Thread by @jonworth

I am aware political prediction is a mug's game

I am aware the old rules of 🇬🇧 politics don't apply

I might be awfully premature

But one hell of a ⛈ is coming

🇬🇧 locked down late and inconsistently

🇬🇧 has been loosening erratically and without a plan (e.g. arguments over 2m ↔️ distance or not)

🇬🇧 has been late to make 😷 compulsory, months behind rest of Europe

Track & Trace 📱 is still a complete mess, and will be for some time, plus trust in the government has evaporated, making chances the system works effectively even lower

And this against a backdrop of one of the highest numbers of COVID deaths per capita in Europe

There's also this thing that nags: the argument was that 🇬🇧 should not lock down as hard as - say - 🇪🇸. But is a harder, shorter lockdown less economically damaging than a longer but less severe one? Time will tell

As if that were not enough, the Cummings saga and the so called Mogg Conga lost Johnson one hell of a lot of political capital - even on his own benches

Plus Johnson himself has never been a character for a crisis, and if his recovery from COVID is anything like it is for the others I know who've had it, he will not be at 100% for some months

The core team is Johnson - Cummings - Gove.

Everyone else in cabinet is either a puppet or has no base, bar Sunak who's apparently on manoeuvres to widen his support.

Replacing Javid with him may, medium term, prove a fatal error.

Meanwhile Labour is steadily boosting its effectiveness. Johnson is nervous facing Starmer. Labour's front bench team looks like a solid, sensible opposition in the way Corbyn never was.

And then there's Brexit.

The deadline to request an extension to the Brexit Transition Period is now less than 3 weeks away. I am pretty sure nothing is going to make Johnson change now, and take up that opportunity...

So suddenly there, 6 months from now, is a further massive problem. No Deal.

If Johnson were to solve this with some fudge in the autumn - a transition from the transition - then the Brexit hardliners, already furious about Cummings, scream.

If he sticks to the line, and the economic pain mounts further, will all of the Tory Party really stick with him? After all the good will lost due to Cummings and Rees Mogg?

The government by the early autumn is damned, whatever it does

Were it *only* COVID or *only* Brexit, and a government not stuck with a poor quality cabinet that has expended most of its goodwill, they might be able to get away with it.

With all of these problems together, can it actually survive?

If you're Steve Baker on one side, or Greg Clark, Simon Hoare or Karen Bradley (or even Sunak?) on the other, what do you do?

Your allegiance has been taken for granted. You have stomached all sorts of bad behaviour. The Tory Party's reputation for economic competence is 💥

Also with all of the government's communication and approach set on Brexit - a them and us, Leavers vs. Remainers frame, they cannot cope when even previous backers - Tim Montgomerie or Piers Morgan for example - exit their camp

Hell there is even a majority of people who voted for Brexit in 2016 who now say it makes sense to extend the transition period!

"The people" have come to see what the government has not yet seen. On Brexit, as on COVID, the government is following, not leading.

The assumption since the election in December has been that the Tories, with an 80 seat majority, can get away with just about anything. But can they see this through to the end of the year and get away with all of that? Really? Maybe they somehow weather the ⛈

/ends