ForenSix Opposition - Politics in the Soon To Be Former UK in Autumn 2020

My battery is on 3%, will it survive this presser and my frantic posting? My sources are doubtful

Nice brown and yellow map, appropriate

Darker colour = 'more of whatever is being measured' is the exact opposite of how the scale of a heatmap is supposed to work.

good luck, UK england

I’m not an epidemiologist but idk, this seems bad.

Worst case scenario was 6000 deaths a day, if I read that right.

Lol he must be shitting it, he’s talking about triage

Furlough extended to Dec.

great news for those millions of people who have been excluded from it and still have no hope of support

the government that cancelled christmas

The government that killed Bambi.

Maybe an unpopular opinion but I don't think this government exudes competence lads

what, just because they spent six weeks dicking around after a clear warning that a circuit breaker was necessary to stop thousands of people dying

"Worst case scenario was 6000 deaths a day, if I read that right."

Seemed slightly glossed over.

I'm fairly decent at maths/stats but the start of that press conference seemed designed to get people to turn over.

look on the bright side I suppose: this thing will consume the majority of BJ's 80-majority premiership

Furlough extended to Dec.

Shane about all those folk laid off in the past week because it was ending with no indication it could be extended.

Shame, even

Don't have to pay them if they've already been laid off *taps forehead*

Can't wait for *checks notes* tanks in the streets:

Johnson promised a “massive expansion” in the deployment of quick turnaround tests. The army will help distribute tests.

They can just shoot the tests straight at you face

Anyhoo, a whole winter shut down and bell-ends hoarding groceries should be a tip top drill for no deal Brexit

"I understand that discussions remain ongoing over whether people will still be allowed to play golf and tennis as the regulations are still to be drafted."

Hmm..

PIRANHA 3D COVID-19 TESTS: THEY FLY @ U FACE

As far as I understand it getting hold of the rapid swab tests in large numbers is the easy bit, there is currently nowhere near the capacity to process the numbers that they're talking about.

can't wait for priti patel on strictly 2025

I was skipping and saw that smug twat so I kept skipping

As it stands courts remain open for eviction cases.

Ministers have asked bailiffs not to enforce evictions. But this is non-binding guidance that landlords will fight in court.

If the Tories cared about the millions who rent they’d ban Section 21 evictions & cancel rent debt

— London Renters Union (@LDNRentersUnion) October 31, 2020

"humble in the face of nature" my fucking god

— pro Patreon mori (@MediocreDave) October 31, 2020

can't wait for priti patel on strictly 2025

Oh don't worry. At the rate these Tory PMs switch over, she'll have won a Tory leadership contest, put in a year or so of piss poor mithering, and then resigned long before then.

don't threaten me with a good time
xp

love to live in a country where im forced to find out extremely serious and important information via this pic.twitter.com/OPyDSD7xlj

— ben (@bortwhitcombe) October 31, 2020

Ah yes the competent party is it

💥 Conservative minister: “The incompetence is another level. Is this a deliberate destruction of the Tory Party? People only vote for us because they think we don’t care, but are competent. Lose the competence and we’re fucked. We’ve lost the competence. And we are fucked.”

— Matt Chorley (@MattChorley) October 31, 2020

I'm assuming that's either Gove or one of the ministers we've never heard of, right?

At what point does the PM accept he is f***ed politically, ignores the polls & backbench grumbling, and focuses solely on saving the country?

The polls have barely shifted for months and I suspect a lockdown is not going to change that significantly.

Politically, Johnson’s main problem is the coalition of people like Gove and Sunak who are comfortable with 6k deaths a day if it means not having to cover wages, backbench conspiracy theorists and a segment of the right-wing press. I don’t know if it’s the public (yet).

I think that's right. Support for the new measures at 85% (exc dont knows) I saw earlier. Johnson would be fine with the public if he was going all-out on restrictions, it's just the new breed of nutters on his further right who won't have it. In other circs you'd love to see how quickly these fucks found a new thing to schism over once the losing side of the last one were all sacked.

To think, were it not for Cummings, he'd have Javid in place for this and likely wouldn't be dealing with half the pushback.

The Telegraph has an amazingly incoherent leader on it tomorrow: Most of it is showing how obvious a lockdown is needed and how this is showing just how enfeebled we've let the state become, and then a pivot to "but we shouldn't have one. The people we save now will probably die in wave 3 anyway. Also, what of the costs to freedom?"

It's astounding (not surprising, but breathtaking nonetheless) how ideologically difficult it is for people to stomach the very idea of the full power of the state getting behind protecting the weak and the poor in the face of a health (or any other) emergency.

Johnson: will extend furlough! That means @Keir_Starmer is de facto prime minister

— Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) October 31, 2020

good to see that despite the imminent lockdown, the spice is still flowing.

isn't the The Torygraph just a mirror of the party really, with editorial staff and a readership that are split between softish tories who know the NHS getting overwhelmed would be a humanitarian disaster and hard as nails covid hawks that would still be sending kids down the pits if coal mines still existed.

MI5 simply love the banter

If Steve Baker is any guide, the backbench lunatic fringe is holding fire on public opposition to Johnson for now.

I don’t blame anyone for leaving the Labour Party at the moment. It’s ‘under new management’ indeed—meet the new boss, same as the old boss. We’re self-evidently under enemy occupation by a leadership that does not share our values, our aims, our analysis, or our programme.

— Joe Guinan (@joecguinan) October 31, 2020

good thread, tho i'm too tired and distracted to know whether i agree with him

i'd avoid the replies if you value your blood pressure tho

there's already got a model for how to fight within the party to retake the leadership: wrecking. unfortunately, left voices don't have a as mature a rolodex as the right nor a sufficiently pliant media

Finally, we should remember the moves Starmer has made since becoming leader and the ruthlessness with which he operates. Next time there should be no holding back. Party democracy. Rulebook reform. Open selection. A new General Secretary. And a clean-out of the party machine.

— Joe Guinan (@joecguinan) October 31, 2020

next time... see you in thirty years

all things considered i'm on the side of shrugging and fuck the Labour Party forever at the moment. hard to understand people's continued belief in this thing that produced one decent government almost by accident in its entire history

and this in a country where the chunk of the bourgeoisie that considers itself left-liberal is more bovine, more reactionary, more hateful to the working class, to democracy and to equality than its compadres on the right

I get where you're coming from NV, but Iain Duncan Smith is in the Telegraph today complains about the government "giving in to scientific advisers"

yeah i know there was some poetic exaggeration altho i was thinking of the average little Englander bourgie right rather than full blown libertarian chancers like IDS