A decade on and George Osborne is still wrong. He, Cameron,Hunt and May underfunded the NHS for the decade prior to the pandemic, resulting in our lack of preparedness and today's appalling wait times and ill health. /1

nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/the-… Austerity - not only in health but also to benefits, wage stagnation, poor housing - led to the first time in 100 years that increasingly life expectancy stalled. This kicked in before the pandemic, not as a result of it. /2

theguardian.com/society/2019/j…

Completely unreasonable for Sunak to claim that a fall in the number of Albanians coming to the UK is justification for his wider approach to small boat arrivals. /1

theguardian.com/politics/live/… Albanians have stopped coming because we have a new returns agreement with Albania. Almost uniquely we can send people back to a largely safe country that will accept them. As a result people have stopped making the journey. /2

The Tories have clearly decided that pretending asylum applications are 'out of control' serves their electoral interests. In reality we get comparatively few applicants, and if they bothered to run the asylum system we could process claims quickly. /1

theguardian.com/politics/live/… Instead they refuse to process claims, leaving a backlog of over 160,000. Their new bill will mean claims won't be heard, but with 200 places in Rwanda and a lack of return agreements they'll get thousands backed up waiting until inevitably their claims are eventually heard. /2

Depressing if unsurprising that @theresecoffey has abandoned the health inequalities white paper, sending the clear signal that she and her Govt don't care about inequality that gives the rich 19 more years of life than the poor.

theguardian.com/politics/2022/… We need a decent public health system. Other nations have one, they're not rocket science, but it takes political will and public investment, both lacking under Truss' Govt.

The Govt's plan to end isolation and free testing seems to be predicated on new variants either not arriving or being no more severe than Omicron (which despite its 'mildness' has killed thousands). /1 Problem is there's no guarantee when the next variant arrives, how severe it will be or what level of immune escape it will have from prior infection and vaccines. /2

Daily deaths at 314, +95 from the same day last week. And Johnson decides today is the day to announce he's ending all Covid restrictions a month early, in yet another desperate attempt to save his own skin. /1 The fact this will mean more deaths, more Long Covid in adults and kids, and more hospitalisations - most of them with long term health consequences, won't have crossed his mind. /2

The gulf between Johnson and Whitty at these press conferences grows and grows. Today Johnson said 'Omicron is mild, hospitalisations are less likely', Whitty said 'Omicron is not mild, we're heading towards the hospitalisation peak seen last January.' /1 They agree on boosters but neither gave the unwelcome news that booster effectiveness starts to wane after 10 weeks (and likely goes down from there, we don't have data to know yet). Still absolutely worth getting but it's no guarantee of avoiding infection or illness. /2

In all the North Shropshire coverage so far there's been basically zero mention of the fact that yes many rural voters voted Brexit but that since then the Govt has shafted farming and agriculture with its Australia and New Zealand trade deals. /1 Sure N Shropshire voters are angry about corruption and illegal Christmas parties. They're probably also angry about their primary economic sector being hung out to dry by the Govt that promised to do the opposite. /2

Johnson and Frost clearly decided today was a good day to slip out they've backed down on ECJ oversight of the NI Protocol. While predicted this is still good news for the Protocol and hence NI, and means Article 16 almost certainly won't be used. /1

ft.com/content/a05176… Maybe - just maybe - sensible heads have prevailed in the Govt and they've decided that an Article 16 war they were never going to win wasn't worth the bother. Does this mean the end of EU bashing as an electoral tactic? We can hope. /2

It’s hard to see how Johnson could have handled the Owen Patterson affair more catastrophically for Patterson, himself or his party. I’m guessing many Tory MPs agree. /1 If Patterson had just taken his original suspension without complaint, and if Johnson hadn’t backed him in the hope of skewering the parliamentary standards committee, none of this would have happened. Even Johnson may have some regrets. /2

So we're now living in a strange world where Jenny Harries, now head of the UK Health Security Agency, says Omicron is “probably the most significant threat” since the start of the pandemic, and Amanda Pritchard, chief executive of NHS England, says it could lead to as many /1 or even more hospitalisations as last winter, yet the Govt have 'no plans' to introduce measures beyond the clearly inadequate ones they've brought in so far. Which means more cases, more hospitalisations, more deaths and more Long Covid. /2

Listening to Frost speech in Lisbon which is supposed to be about Northern Ireland but in reality it seems to be a belated justification for why Brexit is going so badly. /1 He says Brexit has allowed a bonfire of regulations - in reality it's the biggest imposition of regulations on business, and the biggest loss of freedoms for business and individuals in living memory. /2

My take on Labour and Brexit post this week's conference in @BylineTimes.

In short - we're talking about it, which is welcome, but have a long way to go. /1

bylinetimes.com/2021/10/01/fix… Criticising Johnson's shoddy deal is the easy bit - building an alternative that is a) feasible, b) popular and c) fixes the many, many problems created by Johnson's hardest of Brexits will take time, and will take honesty with the public re needed trade offs. /2

Thread and piece on where we are with Covid - and how the Govt are failing children, teens and the rest of us by relying on vaccines alone to keep the virus at bay. /1

@BylineTimes

bylinetimes.com/2021/08/18/the… Just because we don't have the 100k cases some warned of doesn't mean that ending restrictions has been a success. We have the highest case numbers in Europe, the second highest daily deaths. Where we are is a disaster. /2

graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavi…

It's a Saturday in mid August, but if you fancy reading about how we could end the pandemic, with some expert input, here's my piece in @newpolitic_ /1

newpolitic.com/2021/08/how-to… You may be unsurprised to find that we don't the Government have done a very good job, nor that we're unimpressed by their current strategy of letting infections run in the vain hope of achieving herd immunity. /2

It is good news that the Govt are *finally* doing a trial of air purifiers in 30 schools but a host of issues remain. Not least they should have done this a year ago - we're incredibly late. /1

inews.co.uk/news/air-purif… Pupils, teachers and staff have been left at needless risk for a year - esp since the dangerous removal of masks from 17 May. /2

Despite everything in this pandemic it's *still* shocking that the isolation vs testing in schools study is being reported as 'they're definitely of equal value' when scientists, epidemiologists, teachers and teaching unions are all saying the study was flawed. /1

https://twitter.com/karamballes/status/1418500683012218880

Among many other issues stated - the study was flawed, it was conducted under low prevalence Alpha - can results be transferred to high prevalence Delta?, and the report's authors are inconclusive about results due to lack of data. /2

As happens every time almost all discussion of the NI Protocol misses the essential point that the UK is not the only third country which trades with the EU. If the EU did what the UK wants Ukraine, Norway, Switzerland and others would be all over it. The Single Market would /1 become entirely meaningless. Johnson and Frost can froth at the mouth but they signed the Protocol in good faith, they can implement it or enter negotiations for a viable alternative - which means (very marginally) closer EU engagement. /2

Some thoughts on where we are with the Govt announcement re Covid restrictions and what it could mean for the pandemic and politics. 🧵

Their decisions are clearly based on ideology, not fact or scientific opinion. /1 As @ChristabelCoops says in this 🧵the decision to remove protections is not driven by an attempt to protect public health or the economy - both will be harmed, the only question is how much. /2

https://twitter.com/ChristabelCoops/status/1412340161967439875

The problem of children needing to isolate due to a highly dangerous virus spreading through schools is not to end isolation but to restrict transmission.
The fact *we're not even talking about* restricting transmission fails children, teachers and their households. /1 It also needlessly extends the pandemic. As children inevitably become infected they will infect others - including a small % of double vaccinated older people because vaccines are not 100% effective. /2

I've written on why Johnson is an outlier - unlike Biden and EU leaders he has no respect for, or intention to abide by, the international rules based order.
Given the Protocol the world is starting to notice - which has consequences. /1

@BylineTimes

bylinetimes.com/2021/06/15/uk-… For the moment Johnson seems to think he can get away with it - playing to domestic anti EU sentiment with the Protocol while still playing global statesman at the G7 and NATO summits, while (nearly) signing a trade deal with Australia. /2