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23 May, 6 tweets, 2 min read
Cummings revelation on herd immunity strategy prompts 2x questions: 1/ Why did it take until 9 March for experts to convince HMG the strategy was catastrophic? 2/...
...2/ Why did @peston get briefed on 12 March that herd immunity was still the strategy? Indeed why did the concept of lockdown take so long to form and implement?
3/ The idea that Johnson was "busy writing a bio of Shakespeare to fund his divorce" sounds like classic maskirovka ... Whitehall doesn't malfunction in that way: they'd gone gangbusters for an ideologically-driven strategy of herd immunity...
4/ Cummings overstates the possibility of avoiding lockdown #1 ... but we are an island and the strategy of containment if done right could have worked ...
5/ What's being set up here is Johnson as the bumbling fall guy, when the entire Shadow Cabinet clearly bought the Greenwich (3 Feb) line - let's steal a March on the world by "taking it on the chin"...
6/ We need a public inquiry urgently.

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More from @paulmasonnews

Paul Mason Profile picture
21 May
I just read the whole BBC Dyson report and here's how it looks to an ex-insider: elite dysfunction meets the BBC's perennial problem: politicised news management through informal networks 1/...
2/ Bashir comes in with a scoop premised on the idea that MI5/6 are spying on Diana and someone is being bribed... he's new, he's Asian, he's not playing by the rules of the Old Boys who have a direct line to the spooks...
3/ He clearly breaks the rules - not just of the BBC but of journalism - but Fleet Street and the old schoolers in Current Affairs go after him because he's scooped them: the outsider, not the insider, got the story...
Read 13 tweets
Paul Mason Profile picture
13 May
What Blair gets wrong 1/ The social use of digital tech is not given by the technology itself: it has no use for a big state because it is wedded to monopolies and tax evasion...like the early factory system: we can change this... newstatesman.com/politics/2021/…
2/ The deep social divisions, poverty, precarity and insecurity are all products of the economic system Blair helped embed: neoliberal globalisation. The answer is not more of it... newstatesman.com/politics/2021/…
3/ The project of a Liberal led, Macron style party, which Labour dissolves into, is a non-starter in Britain. The TIG failed because there is no social base for it... and the Greens pose a real challenge to Labour from the left... newstatesman.com/politics/2021/…
Read 7 tweets
Paul Mason Profile picture
12 May
Blair joins the Labour right's attack on "woke": am writing a reply to this - it's required reading: a case study in how political obsessions (in this case with creating a globalist centrism) become irrelevant. Thread 1/... newstatesman.com/politics/2021/…
2/ Blair's main attack is on the Labour centre for being wimps in the face of wokeness. There's the usual blather about technological change and an attack on Starmer - plus a call for some kind of Lib-Lab movement... newstatesman.com/politics/2021/…
3/ Blair understands that the radical left has set the agenda. He thinks you can create some kind of Macron-style party or movement that can subsume Labour into liberalism as a response... newstatesman.com/politics/2021/…
Read 8 tweets
Paul Mason Profile picture
8 May
The Labour excuse factory is cranking into gear: poor campaign, no clear policies, Corbyn, PV... it's always done to deflect from ANALYSING THE NEW CLASS DYNAMICS... 1/ ... because that would involve thinking ... newstatesman.com/politics/2021/…
2/ That's why Jim McMahon's (Labour's campaign organiser) attack on "abstract theories" was so telling ... but it's not rocket science: values now determine voting behaviour - from Hartlepool to Hillsborough ... but... newstatesman.com/politics/2021/…
3/ The question is what's shaping the values. Answer: the new forms of exploitation and working class survival strategies... because contrary to Cruddas et al, work is no longer the defining political experience ... newstatesman.com/politics/2021/…
Read 11 tweets
Paul Mason Profile picture
8 May
Anatomy of what a Labour heartland now looks like: Lambeth & Southwark. Landslide for @SadiqKhan with huge 2nd prefs for @sianberry - and Greens second in member election... ImageImage
... people queued into the distance to deliver this message: any backsliding from Labour and the Greens are the alternative ... and it's not a one-off. See Sheff Hillsboro...
Lesson: Labour has to first and foremost represent the people who vote for it... yes, to gain power, it must draw others into its coalition but the base of the coalition is restive....
Read 4 tweets
Paul Mason Profile picture
30 Apr
The Labour right is on the offensive against "post capitalism" and the UBI. That's nothing new - and we need to understand neither side can impose its agenda on the other - but they're wrong: here's why 1/ newstatesman.com/politics/uk/20…
2/ By "Labour right" I mean the pre-Blairite "old Labour" MPs largely represented in the Fabian Hearts & Minds pamphlet... they argue the party needs to "represent" small-town ex-industrial culture... newstatesman.com/politics/uk/20…
3/ Some, like Yvonne Fovargue, say anti-racism, human rights and radical redistribution (aka "freebies") are secondary to "our core communities". Leave aside your outrage at this, they are just stone cold wrong... newstatesman.com/politics/uk/20…
Read 13 tweets

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