The most significant example of this in recent times being Karen Bradley’s admission that she didn’t understand the polarisation between unionists and republicans in Northern Ireland.

I can imagine her mental cogs whirring as she thought to herself, “wow, these two groups of people who spent large chunks of the last hundred years trying to kill each other really don’t vote for each other. Who could have guessed that?”

‘The most significant example of this in recent times being Karen Bradley’s admission that she didn’t understand the polarisation between unionists and republicans in Northern Ireland.’

Bradley was as well suited to that job as Patel and Raab are to head the Home and Foreign office respectively]

Whilst most politicians to be fair are considerably above average intelligence, it makes no sense to hand plum role to those that aren’t

Tim – but you are again letting your prejudice get in the way of the facts.

Raab is both objectively intelligent and suited to that role from his CV. A First in Law, prosecuting war crimes at the Hague and so on.

It reminds me of those on here who derided Fox [because they hate his views] as both unsuitable for Health and not bright compared with a certain Labour Education spokeswoman who left school after having failed all of her exams! Their CVs speak for themselves, especially in their 20s.

There are many examples of intelligent Labour people (although I’d argue far fewer than in the days of Peter Shore and Tony Benn) in the House and stupid Tory MPs, but not the ones referenced on here.

Next GE Odds

Cons 2/5
Lab 7/2

Labour to win a majority 12/1

Next Lab Leader Starmer 5/1 (now ahead of all of the women)

Kevin Maguire on the Sky News Paper Review was right in predicting that a couple of chicken suits have been spotted.

He opined that the Sun or Express were likely to doorstep [or follow them on College Green] Jezza or Thornberry et al in the same way the Mirror used to follow Major around in the dying days of his Govt.

I didn’t see it, but I understand Andrew Neil was his usual self and totally defenestrated Corbyn on BBC last night.

A review today said he refused four times to apologise for anti-Semitism in the Party. He admitted the abolition of the married couples’ allowance would mean tax rises would affect the average taxpayer and not just the top 5% and he refused to say that a marauding terrorist should be shot dead.

I expect Boris & Swinson to be attacked in the same way, as none of them appear good on detail.

That’s if Boris agrees – they still haven’t got him to agree a date.

The most astonishing thing about the interview was that he seemed more remorseful about his implementing much-needed middle-class tax rises than any of the thing he should have been apologising for!

Still, it won’t touch the polls. Already been forgotten, 24 hours later – I suspect the party had been sitting for a while on that US trade dossier, for deployment when they really needed it.

The climate change part of the trade deal is getting noticed on social media. Saw someone I went to Uni with and who has never posted anything political posting about it. Could be something that moves even more of the remain vote back to Labour.

The BBC’s Chris Mason says Labour wants to plant billions of trees here by 2040, which works out as:

200 trees per minute, 24/7 and a forest the size of Wales!

Planting trees is great and I certainly support a target that isn’t as unachievable as some are saying; certainly it’s a far more realistic target than decarbonising within ten years. My concern is where those trees are going to be planted; I suspect that he is treating them as a resource to be enjoyed by people, and will want to put them right on the edge of conurbations. But that’s just catnip for NIMBYs, the worst and most powerful special interest group in Britain, and in my opinion the trees should purely be seen as carbon sinks and kept as far away from civilisation as possible.

AFAIK a national strategy was in fact agreed last year: one by a quango of sorts and the other by a charity.

Frank Field gained approval from HM Queen for the Commonwealth Canopy of trees (I forget but think it’s 1m+ trees over the next decade).

Plus the Woodland Trust are currently giving away 150,000 trees for free to anyone with a Nectar card.

I agree with most of what you said except the last sentence: randomly planting them on rural hillsides would if anything spoil the landscape.

Andrew Neil has ran rings round every politician he has interviewed on the BBC thus far, although the Corbyn interview was particularly brutal

Best PM:

Leavers: 76% BJ v 6% JC

Working class: 46% BJ v 17 JC%

Women 32% BJ v 20% JC

18 – 24s: 32% BJ v 29% JC

Even London was neck and neck

There will be an almighty effort by ‘the centrists’ to get like minded people to join Labour between now and the cut off date, 20th January.