Has Boris and the government done a good job of handling the pandemic?

[Bikeman78]

Yes, I agreed in March, and agree now. As I said above, the strategy of 12th March, which seemed to be more-or-less that, was reassuring to me that the government were going to approach this in the 'least worst' way. Unfortunately they swiftly changed their mind.

I do understand the argument that we may have overwhelmed the NHS without a lockdown, although I believe firstly the risk was overstated (largely based on the images from Italy and Ferguson's appalling modelling) - see Sweden, who never had capacity issues.

People have repeatedly failed to explain why Sweden, especially Stockholm, didn't go in to meltdown. Their death rate is slowly reducing so they are clearly past the worst of it. Their economy is comparatively intact and they have avoided all the bickering about how/when to come out of lockdown because there never was one.

 

[yorkie]

People have repeatedly failed to explain why Sweden, especially Stockholm, didn't go in to meltdown. Their death rate is slowly reducing so they are clearly past the worst of it. Their economy is comparatively intact and they have avoided all the bickering about how/when to come out of lockdown because there never was one.

Agreed. I'd be far happier if we'd handled this in the way Sweden has done.

 

[Domh245]

There hadn’t been a single death from Covid 19 in the UK on the 3rd March, the public wouldn’t have gone for it, Europe hadn’t locked down by then and they were ahead of us.

Spain didn’t lock down until the 14th March when they had had 292 deaths, France didn’t lock down until the 17th March when they had 175 deaths, so the maximum you can be looking at for us is about a week late into lockdown. We’d had 158 deaths on the 18th March.

Yes and no. A stronger leader could have made the case of "Europe is ahead of us by 2 weeks, therefore if we shut down now we can avoid reaching the same levels they have", but it would have been a tricky sell. However, the plan at that stage wasn't eradication, so locking down sooner with fewer cases would have had been counterproductive to the original plan.

 

[Esker-pades]

I do want to comment on New Zealand and Australia, because whilst I think that their achievements are impressive, they definitely had a lot of favours. Australia has a population of 25 million (less than half that of the UK), whilst New Zealand has a population of less than 5 million. The UK has a population density of 270.7 per Square KM, whilst New Zealand has 18.3 and Australia 3.3. And I will concede that many will live in Urban Areas and Coastal Regions, but then you also have to consider their distance from other countries and more easily seal-able borders. The UK consistently ships goods through its borders from Western Europe to Ireland, trade routes that cannot practically be stopped and almost certainly has more frequent movement between it and surrounding countries.

I think the lockdown policy in New Zealand has been very successful and almost certainly took a decent amount of decisiveness and fast action to achieve. But we should also understand that New Zealand was playing with a better set of cards for this circumstance and take a dose of realism before copy and pasting tactics for the UK.

New Zealand's cities are very low density as well, hence Auckland sprawling over a massive area for a population of 1m.

Focusing on New Zealand & Australia is not as useful for population density, but it assumes that they are the only countries to get it right.

Vietnam has a population density of ~290 per km^2 (higher than the UK), and has recorded no deaths and only 300 infections (~180k tests carried out). They have gone 2 months without any new cases as a result of local transmission.

Essentially, it was possible to get this right even with high population densities.

I think to a certain extent China probably had an advantage with their lockdown policy too. Most of the country's cases were concentrated in one city, so shutting it down did not require such a heavy amount of disruption to the economy as a whole. China also doesn't have to deal with pesky things like human rights, which I know a lot of those screaming for lockdown were eager to get rid of. I also think China's lockdown and reporting will have almost certainly had an angle of performance to them. The CCP showing their "decisiveness" and ability to contain this dangerous virus (forgetting that their poor control of the food and animal trade lead to this in the first place). I reckon the outbreak probably spread much more than was reported, simply because it took them so long to admit to the issue and respond, at which point testing probably caught a fraction of the cases, near the end of the curve anyway. In fact, if I was to really put my tin foil hat on, I might even say Wuhan's lockdown existed simply to shield residents from the amount of deaths and illness that was likely taking place.

China locked down Wuhan late enough for people that were already infected to leave the city for Chinese New Year. I don't disagree with the rest of your points on China.

That one is certainly with the benefit of hindsight

There hadn’t been a single death from Covid 19 in the UK on the 3rd March, the public wouldn’t have gone for it, Europe hadn’t locked down by then and they were ahead of us.

Spain didn’t lock down until the 14th March when they had had 292 deaths, France didn’t lock down until the 17th March when they had 175 deaths, so the maximum you can be looking at for us is about a week late into lockdown. We’d had 158 deaths on the 18th March.

What you're essentially saying is that we didn't learn from the disaster that was Italy & Lombardy, along with some other countries didn't (and some did). But, when France locked down, President Macron said that he'd got it wrong so and underestimated the virus. Prime Minister Johnson continues to claim that the UK's response was a success.

 

[Domh245]

Prime Minister Johnson continues to claim that the UK's response was a success.

Define success!

 

[takno]

I suggest the distinction here is not between herd immunity and a vaccine as suggested by #51. It's between two possible methods of achieving herd immunity:

• Through a vaccine. This can be done quickly and safely but you need the vaccine!
• Through infection in the community. This carries some level of risk because a proportion of people infected will become seriously ill. Therefore, to prevent the overwhelming of the NHS, some social distancing is necessary to manage the rate of infection. My contention on another thread is that until we have better knowledge of the number of people already infected and the effectiveness of various measures in controlling infection, we have to assume that this process (and therefore the associated control measures such as social distancing) would take many months and possibly years.

I agree that more information on this would be valuable. Unfortunately again the government has failed. We have piles of antibody tests which we aren't using because they are considered too risky to definitively tell people whether they have the virus. They overstate immunity by perhaps 2-3%, which is diagnostically problematic, but perfectly good enough to gather stats, and they are much easier for people to do at home and post off. We could cheaply and effectively do a real large scale trial and get some real information on this. I genuinely wonder if they are just worried about what the result would be

 

[Esker-pades]

Define success!

At the 3rd of March press conference, 20000 deaths was quoted as being successful. We're at more than double that now and it isn't even over.

 

[CaptainHaddock]

At the 3rd of March press conference, 20000 deaths was quoted as being successful. We're at more than double that now and it isn't even over.

How many of those people died solely of Covid-19?

There are that many different ways of counting the total deaths over the last three months and far too many people are picking whichever figure suits their political viewpoint.

 

[Mikey C]

People have repeatedly failed to explain why Sweden, especially Stockholm, didn't go in to meltdown. Their death rate is slowly reducing so they are clearly past the worst of it. Their economy is comparatively intact and they have avoided all the bickering about how/when to come out of lockdown because there never was one.

And there are significant regional variations in Sweden, with Stockholm worse hit than Malmo, despite having the same policies.

A lot is unexplained, it does seem that certain countries in Western Europe were especially badly affected, us of course, but also Spain, France, Italy, Netherlands and Belgium

 

[Reliablebeam]

I thought readers might be interested in the following website which is packed full of evidence based evaluations of covid:

Oxford COVID-19 Evidence Service - The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine

The Oxford CEBM COVID-19 Evidence Service provides rapid reviews with regular updates around primary care questions relating to the coronavirus pandemic.

www.cebm.net

It's run by a group from Oxford University. My main interesting observation on covid is how the worst 'rebounds' are seen in countries which apparently had great success in supressing the virus first time around, whereas our Spanish, French and Italian friends don't seem to be struggling as much - nor London for that matter. Maybe famous last words but it does suggest some of this modelling either assumes incorrect susceptibility amongst the populace (maybe cross-immunity from other coronaviruses?) or the transmission assumption (R0) they make is wrong..

I think Boris is probably the worst PM we could have wished for in this sort of crisis. Of all the PM's I have clear memories of, Blair is the only other who would give some cause for concern - I well remember the Foot and Mouth catastrophe in rural Wales, which largely came about due to Blair and co following the modelling of one N. Ferguson and his acolytes. On the other hand he was so untouchable he might well have stayed a Sweden style course come what may - he certainly didn't care about public opinion on the Iraq debacle and still got re-elected.. Of course, BoJo also seems to run his cabinet in a very similar style to Blair.... You can imagine Thatcher, Brown and May being all over this and for better or worse taking hard headed and unsentimental decisions for the future of the country.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think this would very much have been one for Theresa May. I'm sure she wouldn't have wanted it, but generally female leaders seem to have done better.

 

[Mikey C]

I thought readers might be interested in the following website which is packed full of evidence based evaluations of covid:

Oxford COVID-19 Evidence Service - The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine

The Oxford CEBM COVID-19 Evidence Service provides rapid reviews with regular updates around primary care questions relating to the coronavirus pandemic.

www.cebm.net

It's run by a group from Oxford University. My main interesting observation on covid is how the worst 'rebounds' are seen in countries which apparently had great success in supressing the virus first time around, whereas our Spanish, French and Italian friends don't seem to be struggling as much - nor London for that matter. Maybe famous last words but it does suggest some of this modelling either assumes incorrect susceptibility amongst the populace (maybe cross-immunity from other coronaviruses?) or the transmission assumption (R0) they make is wrong..

I think Boris is probably the worst PM we could have wished for in this sort of crisis. Of all the PM's I have clear memories of, Blair is the only other who would give some cause for concern - I well remember the Foot and Mouth catastrophe in rural Wales, which largely came about due to Blair and co following the modelling of one N. Ferguson and his acolytes. On the other hand he was so untouchable he might well have stayed a Sweden style course come what may - he certainly didn't care about public opinion on the Iraq debacle and still got re-elected.. Of course, BoJo also seems to run his cabinet in a very similar style to Blair.... You can imagine Thatcher, Brown and May being all over this and for better or worse taking hard headed and unsentimental decisions for the future of the country.

Blair would have been fine, as he had another strong politician Brown to work alongside him, especially as Brown was more powerful when it came to domestic policy

Boris doesn't have anyone of that ilk alongside him, as most of the other big hitters in the Conservative party got purged...

 

[northernchris]

How many of those people died solely of Covid-19?

There are that many different ways of counting the total deaths over the last three months and far too many people are picking whichever figure suits their political viewpoint.

This is a really valid point. A relative of a colleague was admitted to hospital with a stroke, and were tested on arrival. The test came back negative and unfortunately a few days later they died. They were retested and found to have the virus and on the death certificate covid was given as the reason for death. The family were trying to overturn this as they believed it was the stroke which was the cause. There's a possibility that the actual death count from the virus is lower than is reported

I think it's really difficult to judge the governments response. There's been many mistakes (as to be expected when so little is known) and there's been some successes. The lack of communication really lets down the government, it just doesn't seem to be there. However, given just over 6 months ago there was a possibility Corbyn could have become PM I really think things would have been a lot worse under his leadership

 

[edwin_m]

This is a really valid point. A relative of a colleague was admitted to hospital with a stroke, and were tested on arrival. The test came back negative and unfortunately a few days later they died. They were retested and found to have the virus and on the death certificate covid was given as the reason for death. The family were trying to overturn this as they believed it was the stroke which was the cause. There's a possibility that the actual death count from the virus is lower than is reported

I think it's really difficult to judge the governments response. There's been many mistakes (as to be expected when so little is known) and there's been some successes. The lack of communication really lets down the government, it just doesn't seem to be there. However, given just over 6 months ago there was a possibility Corbyn could have become PM I really think things would have been a lot worse under his leadership

Equally there will be false negative tests and people who died outside hospital and were never tested at all. The best measure is the excess deaths relative to the average at the same period over the last few years, which will also pick up deaths not directly caused by Covid but that would have been prevented in normal circumstances (such as somebody missing cancer treatment or not going to A&E because of fear of the virus). That figure is comfortably ahead of the official one, currently somewhere around 60,000.

 

[Huntergreed]

How many of those people died solely of Covid-19?

There are that many different ways of counting the total deaths over the last three months and far too many people are picking whichever figure suits their political viewpoint.

I have looked into this a little on the ONS website.

They say

Of the 3,912 deaths that occurred in March 2020 involving COVID-19, 3,563 (91%) had at least one pre-existing condition, while 349 (9%) had none. The mean number of pre-existing conditions was 2.7.

So it looks like we can assume that covid alone is causing up to 10% of the total death rate, which is 4,000 deaths in all. As would be expected, as you go into the younger population, a proportionally higher number of deaths occur without any underlying conditions.

For age groups younger than age 70 years, “No pre-existing conditions” ranks much higher than in those aged 70 years and over, where conditions such as dementia and Alzheimer disease are much more prominent.

The page states some interesting points, including that the risk of those over 55 dying from the virus is much higher than of those under 55.

The rate of death due to COVID-19 increased significantly in each age group, starting from age 55 to 59 years in males and age 65 to 69 years in females; overall, one in five deaths were in age group 80 to 84 years.

I would argue this statement alone is justification to allow the younger members of society to return to a far more normal state than they are currently facing, and I do think that the situation with schools and colleges in particular is totally unacceptable given the very, very low risk of death in this age category. Indeed there have been 3 overall deaths in the 0-20 age group with no conditions. I think it's utterly unacceptable to accept this is a reason to keep them living under such tight restrictions, but that's best addressed in another thread.

Overall, we can assume that up to a maximum of 10% of deaths are caused only by covid and not by any other condition according to the data presented on the ONS website.

I would recommend a browse through this data, there's some interesting information on the page which highlights just how ludicrous the current restrictions are when you see the true impact of this 'extremely deadly' virus, in the words of one Nicola Sturgeon.

Source: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...g-conditions-of-people-who-died-with-covid-19

 

[Butts]

Agreed. I'd be far happier if we'd handled this in the way Sweden has done.

Yet people are complaining that they had higher Death Rates than adjoining Norway and Denmark who implemented complete lockdowns.

 

[Bikeman78]

Yet people are complaining that they had higher Death Rates than adjoining Norway and Denmark who implemented complete lockdowns.

How many of the complainers live in Sweden? I bet there aren't many Swedish people wishing they'd gone for the UK strategy.

 

[northernchris]

Equally there will be false negative tests and people who died outside hospital and were never tested at all. The best measure is the excess deaths relative to the average at the same period over the last few years, which will also pick up deaths not directly caused by Covid but that would have been prevented in normal circumstances (such as somebody missing cancer treatment or not going to A&E because of fear of the virus). That figure is comfortably ahead of the official one, currently somewhere around 60,000.

Yes, the excess death figure is a more reliable measure than the obsession the media seem to have with the combined daily death toll

 

[Esker-pades]

How many of those people died solely of Covid-19?

There are that many different ways of counting the total deaths over the last three months and far too many people are picking whichever figure suits their political viewpoint.

Would you like to show some official/verifiable statistics that show a lower number? Otherwise your comment is meaningless.


I'll add a bit more:
The official death toll of ~41,500 is less than the ~65,000 excess deaths in the country, and the well over 50,000 where COVID-19 was mentioned on the death certificate (but wasn't necessarily the cause). Further, up to the 29th of April, only deaths in hospitals were recorded. That data is available and shows the death toll ~6000 higher than the figures from Downing Street. I'm using the lowest verifiable figures I can find, and we're still more than double what was considered a "good" outcome.

 

[ashkeba]

How many of the complainers live in Sweden? I bet there aren't many Swedish people wishing they'd gone for the UK strategy.

What UK strategy? It appears there were either three or none!

 

[Starmill]

Yes, that's the exact point I was making - our death statistics will include people who didn't die of COVID, but happened to have it when they did.

This factor is, of course, controlled for by the more reliable, but slower, excess deaths calculation. These cases will be within the 'baseline' rate, and not affect the 'excess' calculation.

The fact that the excess deaths is much higher than the death certificate recorded deaths suggests that the scale of the effect you're describing is very small, and dwarfed by the large number of people who have died of the disease but never had a diagnosis.

 

[edwin_m]

The fact that the excess deaths is much higher than the death certificate recorded deaths suggests that the scale of the effect you're describing is very small, and dwarfed by the large number of people who have died of the disease but never had a diagnosis.

Plus those who have died of other causes but wouldn't have done if the health service had been able to treat them.

 

[Bletchleyite]

This factor is, of course, controlled for by the more reliable, but slower, excess deaths calculation. These cases will be within the 'baseline' rate, and not affect the 'excess' calculation.

The fact that the excess deaths is much higher than the death certificate recorded deaths suggests that the scale of the effect you're describing is very small, and dwarfed by the large number of people who have died of the disease but never had a diagnosis.

I'm sure I recall hearing or reading that one day this week excess deaths was negative for this time of year, i.e. there have been fewer than normal.

 

[shodkini]

I'm sure I recall hearing or reading that one day this week excess deaths was negative for this time of year, i.e. there have been fewer than normal.

The "negative" excess deaths could be because a proportion of the expected deaths for the recent week occurred earlier due to Covid direct or indirect effects.....

 

[Yew]

Yes and no. A stronger leader could have made the case of "Europe is ahead of us by 2 weeks, therefore if we shut down now we can avoid reaching the same levels they have", but it would have been a tricky sell. However, the plan at that stage wasn't eradication, so locking down sooner with fewer cases would have had been counterproductive to the original plan.

Regardless of lockdown, I feel that encouraging people who can easily work from home to do so, and a no-detriment policy for leave/cancellations/whatever for people who are self isolating. I think they'd be minimally expensive or impact, but would have a surprising effect on the early stages of transmission

 

[jfollows]

The Economist: I don't disagree with much of this, essentially that we have the wrong sort of government for the pandemic crisis and the wrong sort of Prime Minister, who did not pay enough attention initially, chose his ministers for their ideology rather than their ability, and lacks attention to detail. It ends with the hope that in future more attention is paid to the competence of the person or party to vote for, but I don't personally think there was a lot to choose between in this area in the last election, although I'm hopeful that there will be in the next election, whenever that might be.

Politics and the pandemic
Britain has the wrong government for the covid crisis
It has played a bad hand badly

There was a lot going on in Britain in early March. London staged an England-Wales rugby match on March 7th, which the prime minister attended along with a crowd of 81,000; on March 11th Liverpool played Atletico Madrid, in front of a crowd of 52,000 fans, including 3,000 from Spain; 252,000 punters went to the Cheltenham Festival, one of the country’s poshest steeplechase meetings, which ended on March 13th.

As Britons were getting together to amuse themselves and infect each other, Europe was shutting down. Borders were closing, public gatherings being banned. Italy went into full lockdown on March 9th, Denmark on March 11th, Spain on March 14th and France on March 17th. Britain followed only on March 23rd.

Putting in place sweeping restrictions on everyday life was a difficult decision, fraught with uncertainty. Yet the delay is just one example of the government’s tardiness. Britain has been slow to increase testing, identify a contact-tracing app, stop visits to care homes, ban big public events, provide its health workers with personal protective equipment (ppe), and require people to wear face coverings on public transport. As this wave of the disease ebbs, Britons are wondering how they came to have the highest overall death rate of any country in the rich world, and why leaving lockdown is proving so difficult.

The evidence so far suggests that the British government played a bad hand badly. The country was always going to struggle. The virus took off in London, an international hub. Britain has a high proportion of ethnic-minority people, who are especially vulnerable to the disease. And Britons are somewhat overweight, which exacerbates the impact of the infection.

Britain has got some things right. Its researchers have been in the forefront of the race to find drugs and create vaccines against the disease. On June 16th a trial by Oxford University, the first to identify a life-saving medicine, showed that a cheap steroid can reduce mortality among the sickest patients by a third. A swift reorganisation of the National Health Service put paid to fears that it would be overwhelmed. But the government has wasted the most precious commodity in a crisis: time. In a federal system, like America’s, the central government’s failings can be mitigated by state and local authorities. In a centralised system, they cannot.

Hindsight is a fine thing, and offers a clarity that is absent in the blizzard of events. Yet it is now plain that Britain’s scientists initially argued for the wrong approach: accepting that the disease would spread through the population, while protecting the vulnerable and the health service. Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London, estimates that had Britain locked down a week earlier, at least half of the 50,000-or-so lives that have been lost would have been saved. This is more Britons than have died in any event since the second world war.

In retrospect, the government should have probed the scientists’ advice more deeply. Some of it was questionable. The received wisdom that people would tire of social distancing, and that shutting down early would mean loosening early too, was just a hunch. Even after the evidence changed, and it became clear the country was heading for catastrophe, the government was slow to impose the sort of lockdown seen across Europe.

Yet you do not need hindsight to identify other mistakes. Delays in fixing ppe supply chains, promoting face coverings and increasing testing capacity were clearly errors at the time. Despite the urging of the country’s scientists and the World Health Organisation, by the middle of April Britain was still carrying out just 12,000 tests a day, compared with 44,000 in Italy and 51,000 in Germany. Because most testing was reserved for hospitals, care homes struggled to find out which of their residents and staff were infected. Competition for ppe was fierce, so they also struggled to get the kit they needed to protect their workers.

The government is not solely to blame. The pandemic made new demands on the system. Some crucial bits of machinery did not work. The publicly owned company which supplies the health service with ppe failed. Public Health England, which was responsible for testing and tracing, failed. But there was a failure of leadership, too. When systems break it is the government’s job to mend them; when the evidence argues for drastic measures ministers need to take them.

Britain is still living with the consequences. The spread of the virus and the devastation it has wrought have made leaving lockdown difficult, as shown by the halting return of pupils to school. Only five year-groups have gone back, many parents are choosing to keep their children at home, and the government has abandoned an earlier ambition to get more in. The “world-beating” contact-tracing system still lacks its app, which is not due to arrive until winter. Slow progress at suppressing the virus will have grave economic consequences, too.

These shortcomings have claimed many victims. Among them is public trust. Britain went into this crisis with a powerful sense of unity and goodwill towards the government. Now Britons think worse of their government’s performance during the crisis than do the citizens of any of 22 countries polled by YouGov, aside from Mexico. That reflects the government’s mistakes and its hypocrisy, after the prime minister’s main adviser broke its own rules about when to travel—and kept his job. While the world waits for a vaccine this lack of trust will make managing the disease a lot harder.

The painful conclusion is that Britain has the wrong sort of government for a pandemic—and, in Boris Johnson, the wrong sort of prime minister. Elected in December with the slogan of “Get Brexit Done”, he did not pay covid-19 enough attention. Ministers were chosen on ideological grounds; talented candidates with the wrong views were left out in the cold. Mr Johnson got the top job because he is a brilliant campaigner and a charismatic entertainer with whom the Conservative Party fell in love. Beating the coronavirus calls for attention to detail, consistency and implementation, but they are not his forte.

The pandemic has many lessons for the government, which the inevitable public inquiry will surely clarify. Here is one for voters: when choosing a person or party to vote for, do not underestimate the importance of ordinary, decent competence.

 

[philosopher]

The Economist: I don't disagree with much of this, essentially that we have the wrong sort of government for the pandemic crisis and the wrong sort of Prime Minister, who did not pay enough attention initially, chose his ministers for their ideology rather than their ability, and lacks attention to detail. It ends with the hope that in future more attention is paid to the competence of the person or party to vote for, but I don't personally think there was a lot to choose between in this area in the last election, although I'm hopeful that there will be in the next election, whenever that might be.

Boris clearly is not the type of PM you want for this situation. He is a ‘good times’ PM primarily elected to get Brexit done. Gordon Brown and Margaret Thatcher are probably the PMs for dealing with this, as has been mentioned earlier. I too don’t think Corbyn would have been any better. Both of them seemed like leaders who are good at grand promises but are not so good at the nitty gritty of governing. They are both also fairly divisive figures, again not great for a situation which requires people to trust the government.

 

[edwin_m]

Boris clearly is not the type of PM you want for this situation. He is a ‘good times’ PM primarily elected to get Brexit done. Gordon Brown and Margaret Thatcher are probably the PMs for dealing with this, as has been mentioned earlier. I too don’t think Corbyn would have been any better. Both of them seemed like leaders who are good at grand promises but are not so good at the nitty gritty of governing. They are both also fairly divisive figures, again not great for a situation which requires people to trust the government.

Indeed. I'd take issue with the suggestion in the article that Britain was united after the 2019 election - I and I suspect many others strongly in favour of remaining were pretty disgusted by the way Brexit was railroaded through. I gave Boris the benefit of the doubt on his plans for levelling up, but the government's handling of the coronavirus confirms my suspicions that they are driven by ideology not competence.

 

[jfollows]

Indeed. I'd take issue with the suggestion in the article that Britain was united after the 2019 election - I and I suspect many others strongly in favour of remaining were pretty disgusted by the way Brexit was railroaded through. I gave Boris the benefit of the doubt on his plans for levelling up, but the government's handling of the coronavirus confirms my suspicions that they are driven by ideology not competence.

I agree - I didn't sense any unity following the last election, however it was the point at which I gave up my efforts to prevent us leaving the EU, it was an "oh well, that's it then" kind of thing for me then. But in no way did I support Boris and his plans, it's just that I stopped actively opposing them. Neither did I have any goodwill towards the government, nor do I think that unity and goodwill changed any after the election, if anything the polarisation into two opposing camps became more apparent, but just no longer in Westminster and its political bubble where it became easy for Boris to steamroller his plans through without opposition.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think effectively the last election was a de-facto second Brexit referendum (which was very much in favour of "leave") and not really a proper general election. I can't imagine the former coal towns of the North East voting Tory again in a hurry - they did it for one specific reason.