So who's enjoying the Boris Johnson v Dominic Cummings war

[malaise]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/29/he-came-he-spoke-but-what-will-cummingss-explosive-claims-mean

After more than two and a half hours of extraordinary testimony from Dominic Cummings to a Commons committee last Wednesday morning, Greg Clark, the former cabinet minister who had chaired the explosive morning session, called a short lunch break. He and his co-chair – the former health secretary Jeremy Hunt – had, like the other 20 MPs who were due to ask questions, been left stunned, appalled and riveted in equal measure by what they had just heard.

Expectations had been set high in advance of the appearance of the highly combustible Cummings. The ex-adviser had been forced out of Downing Street last November in a power struggle that had involved the prime minister’s fiancee, Carrie Symonds. Downing Street was on edge because Cummings had been firing off ominous preparatory salvoes on Twitter for days. But after a morning in the witness chair he had already exceeded his billing, unleashing accusations of such gravity that at times the MPs (and presumably much of the public watching on TV) found it all but impossible to keep up.

“To lift the lid on the inadequacies of a government he served, in the face of a crisis like Covid, in the way he did – so calmly – was unlike anything I have ever witnessed,” said one committee member.

Cummings had painted pictures of his former boss Boris Johnson as a hopeless, careless incompetent unfit for high office; of Matt Hancock as a serial liar of a health secretary who should have been fired “15 to 20 times”; and of the entire government and Whitehall machine as chaotic and dysfunctional at every level in their shambolic early response to the Covid-19 pandemic last year.

[marye50]

1. Cummings testified that Boris wanted to be injected w/Covid

To show that it wasn’t a big deal.

[dawg day]

16. Then Boris got it naturally

And almost died.

This is really a team of vipers, and yet they got reelected.

[FakeNoose]

2. Wow! I hope Dominic Cummings has a few body guards

... and a place to hide. This is getting ugly.

[malaise]

3. Getting?

Boris and his Health Minister are up shit creek without a paddle
From the link
In all, the Cummings evidence would last seven hours, until late afternoon. Throughout, with his head propped on his hands, he dropped bombshell after bombshell with dizzying regularity. Strikingly, however – for someone who had denied having done anything wrong last summer when he drove to County Durham with his wife and child when suffering Covid symptoms – Cummings opened with a very personal apology, and later even ridiculed himself as unfit to have been a prime ministerial adviser. “In any sensible, rational government, it is completely crazy that I should have been in such a senior position, in my personal opinion,” he said. “I’m not smart. I’ve not built great things in the world. It is completely crackers that someone like me should have been in there, just like it’s crackers that Boris Johnson is in there.”

[ananda]

4. And Keir Starmer is on the attack...

going after Johnson and the Tories for their chaos,
incompetence, and civil war.

I like this!

[malaise]

5. Looks like the Trickle down posse

are pissing on themselves across the planet these days. I love internecine war.
Go Labour!

[Emrys]

6. I'd enjoy it more if I didn't suspect it was aimed at opening the door for

a Michael Gove premiership.

[malaise]

9. The people are moving away from the right wing lunatics

We do have a say. These are interesting times

[Emrys]

12. There's no sign of that happening in England. The Tories are riding high in the polls there,

despite weekly, almost daily, scandals.

Which makes me glad I live in Scotland.

[malaise]

13. That is frightening

Indeed

[Emrys]

14. I think there's been a twitch downward in one of the latest polls,

presumably as a result of Cummings' allegations, but more or less within the margin of error.

There's a standing joke on social media at the moment every time a new scandal emerges: "That's the Tories up five more points in the opinion polls": https://twitter.com/search?q=tories%20polls&src=typed_query

Some of it's a testament to the weakness of the Labour opposition, some of it's probably to do with the COVID crisis, where for some reason the government's cockups (including those alleged by Cummings, many of which haven't come as a surprise) aren't registering and the government's all people have to rely on to try to get us through (they're probably getting more credit than they're due for the vaccine rollout), and some of it's probably a hangover from the stark Brexit divisions, despite the fact that's been an unmitigated series of predictable disasters so far (and its ill effects have been masked to an extent by COVID). Labour offers no coherent alternative to all that.

The media in the UK are generally owned by big money interests, many overseas, and the BBC's been more or less taken over by the Tories, so coverage of these issues is generally inconsistent and fragmented, too often self-serving, and easily distracted by puff headlines about the latest dead cat flung on the table (not sure if Americans will understand that idiom - it's like shouting "Squirrel!" at an opportune moment).

Some sort of circle-the-wagons effect is probably at play among Tory supporters, too - we see that in other countries as well when populist parties (like the Republicans) are perceived to be under attack.

[malaise]

18. Thanks for this

The reality is that there will be a global paradigm shift following this pandemic

[Emrys]

19. I appreciate your optimism, but I think it'll be patchy.

Those old vested interests are very insidious and deep-rooted in many countries, and I doubt they'll go down without a prolonged and tortuous fight.

[róisín_dubh]

15. I just read something about how Tory numbers are slipping.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/30/tory-poll-lead-shrinks-following-cummings-broadside-against-johnson I live in Tory stronghold (Essex) and it's painful.

[Emrys]

17. You have my sincere sympathy.

I lived in Reading during the early Thatcher years - it was a major driver for my eventual move to Scotland.

[Skittles]

7. so essentially, he is saying England has their own Trump

yes indeed

[malaise]

8. Just like Brazil and India

[HipChick]

10. I've been following it...

[panader0]

11. No wonder trump liked him. At first, until he caught Bojo laughing at him.

[mainer]

20. For background on these guys, watch "Brexit" on HBO!

Starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Dominic Cummings.