[seankenny]

Labour, in particular, has a massive image problem; because very few working or middle class people in the UK, feel represented by them. They appear to represent most minority groups (Good, brilliant, right) exclusively (not good, divisive, exclusionary).

Perhaps it’s just a media issue, possibly the entirety of the media is biased against the left in general? Or, maybe, they could, perhaps, at least try, to be a little less judgmental?

Labour does indeed have a massive image problem, but it's not quite this simple.

Here's the YouGov post-2019 election analysis: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/12/17/how-britain-voted-2019-general-election

If you look at the differences by social class, there isn't a huge difference in Labour support between Mr Hi Vis and Mr Suit. A third of the population supporting you isn't good and it certainly isn't good enough, but neither is is "very few". The big dividing lines are still age and education - and I'm certain there is some research that teases these effects out to show which is slightly more important, but I can't for the life of me remember which way around it is. And I think it's quite clear that the preferences of the elderly - for continuing high house prices and low levels of house building, for continuing high spending on elderly benefits, for low levels of spending on climate change which they won't benefit from - are in direct opposition to the preferences of the young.

One of the huge issues for Labour is I think the confusion between left wing activists and the Party itself. I have little time for many of the former and think they over-represent what the "electoral left" is interested in, or wants to do. For me another, and interlinked, issue is that on many issues - such as minority rights and representation - big city and small town dwellers are simply living in very different realities.

[mrjonathanr]

Have I just misunderstood (apologies if this is in the wrong thread) but has Javid just held a press conference to communicate the message that the gov intends to sit on its hands and if there are 100k infections /day it will be because of public failure to get vaccines and follow other, no longer compulsory, behaviours??

Words. Fail. Me.

[TobyD]

Have I just misunderstood (apologies if this is in the wrong thread) but has Javid just held a press conference to communicate the message that the gov intends to sit on its hands and if there are 100k infections /day it will be because of public failure to get vaccines and follow other, no longer compulsory, behaviours??

Words. Fail. Me.

No, that's exactly what he said. The junior minister interviewed on the today programme this morning also implied that any failure of the booster programme was the fault of people not coming forward,  or the NHS,  who are apparently responsible for anything going wrong (however if it seems to be working well,  that's all the government).

Just like last time they were advised to act early,  they won't,  and it'll ultimately be more economic harm, restrictions and deaths than if they did.  All because the PM likes to hand in his homework late and do things at the last minute.

[ali k]

I suspect the Saj has a hand in this too. It was clear as soon as he became health secretary that he was more strongly opposed to restrictions than Hancock.

They’ve been doing their best to signal that it’s all back to normal by not wearing masks in the commons and at cabinet meetings for months, and now all of a sudden it’s on the public to have known better.

Never their fault is it. What a vile bunch of cowards.

[seankenny]

... now all of a sudden it’s on the public to have known better.

Never their fault is it. What a vile bunch of cowards.

Vile but popular. In a strongly individualistic culture this approach is proving to be reasonably popular. Plus a graph, some stats about infection rates, etc etc just isn't as persausive to many voters as a reasonable-sounding story, especially if it's a story that involves blaming others.

[Nigel]

If you look at the differences by social class, there isn't a huge difference in Labour support between Mr Hi Vis and Mr Suit. A third of the population supporting you isn't good and it certainly isn't good enough, but neither is is "very few". The big dividing lines are still age and education - and I'm certain there is some research that teases these effects out to show which is slightly more important, but I can't for the life of me remember which way around it is.

I don't have the info to hand, but from memory age is *the* dividing line, education level being a proxy for age - essentially Labour wins on uni educated folk because of the huge rise in graduates since the millennium i.e. graduates are not evenly spread throughout all age groups, there are more younger ones than older ones. And the young swing to Labour.

The conservatives rely hugely on the retired vote. What the chart in your link demonstrates appears to be a fairly linear shift from labour voting when young to con voting as age increases, which is true. In case anyone is not sure of "how true" the maps in the following article make it abundantly clear. The disparity is massive: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/general-election-map-uk-young-old-voters-a4323171.html

What is not made obvious by Yougov in the link is that the turnout follows a similar trend - turnout of the older demographic is much higher than in younger demographics. Also very important is that the ages are not evenly spread geographically. Put simply the cities are young, everywhere else is older. The "everywhere else" accounts for more seats. FPTP then has an effect in that Labour piles on a lot of wasted votes in the cities, whereas the conservative vote is more effectively distributed. The net result of this combination is that Labour can win handily across the demographic of working age people, and yet still lose the election to the votes solely of the over 65's. Again from memory so apologies if wrong, but I believe this happened in 2017, and also 2019 (though the effect was much less pronounced). So yeah age is important, which is why like you I find Tory notions of solving the housing crisis, climate change, and "levelling up" a little hard to believe.

Regarding social class, this used to be a major predictor of voting intention. This relationship broke down during the Blair era (see graphic on page 55 of https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8749/CBP-8749.pdf ). So in that sense OMM is correct in that they have an image problem which they haven't resolved (except briefly in 2017).

[TobyD]

Looks like the slide towards increased restrictions is on its way...
BBC News - Covid: UK cases top 50,000 for first time in three months
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58999796
...and the PM is still just trying to tell people to get vaccinated. We have a chocolate f*****g teapot for a leader.

[spidermonkey09]

I'd say there is slim to zero chance of increased restrictions even approaching previous lockdowns. I suspect masks might make a return but social distancing won't, and frankly I think thats a good thing. Serious restrictions like the last 18 months should be reserved for once in a generation threats, not just 'pressure on the NHS because winter is coming.' Seems pretty clear everyone will be exposed to covid multiple times throughout their life, not sure it helps to suggest that we can realistically avoid that.

Other than keep encouraging vaccination and masks (unlikely to make a significant difference but can't harm, so would be a good idea) there is little else to be done in terms of covid policy other than make it compulsory. Some days I think this would be good, others I don't; I don't think its straightforward. There is a hard core minority of people who have decided not to get jabbed for whatever reason and you shouldn't institute society wide restrictions to protect that cohort i don't think.

[petejh]

Obvs the vaccines greatly reduce the impact on health once you’ve caught covid.

But I still feel like I’m in the dark about what impact vaccinations have on transmission of Covid. Is it just me? Can anyone link to a simple explainer showing the stats?

[Bradders]

Other than keep encouraging vaccination and masks (unlikely to make a significant difference but can't harm, so would be a good idea) there is little else to be done in terms of covid policy other than make it compulsory. Some days I think this would be good, others I don't; I don't think its straightforward. There is a hard core minority of people who have decided not to get jabbed for whatever reason and you shouldn't institute society wide restrictions to protect that cohort i don't think.

It's a tricky conundrum. In terms of people actually falling ill and dying it does mainly seem to be amongst the unvaccinated. If you then accept that the Government's primary responsibility is the protection of the nation's citizens, and yet you are also in favour of individual autonomy on healthcare, how can the Government protect those people who choose not to get the vaccine?

Seems to me that simply encouraging vaccine uptake would be an inadequate way of going about it. Especially if the pandemic of the unvaccinated then means non-covid healthcare services are impacted for everyone. No one could say that the Government has adequately protected a triple vaxxed cancer patient if they can't get care because an unvaccinated person is taking up time, space and resources, when there were other ways of effectively protecting the unvaccinated person.

Personally I think this leads unavoidably to some sort of further restrictions. Unless you decide to accept a certain level of fatalities as a cost of doing business...which it so far seems is the chosen approach.

[spidermonkey09]

I guess the question is the extent to which covid hospitalisations are impacting on non-covid care. I think it is far more likely that the knock on effects of the past few years (when covid hospitalisations were really fucking bad!) and years of underfunding/simply not enough staff will be causing this rather than the covid hospitalisations right here, right now. Whether this makes a difference in practice is up for debate, but for me NHS chiefs are fighting the wrong battle calling for a covid plan B, instead they should be calling for more funding and training more staff, starting now. The NHS couldn't clear the backlog before covid, it stands no chance of clearing it after covid!

Personally I think this leads unavoidably to some sort of further restrictions. Unless you decide to accept a certain level of fatalities as a cost of doing business...which it so far seems is the chosen approach.

I think this is absolutely the chosen approach and has been for many years. My partner and I were discussing it the other day and have concluded that the UK has basically chosen to accept a 4/10 healthcare system when compared to the rest of Europe because that is the level of healthcare we can get with our current taxation model. I don't necessarily agree with it but that is unavoidably the direction of travel. We won't magic up better health outcomes without more staff and funding, and we shouldn't give cover to that political choice by acceding to annual restrictions on lives because the system can't cope. Its the system that needs changing, not peoples behaviour for me.

[TobyD]

I guess the question is the extent to which covid hospitalisations are impacting on non-covid care. I think it is far more likely that the knock on effects of the past few years (when covid hospitalisations were really fucking bad!) and years of underfunding/simply not enough staff will be causing this rather than the covid hospitalisations right here, right now. Whether this makes a difference in practice is up for debate, but for me NHS chiefs are fighting the wrong battle calling for a covid plan B, instead they should be calling for more funding and training more staff, starting now. The NHS couldn't clear the backlog before covid, it stands no chance of clearing it after covid!

Personally I think this leads unavoidably to some sort of further restrictions. Unless you decide to accept a certain level of fatalities as a cost of doing business...which it so far seems is the chosen approach.

I think this is absolutely the chosen approach and has been for many years. My partner and I were discussing it the other day and have concluded that the UK has basically chosen to accept a 4/10 healthcare system when compared to the rest of Europe because that is the level of healthcare we can get with our current taxation model. I don't necessarily agree with it but that is unavoidably the direction of travel. We won't magic up better health outcomes without more staff and funding, and we shouldn't give cover to that political choice by acceding to annual restrictions on lives because the system can't cope. Its the system that needs changing, not peoples behaviour for me.

I certainly don't think that another full lockdown is remotely likely, or perhaps necessary; not least because the government is so deeply invested in this course of action. Even another mask mandate will lead to considerable tantrums among the usual set of backbenchers.
However, I do think that they should be more honest in having a conversation about, to be brutal about it, how much death we're prepared to put up with. However, being largely a set of juvenile populists, they won't do this, preferring (if Boris has his way) to abandon any fiscal responsibility to throw money at the NHS, and try to distract the voting public with meaningless culture war BS.
What they need to do is actually engage in how the NHS needs to change in order to stop just being a bottomless moneypit, which no amount of billions will solve. Not a penny of the NI increase will end up with social care, it will all be swallowed by the NHS, much in inefficiencies and its failure to grasp concepts like trying to resource effectively. Until a few years ago, the NHS was still the world's biggest user of fax machines; I think that tells you a lot about how good they'd then be about buying say, radiology equipment or computer systems.   

[Will Hunt]

Is there something about wanting to stretch out the peak in Covid cases by getting some of them "out of the way" now, rather than have a choice between stringent lockdowns/bigger hospitalisation peak in the winter?

[User deactivated.]

When I type 'UK deaths coronavirus' into google, the resulting chart shows that daily deaths have been about the same since the middle of August. Are hospitalisations any different?

[Oldmanmatt]

When I type 'UK deaths coronavirus' into google, the resulting chart shows that daily deaths have been about the same since the middle of August. Are hospitalisations any different?

It is remarkably different from previous waves. In both cases about 1/6th ish, or so, about; what they were for similar daily infection point in previous waves.
The numbers have been largely flat for months. The death figures from the headlines (date reported) are incredibly misleading; the figures for death (date of event) remains very flat. I would assume that there will be a rise, to match the rise in cases, over the next couple of weeks.
I don’t believe the slopes or peaks of either hospitalisations or deaths, will reflect the increase in cases in the way they did in prior events. The infections still seem to be in less vulnerable populations, even as they seem to be moving back into adult populations from the juvenile that has been dominant over the early autumn.
Honestly, just look at the data on the Gov site. It seems pretty obvious.
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

Deaths, in particular, demonstrate the difference, clearly:

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths

It really pays to click on the “All “x” data” the graphs on the main page are, again, misleading.

[mrjonathanr]

From the Grauniad:

Boris Johnson has said that the government sees “absolutely nothing to indicate that [a full lockdown] is on the cards at all” when asked to rule out a shutdown with ““stay at home” advice and shops closing this winter.

.

So that’s it then. Another lockdown is definitely on its way.

[Nigel]

I guess the question is the extent to which covid hospitalisations are impacting on non-covid care. I think it is far more likely that the knock on effects of the past few years (when covid hospitalisations were really fucking bad!) and years of underfunding/simply not enough staff will be causing this rather than the covid hospitalisations right here, right now. Whether this makes a difference in practice is up for debate, but for me NHS chiefs are fighting the wrong battle calling for a covid plan B, instead they should be calling for more funding and training more staff, starting now. The NHS couldn't clear the backlog before covid, it stands no chance of clearing it after covid!

Having just been in for a hospital appointment today here's some anecdotal stuff - the consultant, and everyone else, were "very concerned" about covid. He's working flat out doing ops but they are working with various covid related headwinds. There is the obvious of covid patients taking icu beds. Then the loss of spaces due to rejigged wards. Then there's staff being absent due to isolating / dependents isolating / being ill short term / being off long term / having left altogether. Then there's the fact that any potential efficiencies i.e. "squeezing someone in" last minute after a cancellation say, can't happen because of patients having to pass a covid test 3 days prior to op and then isolate. And then of course you have the issue of there being a backlog i.e. more patients than normal, in the situation where all the above extra restraints are in place. Now it seemed to me they are getting it done, but it also seemed fair to say they were pushed.

So it seems covid is impacting non-covid care quite a lot already. I actually totally agree with what you say, a lot of this is undoubtably systemic and long term and needs more funding and staff, but we are where we are. Starting training nurses today definitely needs to happen but it won't solve the current problems, so I can see why the NHS would ask for more restrictions. I wouldn't expect anything else from them as they are trying to look after their patch, and rightly so.

[spidermonkey09]

I think thats all very fair Nigel; my partner is a doctor so if anything I'm too aware of the pressure the NHS is under! 

The views I've typed out above have been thrashed out through discussions with her. To offer some more anecdata, in her hospital there seems little impact from covid thus far. The problem I have with asking for more restrictions is it reinforces the idea that the public needs to be constantly looking after the health service, whereas in reality its the health service that should be looking after the public. That isn't meant to sound callous, i think the NHS is great and its staff are brilliant, but I'm not into restrictions every time the hospitals are under pressure; that should be reserved for once in a generation stuff.

Its all academic really as for multiple reasons the government are unlikely to introduce strict measures again. I share the wish for an honest conversation about the trade offs of that though, including the deaths that will result.

Edit: also, on a strategic level, I think its profoundly self defeating for the NHS to call for more restrictions. An awful lot of people will hear that and think 'they say they're busy every year, sod em', which isn't the whole truth but has a grain of truth to it; there are warnings of the NHS being under pressure every year. I worry about what such calls will do to public trust in the institution.

[Bradders]

I worry about what such calls will do to public trust in the institution.

Undermine it to the point the public realises that "Our NHS" is actually a fairly second rate healthcare service in dire need of reform? 

I agree with a lot of your points SM, but a desire and legitimate need for systemic change doesn't solve an acute and time sensitive issue.

[Oldmanmatt]

I worry about what such calls will do to public trust in the institution.

Undermine it to the point the public realises that "Our NHS" is actually a fairly second rate healthcare service in dire need of reform? 

I agree with a lot of your points SM, but a desire and legitimate need for systemic change doesn't solve an acute and time sensitive issue.

In terms of the likelihood of anything being done/changed in time and in terms of further restrictions, it’s very unlikely; simply because current policy is broadly popular. We have reached the point of “meh” as a nation, or at least, enough people have and the government is free to proceed as it is/has, without losing much of it’s current support.
There is a possibility of that changing, as things will likely get worse; however that didn’t happen the last couple of times the stable door was slowly inched shut a few weeks after the horse bolted.
Frankly, though, I think our nation is around half full of people who really don’t care much about anybody outside their immediate social circle (and probably smile at the misfortune of many within that circle), so I’m not expecting much.

[webbo]

I worry about what such calls will do to public trust in the institution.

Undermine it to the point the public realises that "Our NHS" is actually a fairly second rate healthcare service in dire need of reform? 

I agree with a lot of your points SM, but a desire and legitimate need for systemic change doesn't solve an acute and time sensitive issue.

It might be second rate to some of the European health care systems but get ill physically or mentally in the US without adequate insurance and it will seem like a premium service.

[spidermonkey09]

I worry about what such calls will do to public trust in the institution.

I agree with a lot of your points SM, but a desire and legitimate need for systemic change doesn't solve an acute and time sensitive issue.

Fair point! I guess I still think there is a difference between "acute as medical professionals see it" and "acute as the government and probably most of the public see it" and I think the latter will probably win out as things stand.

[ali k]

I worry about what such calls will do to public trust in the institution.

Undermine it to the point the public realises that "Our NHS" is actually a fairly second rate healthcare service in dire need of reform?

Isn’t the long term strategy to undermine it to the point that more private sector involvement is the “only” way to fix it?

[mrjonathanr]

Of course. Defund the public service then fix with private capital once the public are fed up enough to accept it.

[Bradders]

It might be second rate to some of the European health care systems but get ill physically or mentally in the US without adequate insurance and it will seem like a premium service.

Well that's a common mistake; we compare against the US and say "oh well, could be worse" when really we should be asking why it's not as good as the best!

Isn’t the long term strategy to undermine it to the point that more private sector involvement is the “only” way to fix it?

Just like, say, many of the European healthcare systems that are better than the UK's?