I’ve noticed a lot of people slipping up on how they interpret UK Covid-19 prevalence & testing data, so here’s a very brief thread on how to interpret figures from different sources, and what caveats each source does and does not come with:
• Pillar 2 community testing: these are the bulk of cases picked up at the moment. Case and positivity rates here *could* be influenced by where and who is being tested, so e.g patterns in this data with age, deprivation etc could be skewed by who is getting tested
• @ONS infection survey: these tests are random, and designed to be representative of the overall population.
Therefore trends and patterns in this data *are not* due to e.g certain locations or groups of people being more likely to get tested.
Samples taken for @ONS tests are re-tested multiple times to make false positives extremely unlikely (one in tens of thousands), so any false positive chatter is completely absurd for the ONS survey (and also hugely exaggerated re the Pillar 2 tests)
So when we see things like today’s fascinating @ONS breakdowns of Covid-19 prevalence & growth by deprivation, age, levels of socialising etc, these trends *are not* being driven by differential rates of testing.
It’s really striking how the Corbynite left has migrated to the Greens.
The result is a curious coalition between the older and more Nimby environmentalist base, and the new hard left/progressive influx.
These are quite different people with quite different politics!
In 2019, one in ten Green voters was from the most progressive/left segment of voters; now that’s one in four.
Big difference in policy preferences, priorities and pressure on the leadership, as we’ve seen in e.g reaction to Denyer’s Biden statement.
The most glaring tension between these two types of Green is on decarbonisation, where the older Nimby base doesn’t want pylons *or even onshore wind farms* but many of the new progressive Green vote do.
Greens are actually less keen on wind farms than Labour and Lib Dem voters!
Essential chart from the new mega report on the general election by @Moreincommon_
The vast majority of people — including Reform voters — said the Tories lost because they were incompetent, not because they were too left or right wing.
And to the extent that people thought they were either too left or right wing, equal shares gave each answer.
There’s one very clear message and anything else is a distraction.
When asked what were the biggest mistakes the Conservatives made in government, the common themes are not left or right, but:
• Mismanagement
• Lack of integrity
• Incompetence
• Dishonesty
• Corruption
• “They are chaotic”
The lack of enthusiasm for Labour at this election really is striking.
Among those who plan to vote Labour tomorrow, the party is much less well-liked than in 2019, 2017 or 2015 (no data before that).
Quite a flimsy voter coalition that could unravel in the absence of results.
The Conservatives weren’t especially popular with their backers in 2019 (mainly a vote for Brexit and against Corbyn), and this was a big part of why they fell so far since then, but Lab voters this time are even less enthusiastic about their party than Tory voters were in 2019.
Of course, all that matters tomorrow is winning more seats than the opponents, and Starmer’s Labour will manage that very easily.
But if they don’t start delivering tangible results, it wouldn’t be at all surprising to see Labour start bleeding votes in all directions.
Some people have responded to that chart with "That can’t be right", or "We can’t be worse than America".
I’m afraid the chart is right. 15 years ago the UK’s record on homelessness *was* not too dissimilar to other developed countries, but things have rapidly deteriorated.