘they’ want to slow down or stop the increase in CO2 (and other GHGs) concentration so that whatever state the atmosphere is now does not further deteriorates.

        And if anything the atmospheric physicists are not followers of Saint Greta, that’s the other way around. But for the medias it is easier to report about a figure like Greta Thunberg.

        1. graham1946
          November 16, 2020

          If you were not so verbose you might conclude that I was being brief and to the point. Your first paragraph is total rubbish. The Greta adherents (some scientists etc obviously because this has been going on since before she was born) blame CO2 FOR the increase in temperature. No-one doubts the climate is changing, the argument is over what causes it. My piece was trying to be concise, not the verbiage you spout.

          1. hefner
            November 17, 2020

            Verbose maybe. However without a bit of ‘technical details’, we have people still quoting 400ppm of CO2 as a ridiculously small amount but not accounting for what the radiative effect of it is.

            And BTW maximum CO2 concentration in submarines is 10,000 ppm, and usually kept in the 3,000 to 7,000 ppm range. SeaWarrior should know about that.

  63. forthurst
    November 15, 2020

    Whenever I read through a list of special advisors, I ask myself the question: how can these people advise when they don’t know anything? The people at the centre of power are those who wanted to be there based not on merit but ambition. Why would someone with a degree in Art History believe that should become the centre of competence on mitigating climate change or even that it needs to be done? Most people with a scientific background are wary of venturing too far outside their fields of expertise because they become confronted with too many questions to which they do not have answers. However, Arts graduates, not being able even to ask the questions that arise when they venture into a field outside their direct knowledge, find it easy, apparently, to wade in well out of their depth.

    Nothing could more exemplify the incompetence of this government than in its response to Covid-19. The decisions to set up hospitals from scratch, to set up test and trace from scratch rather than building on what already existed as though what existed before could not scale up faster and better than some nincompoop with an Oxford Arts degree could create a functioning organisation from scratch. Meanwhile we have been hearing from the Chief Medical Officer, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, the Chief Scientific Advisor, Sunak, Hancock, Arts graduates running the NHS and PHE, and Sage whilst spads (appointed and otherwise) have been arguing with the PM over policy in secret.

    What is apparent is the governance of this country is highly centralised and exclusive to people who don’t know what they are talking about. Is it any wonder that only things that don’t need to be done get done and vice-versa?

    1. forthurst
      November 15, 2020

      Apologies to the Deputy Chief Scientific Advisor whose omission was an oversight rather than an expression of a belief that the male brain has evolved better to address matters of science.

  64. rose
    November 15, 2020

    The fourth priority, which has a bearing on all the others, is to revise the legislation which is permitting too great numbers to be added to the population at a time of unemployment and homelessness.

  65. adenwellssmith
    November 15, 2020

    It won’t work. I refused to be scammed.
    My resignation letter to the Conservatives went out Friday.
    I’ll fund Reform instead, and increase that funding

    I’m not prepared to wait. If I wait you won’t get the message that you’ve chosen the wrong route until its too late.

    1. Fred H
      November 15, 2020

      they get plenty of political donations – beats me why (tongue in cheek) ? Anyway the real test we wait for is a GE – nobody will lose sleep of your resignation!

  66. ian
    November 15, 2020

    If the earth at the bringing was a ball of gas’s and managed over time to reduce the gas’s to next to nothing with a much smaller sea and no plant life why should anybody be worried about population today, it’s a non-event apart from the ground level population in cities.

  67. Sea_Warrior
    November 15, 2020

    There’s much to like about this blog site – but right now the most important quality of it is that our host will pick up on the huge amount of dissent being expressed by proper Conservatives and actually do something about the situation.
    P.S. And today, Richard Tice sent me another email. He sends me more emails than CCHQ, despite my being a Conservative Party member!

    1. Lynn Atkinson
      November 15, 2020

      😂😂 I’ll Trump you! The President sends me a lot of missives!

      1. Sea_Warrior
        November 16, 2020

        Me too! Telling, isn’t it?

    2. Ian @Barkham
      November 16, 2020

      I think our host picks up the under-tones of opinion. But Government! they are on a different planet not listening and not hearing. To busy stroking egos and MsM agendas to even care.

      1. Fred H
        November 16, 2020

        The problem for Sir John is that recognising the downward slope of all he has held dear, and actually being able to arrest the decline are two totally different things.

  68. Heavensent
    November 15, 2020

    there will be no clean break with leaving the transition period deal or no deal- as JR thinks-

    Neither will the EU agree a new deal if Boris persists in breaking agreements already made especially by himself and less than a year ago- it’s not going to happen

    Lastly by any standards new advisers after being appointed will take weeks to get up to speed but by then it will be all over

  69. james
    November 15, 2020

    Boris wanted the job and now that he has it he’s going to have to decide- does he want a Canada minus minus or does he want Australia ie WTO rules and only he has to decide, and with no advisers in place. But of course am sure at the same time he has plenty of ‘off the cuff’ stuff coming from the ERG crowd wherever they are- although havn’t heard a peep in ages.

  70. XYXY
    November 15, 2020

    He should also start to appoint MPs to the Cabinet who are experienced and on the right of the party, such as yourself. I’m very unimpressed with Sunak as Chancellor, I think his popularity will dissipate once the Santa Clause period oi over. People are already questioning how we are going to recover from this ridiculous spending splurge and yet another hammering of small businesses for tax, while disregarding them when it comes to helping out with covid.

  71. Iain Gill
    November 15, 2020

    Lets hope the isolation Boris is being forced into again will give him time to reconsider the fake “green” nonsense he is just about the ram down our throats.

    1. Simon Coleman
      November 16, 2020

      The green nonsense is all global policy forming part of the Great Reset. Johnson is a Great Reset politician – if he wasn’t then he wouldn’t be PM – and he has no choice but to swallow it. I doubt he has any views on green issues anyway.

  72. Fred H
    November 15, 2020

    So Track and Trace sometimes works! Well I never. You spent ÂŁ12bn Boris don’t blame somenbody else.

  73. Al
    November 15, 2020

    I suspect he needs people with a degree of expreience in engineering or statistics. Today Dame Sally Davies blamed obesity for Covid deaths, neglecting to mention that there is a far greater correlation called “being over 55 years old” identified by the ONS. Being over 80 is an even stronger one.

    As she thinks obesity should be outlawed for a comparatively negligible correlation, I dread to think what she believes should be done about old age.

  74. Lynn Atkinson
    November 15, 2020

    Thank God Boris is self-isolating and only a week to hold out for WTO Brexit! đŸ€ž
    I’m not going to ask why he is self-isolating as he is immune having had it, just be grateful that he is off the scene. Carrie too surely?

    1. glen cullen
      November 15, 2020

      Com’on Boris ”get WTO brexit done”

    2. Stred
      November 16, 2020

      Nigel is self isolating too despite being tested clear twice, so stupid are our laws. He’s just made a YouTube which is damning of the goings on in Downing Street. I sent Remain my fifty quid last week. I would send a thousand if it got rid of this rotten chumocacy, as he calls it. They really haven’t a clue.

  75. Will in Hampshire
    November 15, 2020

    Now that he’s no longer employed at No. 10 Downing Street, do you think that Mr Cummings will be asked once again to come in front of the House of Commons Select Committee and to justify his actions? I certainly hope so.

  76. Warwick
    November 16, 2020

    Johnson and Cummings – what an absolute sh1tshow. A complete embarrassment to the party and to the country. New advisers or not there is a long way to come back to regain any semblance of trust from much of the country and I fear that many floating voters won’t be tempted back for some time to come.

  77. Ian
    November 16, 2020

    This is the worst Parliament ever, none of the parties are worth voting for it is a disgrace
    How anyone can think about voting ever again for these , useless people.
    The likes of J R are very scarce sadly, these few are all there is on our side.
    I will vote for Farage, with out that man just were do you think we would be, he atleast has done a hell of a lot more than all the noses in the troff

  78. Helen Smith
    November 16, 2020

    He needs you in his cabinet Sir John

  79. G Leigh
    November 16, 2020

    How convenient the PM has gone into hiding. Why doesn’t he take a PCR test? I reckon he knows how the test reveals virus fragments from previous infections thus any positive test result underminea government statistics. If the test shows up negative, it proves herd immunnity thus no need for a vaccine. Come on Alexander, lead by example: take the PCR test.

  80. Edwardm
    November 16, 2020

    I hope the PM is listening to you and taking it in, Sir John.

  81. peace
    November 17, 2020

    I knew about E. It just appeared on my computer out of nowhere a couple of years ago.
    Its not a religious thing. Its a right or wrong thing.
    The subject is all tied in with whats going on now.

Comments are closed.