UK General Discussion:The Rt. Hon Alex Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, Populist Hero

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'This Benighted Plot'

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Johnson's first post-landslide approvals have him ten points under water. Sobering, embarrassing, even, for Labour. But also...

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You know, if McDonnell hadn't needlessly screwed over that poor old sot Michael Meacher in 2007, and act that blackened his name to the soft Left and meant that ballot access in 2015 was for him impossible, it would have been him who stood in 2015. One wonders how things might have played out differently. McDonnell has severe baggage issues as well (though not so many), but sounder political judgment and a serious manner. I've said it before, and I suspect McDonnell would not appreciate the comparison, but he has much in common with Philip Snowden.

Anyway an interesting thing is that relations between McDonnell's people and Corbyn's people have not been good for a while. Quite what they are like between the men themselves (and this is now a historical point rather than an active political one) we don't know. Though it is the way of such things that we will eventually find out.

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Labour regularly polled over 60% (!) for a time after 1997.

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Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo.

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It won't go away as an issue - much as it didn't after the 1970s! - but there's a fundamental difference between 'not going away' and 'absolutely dominating'. The intelligent thing for those in favour of British membership of the EU to do now would be to scale back and let the argument make itself. Much as it did fifty years ago.

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I think you misunderstand somewhat - I don't mean the issue itself will dominate, I mean the divisions and cleavages that have been created by the issue will dominate. Even if Leave and Remain is not what is being argued, the two 'political camps' that have been created by the issue will be centre to whatever other issues are in the road ahead.

Those particular divisions, those particular political camps, existed before. And even if you put them together they don't add up to anything like a majority of the electorate. Political energy is an odd thing and other issues can (and at some point will) fire up other people. What is different, what will be different, though, is the fact that the 'Remain' camp will be more mobilised and prone to organisation than it was in the past; that is a significant shift, no doubt.

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If the Brexit campaign showed anything, it is that people don't find that kind of economic argument compelling when compared to arguments about "taking back control."

Serious economic arguments were not made by the Remain campaign during the 2016 referendum. Trade, agricultural subsidies, food prices and so on (big issues, you'd have thought), were barely mentioned. Instead there was vague waffle about stability in an almost abstract sense and some incoherent rambling about house prices.

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Main news item to-day is the resignation - on Budget Day - of the Scottish finance minister under... um... something of a cloud.

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A month or so ago we were hearing lots of chatter about how, under the direction of D. Cummings, the entire structure of Whitehall was going to change, that departments, even big departments, were to be variously merged, abolished and created. This is not that. This is just mere politics.

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A month or so ago we were hearing lots of chatter about how, under the direction of D. Cummings, the entire structure of Whitehall was going to change, that departments, even big departments, were to be variously merged, abolished and created. This is not that. This is just mere politics.

From my civil service bunker, it's coming.

Oh, I'm sure that's still the plan.* But it is interesting that it has not happened, yet, even though it was supposed to.

_{*For what end? Reform! Yes, but why? Reform! The contemporary obsession with re-organising the filing system is strange.}

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There are exemptions for people working in the health services. Doubtless many more besides will be carved out in other sectors. I don't particularly like the new rules, but misinformation helps no one.

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No confirmation yet, but looking increasingly likely that this May's elections will be shelved until the autumn.

If you consider how this spreads and then consider British electoral procedures, well, oh.

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What about the Labour leadership election?

Well most of the votes have already been cast, and it's an online and postal ballot. So no worries there. But the result will now be announced in a smaller setting, not the big Special Conference.

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So, a brief summary of the constitutional situation.

Raab appears to be have been designated as an emergency stand-in (without the formal title of Deputy PM) but this has no constitutional significance. Neither does the Deputy PM title. If Johnson were to die or be rendered so ill that it is not realistic for him to remain in post, then it is likely that there would be an emergency meeting of the Cabinet and quite probably a vote, or at least an earnest discussion with the same function. The 'winner' would then be nominated to the Queen and there would be some form of virtual kissing of hands.* There is no such thing as an interim PM under British constitutional law; the 'winner' would be PM. At some point there would then be a Conservative leadership election, but it would not be possible to hold one for a while. The 'interim' PM would then resign and be replaced by the winner of the leadership poll, unless that person was the same person.

_{*They do not, actually, kiss the hand of the sovereign anyway. It's just a thing that's said.}

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Even if he does get through it, it might put his longer term political future in serious doubt.

How so?

Any serious respiratory condition can cause permanent damage to the tissue of the lungs, reducing lung capacity, sometimes quite dramatically. The effect of that on a portly middle aged man could be severely debilitating.

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Moreover, during said hour, Raab would presumably be the one 'in charge,' on the basis of his having been chosen by Boris to deputize for him in his absence.

This designation, and this is very important, has no constitutional significance. All it means is that he's heading up press briefings and chairing cabinet meetings.

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Johnson went around deliberately shaking the hands of Coronavirus patients. How likely do you guys think it is that he gave himself the virus on purpose in order to gain publicity/sympathy and serve as a unifying national figure? It seems like the sort of thing he'd do; Boris loves to take risks and it might all play to his favor.

Completely impossible: Johnson spent the first ten days of his illness, it appears, insisting that it was no big deal, even when he started to struggle to breathe. Staff had prepared a bed for him at St Thomas's and were trying to persuade him to go there a week ago, but he refused until the weekend. There's no crazed gambit here, just a man who refused to take a potentially dangerous illness seriously because he believes that Illness Is For Other People.

As it is, he's now spent a significant amount of time in intensive care. Assuming that he pulls through, we cannot even be sure that he will ever be well enough to fully return to front-line politics.

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Does it matter in the slightest what the polls are saying now?

No. There is functionally no politics at present.

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Does it matter in the slightest what the polls are saying now?

No. There is functionally no politics at present.

Though it is interesting to compare the reactions of different countries to their respective leaders at a time of crisis.

Mostly a picture of much as muchness, but there are a few... exceptions.

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Boris Johnson is now out of the hospital

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/uk-politics-52262012

I presume that they've decided that it's easier to turn a few rooms at Chequers into a little recovery ward for him than keep him in St Thomas'.

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https://twitter.com/dmk1793/status/1257752634817236993

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The defences are amusingly craven.

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"Our Dom" got it as well didn't he?

At the time of his Great Journey his illness was in its early stages, which is when the virus is at its most infectious...

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Never underestimate this & the fact that MPs know generally from records who the people are; a lot of MPs are shaped by their mailbag.

I did spot that one of the first to change his tune - and to even apologise for 'getting it wrong' on Saturday - was Halfron, who is known to be particularly attentive to such things.