- “Michael Gove shaped Britain – and divided it. What’s next?” – Tim Shipman has written a political obituary of Michael Gove for the Sunday Times that’s well worth a read.
- “Michael Gove: the most powerful Tory never to have been prime minister” – Michael Gove’s decision to stand down ends the career of arguably the most powerful MP of this century never to have been Prime Minister, says Gordon Rayner in the Telegraph.
- “The Tories have lost the one man who knew how to defeat the Blob” – After his triumph at Education, it is sad Michael Gove wasn’t given another big department to transform, writes Simon Heffer in the Telegraph.
- “‘Stalinist’ Sunak threatened with legal action for blocking pro-Boris candidates” – The Tory party has been threatened with legal action amid claims that “Stalinist” Rishi Sunak is blocking pro-Boris candidates from standing as MPs, reports the Telegraph.
- “Boris Johnson will be abroad for most of election campaign” – According to friends, Boris Johnson will be out of the country for the majority of the election campaign, says the Telegraph.
- “Crying in the rain” – In the New Conservative, Frank Haviland rips into Rishi Sunak’s performance and the state of the Conservative Party.
- “The end of politics” – On Substack, Paul Sutton envisions an impending global conflict amid a backdrop of cultural decay, corruption and the rise of authoritarian powers.
- “Noisy minorities are being allowed to bully the rest of us into silence” – The attempt to drown out the PM’s election speech outside No.10 reflected a sinister trend in our politics, says Janet Daley in the Telegraph.
- “‘The Madman’ who puts Britain’s bland leaders in the shade” – At the same time as Rishi was receiving a new umbrella from one of his MPs, the President of Argentina was leaping about on stage, writes Janet Street-Porter in the Mail.
- “Labour could allow 16 year-olds to vote in first year of government” – Keir Starmer has confirmed that he wants to give the vote to 16 year-olds, reports the Mail.
- “Voters know they will regret supporting Labour, but they’re going to do it anyway” – Let me guarantee you one thing: if Sir Keir Starmer wins, nobody will call him a heavyweight, says Dan Hannan in the Telegraph.
- “How bad will a Labour Government be?” – Labour is a mishmash of coalition interests that will need identity politics to keep it together as a reconciler of contradictions, writes Ed West in the Spectator.
- “Britain’s reality check threatens to be nasty, brutish and far from short” – Don’t make the mistake of thinking that Labour offers an alternative to Tory chaos, says Jeremy Warner in the Telegraph.
- “Tactical voting threat to Tories as Lib Dems target 90 seats” – Sir Ed Davey has launched his party’s General Election campaign with a strategy to secure dozens of blue wall seats, reports the Times.
- “Alan Bates brands Paula Vennells ‘Cruella de Vil playing Mary Poppins’” – Campaigner Alan Bates dismissed the tears of disgraced former Post Office boss Paula Vennells at the Covid Inquiry, likening her to “Cruella de Vil trying to play Mary Poppins”, according to the Mail.
- “‘More than 10,000’ migrants have crossed the English Channel this year” – More than 10,000 small-boat migrants are thought to have arrived in Britain via the Channel so far this year, reports the Mail.
- “The smoking ban will be back” – The Tobacco and Vapes Bill is not going to disappear. It is only delayed, writes Kate Andrews in the Spectator.
- “Losing faith in our police” – The recent behaviour of many police officers around the country indicates how far forces have departed from Peelite principles, says Julian Mann in Christian Today.
- “Covid Inquiry criticised for ignoring study on lockdown harms” – The Covid Inquiry has been accused of ignoring one of the biggest studies on the harms of lockdowns, reports the Telegraph.
- “Excitable media act as Big Pharma salesmen” – In TCW, Jonathan Angler is taking the hype surrounding weight loss injections with a large pinch of salt.
- “Putin wants a ceasefire in Ukraine ‘because the war costs too much’” – Russian sources claim that Putin is ready to “freeze the war” in Ukraine if a ceasefire, which recognises the current battlefield lines, can be agreed, reports the Mail.
- “Net Zero efforts could cause rise in air pollution deaths” – A new study warns that Net Zero measures, such as making homes better insulated, could increase the number of deaths from air pollution, according to the Telegraph.
- “Gas bills could rise by £1,000 to pay for wind power” – Gas bills are projected to rise by around £1,000 to pay for wind power under official plans being considered by the Energy Secretary, reports the Telegraph.
- “Ireland’s Green Party election manifesto calls for hate speech legislation” – Ireland’s Green Party has renewed its call for hate speech and hate crime legislation in its newly-released European election manifesto, says Gript.
- “Physically-healthy Dutch woman dies by euthanasia” – A physically-healthy Dutch woman died by euthanasia soon after turning 29 because she didn’t want to live with depression and anxiety, reports the Mail.
- “J.K. Rowling says she’d ‘love to know how Labour defines a woman’” – The Harry Potter author has suggested that Keir Starmer’s recent “back-pedalling” on transgender issues is insincere, according to the Mail.
- “Biden derangement syndrome” – In the New Conservative, Dr. Roger Watson has become aware of another derangement related to Joe Biden.
- “Here is the film Nova” – Watch the documentary about Hamas’s attack on the Nova music festival. Viewer discretion advised.
Here is the film “Nova”.
— Andrew Fox (@Mr_Andrew_Fox) May 25, 2024
It is footage recorded by Hamas themselves, victims and first responders at the Nova festival on 7th October.
For all those who think the festival-goers were killed by IDF Apaches
Viewer discretion advised. pic.twitter.com/BBGdKLeqVN
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“it is sad Michael Gove wasn’t given another big department to transform”
Not for me it isn’t. Despicable Covid fanatic.
Fiddled with and ruined Health, ruined Education. No enduring positive effect on either of them. Gove 0-2 Blob…
I don’t know much about what he did in those two roles. I was a school governor for part of his tenure, and I do remember being astonished by the volume of “no shit Sherlock” initiatives that the senior leadership team were meant to read up on and implement. My recollection is hazy so I can’t say much about the exact nature of these initiatives, which ministers were responsible and who produced the most, but I do remember thinking none of it seemed very worthwhile and we’d all have been better off if schools had been left alone to teach stuff – but to be fair the school I was a governor of had an exceptionally motivated and competent team working in it and I accept not all schools are like that. I don’t know what the answer is but I do think the “look busy at all costs” tendency of political leaders (and probably senior civil servants for that matter) is not the ideal way to run things.
The lying, cheating, total waste of space will most probably end up as Sir Michael or Lord Gove of Shittingham as a reward for services rendered.
He is, apparently, a hypochondriac but that is, of course, no excuse.
Nevertheless, he was an outstanding Education Minister, as the results of his reforms are now demonstrating:
‘The UK’s position remains strong, with significantly above average scores in all three subjects. And while UK scores fell, they fell less than the OECD average. What’s more, the UK trends were (unusually) upwards in reading and stable in maths.
This may sound a bit underwhelming, but it is an excellent performance relative to some obvious comparator countries. Germany, for example, recorded its lowest ever scores, including only OECD-average maths scores and a low score for fairness of the education system.
France experienced a record drop in performance, and also has a highly inequitable education system. Results from the United States show particularly poor scores in maths, trailing many other countries, while in the Netherlands, immigrant pupils’ score were particularly low.
In fact, the UK has the best combination of average performance and fairness metric in maths of any European country.’
https://www.economicsobservatory.com/what-can-the-uk-learn-from-the-latest-global-data-on-pupil-performance
Why on earth would OECD country scores be falling?
As for being a hypochondriac, so am I. It didn’t stop Gove dancing the night away during the “deadly pandemic”: Michael Gove hits the dancefloor in Aberdeen, telling nightclub boss: ‘I love to dance’ | Politics News | Sky News
OECD scores fell ‘due to structural factors’ – code for struggling immigrant pupils.
Those who know Gove suggest that his hypochondria may have contributed greatly to the panic in Cabinet at the time:
‘It comes as no surprise that Michael Gove has been the chief proponent of lockdown. Ever since I first met Michael two decades ago, he has gleamed with fanaticism and has a lacuna where common sense is concerned. For a cause in which he believes, he becomes like one of the late Eugène Terre’Blanche’s Dobermans, baring his teeth and foaming at the mouth. He is, moreover, an incurable hypochondriac, and every ache and pain feels to him like the bite of a tiger.’
Petronella Wyatt
Regarding the educational achievement, that would be my strong suspicion too.
Regarding Gove’s hypochondria, it seems weaker than his desire to get off his face and get laid, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a sufferer. As someone who has suffered with this in the past, I have little sympathy for his desire to impose his manias on others.
Putin wants a ceasefire in Ukraine ‘because the war costs too much
What’s really going on?
Maybe ‘the war costs too much’ in diverse ways, potentially?
“The bribery [charges] are for the public. They don’t want to talk publicly about treason right now — it’s a big scandal. It’s the deputy defense minister, after all……Everyone there [in the Kremlin] knew about this for a long time……Putin gave the order after being convinced that the case was specifically about treason” and that “nobody would have arrested [Ivanov] for corruption…….Ivanov is “Shoigu’s man”
iStories
Treason? You mean the ‘Ooops, another private jet exploded’ kind of thing?
Dark days in the Kremlin……Andrey Belousov sounds a bit like ‘Spreadsheet Phil’ and we all know how that turned out:
‘Ou est le masse de manoeuvre?’
‘Aucune!’
Gove is largely responsible for the mess we’re in. Stabbed Boris in the back during the post Cameron Tory leadership election leading to Brexit being delayed by years, and being not being properly done. Then was the architect behind draconian COVID lockdowns and restrictions. Good riddance!
The “Nova” film does not offer any real insight into the attack. For anyone concerned about the content, there aren’t any graphic images and it’s mainly shaky footage recorded by people running, hiding and driving and quite a lot of rave clips.
The X comment related to IDF Apaches is a distraction as there is nothing in the film that would prove or disprove that such an event took place.
I see Sunak’s response to Starmers “votes for 16 year olds” is “National Service for all 18 year olds”.
Phoney democratic governments need cannon fodder for phoney wars. Gotta keep the armaments dealers happy. BigPharma drug lords have already – and continue to do so – made a killing. So many shysters to please…
How about no vote until you’ve done your National Service? (only half joking).
Alternatively we could have votes for 16 year olds provided they pass a basic citizenship test. You know, something like: “Do you intend to vote Labour?”
Or correctly answer the simple question – ‘what is a woman’.
“there are forces trying to divide our society in this increasingly uncertain world”
The Prime Minister summarising the actions of successive UK governments and their allies.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpddxy9r4mdo
“Voters know they will regret supporting Labour, but they’re going to do it anyway”
Daniel Hannan is stating the disheartening truth. Here are a couple of comments from the public:
—“Just look at the polls. The public whinge about how terrible everything is, about how immigration is ruining their communities and how tax is too high and how young people can’t get housing, but Labour is on 40+% and the Conservatives, that allowed 130,000 random men on boats to come in, on top of the highest net migration in history, are still on 20+%. The public don’t want change or “reform”, they just want to continue whinging until it’s too late.”
—“The British will do the same thing they have always done, a cycle of labour to Tory, to Labour to Tory and so on. The Brits don’t want change. They want to watch themselves erased and replaced. They want high taxes, high immigration, no chance for youngsters to get a home. They want to hand their entire country over, in collective suicide.”
Very sad, but true
It seems you’re right, otherwise more people would support and vote for patriotic nationalist parties such as Britain First instead of watching the changing of the old socialist guard after every election.
They must like traitors to be in charge and busily ruining their children’s future.
“‘Stalinist’ Sunak threatened with legal action for blocking pro-Boris candidates”
Sunak the Smarmy is revealing his true cutthroat tactics, clinging to power despite the fact that nobody voted for him, his claws grasping the door handle of No.10 while the whole country wants him dragged away.
“Labour could allow 16 year-olds to vote in first year of government”
Oh just dandy, 1.5 million more greta thunbergs idealisticly voting to ruin their own futures!
Voting age should be raised to 21
A very dangerous move. They won’t have finished their indoctrination by then.
Yes, as it used to be until a cynical Labour government lowered it from 21 to 18 in the 1960s. They knew that younger people, being inexperienced and idealistic rather than realistic, would vote for them.
Starmer and his rabble are even more cynical.
One thing’s for sure: those Labour predators really do like them young. Much like their client voter group.
In yesterday’s Daily Telegraph article Covid Inquiry criticised for ignoring study on lockdown harms we find a link to a much earlier article Covid lockdown ‘prevented only 0.2pc of deaths in first wave’ from 2 Feb 2022. Within that earlier article we find a chart which compares the stringency of lockdowns and other non-pharmaceutical interventions like masking against deaths attributed to Covid.
The excellent NPI stringency index was put together by the Blavatnik School of Government at University of Oxford and compared daily Covid related restrictions on people’s lives in various countries around the world. The Stringency Index is accessible though Our World in Data (OWID) . Its most obvious limitation is that it is an index of restrictions and we don’t have a baseline of how ‘free’ the people of each country were before anyone had even heard of Covid.
A simple comparison of the stringency index against Covid mortality as shown in the above chart is almost meaningless. Government analysts are quite capable of projecting an epidemic curve forwards to foretell what will happen to mortality in a week or so. It is therefore no surprise that governments imposed more stringent controls a bit before increases in death count.
Governments’ apparent assumption was that more stringent controls would reduce transmission of the bug. The success or otherwise could then be measured in the change to the mortality rate some time later. It must take some time between catching the bug and dying from it and the increased stringency will have no effect on the outcome for those already infected before lockdown. But how long does it take for a lockdown to show any effect on any-cause mortality and how big is that effect?
We’re not really interested in what the any-cause mortality rate is x weeks after the imposition of lockdown. What we’re interested in is the change in the death rate; is the mortality rate reducing or not increasing as fast as previously? Under this sort of analysis we find that the imposition of more stringent restrictions had a very brief and minor effect on mortality on average for a period of ~1 week about 27 days after being imposed. This tells us two major things:
1 – Given that the peak in mortality in England and Wales was on 8 April and the first lockdown was announced 16 days earlier on 23 March we can see that the majority of those who died at the first peak were already infected at the time of lockdown (I know from my own experience that businesses implemented lockdown straight away and were turning employees away on 24 March). The peak of infections must have been about 27 days earlier than the peak of mortality; ie at around 12 March. To have any prospect of significantly reducing transmission before infections naturally peaked the lockdown would have to have been a week or two before 12 March. The first day with multiple Covid deaths was 5 March (2 deaths) – just 1 week before peak infections. This means using mortality to guide lockdown decisions was and is futile. I do not believe the Coronavirus 2020 Act which effectively enabled lockdown in the UK would have been fast-tracked like it was (just 6 days) if it had been introduced to Parliament in early March instead of 19 March.
2 – The improvement in mortality rate is short-lived. Within a week the mortality trend returned to the previous state. Lockdown had a minor benefit for just one week. Unfortunately, the same analysis shows that about 16 weeks after increased stringency restrictions are imposed there is an increase in the rate of increase in mortality – almost equal and opposite in magnitude. In other words the increase in stringency merely delayed the inevitable by about 12 weeks.
(Note that England and Wales death registration reporting rules results in about 7-10 days delay between death and appearance in weekly statistics reports).
If we extend the analysis beyond England and Wales to all countries where we have both Stringency Index figures and weekly (or better) mortality reporting we see the same effect: about 4 weeks between increased stringency of restrictions and a minor improvement in mortality rates followed by a rebound about 16 weeks after the restrictions.
Lockdown and other NPIs were futile.