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Johnson in the Commons for lockdown statement btw - you can follow along here https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/ddd965d1-c949-4679-b735-eb4dc9c5b1da
Extraordinary situation in which a historically foolish and irresponsible prime minister will face attacks from his own MPs for not being foolish or irresponsible enough.
He has tidy hair, so we really must be fucked.
Instructive to listen to this while getting messages from a friend in Thailand.
Starmer: "When Sage recommended an urgent 2-3 week circuit break, there were 11 deaths from covid & just over 4K infections. For 40 days the PM ignored that advice. When he finally announced a longer & deeper lockdown, those figures had increased to 326 deaths a day & 22K cases."
"Labour will provide the votes necessary to make this happen" Starmer says (making the kist of Tory rebellion). But wants broken track-and-trace system fixed and local authorities given control.
wants financial package to be "at least as generous" as March, and protection for the self-employed. PM needs to get a grip on messaging - "this announcement only happening today because it was leaked to national papers". And wants test for existing lockdown.
Will we leave lockdown on regional basis? Is it connected to R? These are all of course reasonable questions. Would be astonishing if we get answers to any of them.
Johnson sounds like he's still campaigning against lockdown while announcing that he is implementing it. The man is a broken toy.
Johnson says lockdown will end on December 2nd. House will then vote on whatever measures it wants, "but we'll then go back to the tiered system". What.
Liam Fox jumps up to gibber about making sure the "cure is not worse than the disease". It'll be all the smallest brains on parade today. A Greek chorus of utter tools.
Tory MP Charles Walker says he won't support the lockdown legislation because we are "drifting further into an authoritarian coercive state".
I really can't anymore. It's just the most inane bedwetting nonsense.
Sammy Wilson, DUP, says this is an announcement of defeat, "daily doses of doom-laden data". Seems to believe that covid is spread by people failing to believe harder that it can be ignored.
I mean, Brexit must have some explanatory function here. If you spend years believing that customs borders are a matter of faith, then it's not such a substantial step to believe the same of a pandemic.
It is actually mad. Not in a general political way, but a specific medical way. It is madness. An objectively insane proposition.
