Saturday, May 30, 2020
How much political capital does Boris Johnson have left?
It has been a week and Dominic Cummings is still in post. The amount of political capital expended by the Prime Minister to keep his Svengali in post has been extraordinary.
As the Guardian reports, the furore over Dominic Cummings’ breach of lockdown rules has prompted tens of thousands of people to flood their MPs’ inboxes in what some described as the biggest outpouring since Brexit:
A Guardian analysis covering 117 MPs found they have received a total of 31,738 emails since a joint Guardian and Daily Mirror investigation a week ago divulged that Cummings had travelled to County Durham and taken a trip to a beauty spot with his family after suffering coronavirus symptoms.
If that level of correspondence was reflected across all 650 MPs, it would suggest the revelations may have sparked as many as 180,000 items of correspondence. The numbers were either provided in response to the Guardian’s request for figures, or in statements MPs had released to constituents.
Johnson has repeatedly suggested it was time to “move on” from the Cummings row, despite about half of Tory backbenchers – more than 100 MPs – calling for his most senior aide to resign or be sacked, or criticising Cummings. Many said they were motivated by their constituents’ anger.
Several Conservative MPs in marginal seats said they had received more than 1,000 emails about Cummings, in some cases dwarfing their majority. While the average number of emails each MP got was 271, the Tory MPs analysed by the Guardian received 590 each on average.
Many MPs said the emails were from people writing to them for the first time and not the common copy-and-paste messages on a campaigning issue, and for some it has been the most significant volume since the Brexit crisis in parliament.
Meanwhile, the Independent reports that mthan 1 million people have signed a petition calling for Dominic Cummings to be sacked over allegedly breaching the lockdown rules.
In addition, a recent YouGov poll found 59 per cent of people thought Mr Cummings should resign and 71 per cent believed he had broken the rules, while the Tory lead over Labour narrowed to six points, from 15 points on the week before.
Johnson has not just destroyed the trust between the government and those they need to obey the rules if we are to defeat this virus, he has also demolished his own electability, the one factor that motivated Tory MPs and members to select him as their leader in the first place.
As the Guardian reports, the furore over Dominic Cummings’ breach of lockdown rules has prompted tens of thousands of people to flood their MPs’ inboxes in what some described as the biggest outpouring since Brexit:
A Guardian analysis covering 117 MPs found they have received a total of 31,738 emails since a joint Guardian and Daily Mirror investigation a week ago divulged that Cummings had travelled to County Durham and taken a trip to a beauty spot with his family after suffering coronavirus symptoms.
If that level of correspondence was reflected across all 650 MPs, it would suggest the revelations may have sparked as many as 180,000 items of correspondence. The numbers were either provided in response to the Guardian’s request for figures, or in statements MPs had released to constituents.
Johnson has repeatedly suggested it was time to “move on” from the Cummings row, despite about half of Tory backbenchers – more than 100 MPs – calling for his most senior aide to resign or be sacked, or criticising Cummings. Many said they were motivated by their constituents’ anger.
Several Conservative MPs in marginal seats said they had received more than 1,000 emails about Cummings, in some cases dwarfing their majority. While the average number of emails each MP got was 271, the Tory MPs analysed by the Guardian received 590 each on average.
Many MPs said the emails were from people writing to them for the first time and not the common copy-and-paste messages on a campaigning issue, and for some it has been the most significant volume since the Brexit crisis in parliament.
Meanwhile, the Independent reports that mthan 1 million people have signed a petition calling for Dominic Cummings to be sacked over allegedly breaching the lockdown rules.
In addition, a recent YouGov poll found 59 per cent of people thought Mr Cummings should resign and 71 per cent believed he had broken the rules, while the Tory lead over Labour narrowed to six points, from 15 points on the week before.
Johnson has not just destroyed the trust between the government and those they need to obey the rules if we are to defeat this virus, he has also demolished his own electability, the one factor that motivated Tory MPs and members to select him as their leader in the first place.
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Cummings was a big thing with the leave vote,behind the scenes where all the plans were made with the support of the right wing media and other tax dodging funders .This elite aristocrat son (uncle with castle) is now exposed as a devious chap who is helping Johnson with Brexit.With the fiasco over Covid-19 is it not time to revisit the way,reason that the people were sold Brexit. With no transition extended does this not add further cost to the nation when we have to cope with Covid -19 as well.
Or is it Cummings gets his downfall of institutions by removing the elderly and having a young compliant workforce for economic reasons whilst restructuring the economy in his image .
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Or is it Cummings gets his downfall of institutions by removing the elderly and having a young compliant workforce for economic reasons whilst restructuring the economy in his image .
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