When I suggest online learning isn't as effective as in-person learning people often think I'm insinuating teachers aren't working as hard. I think they are - and we should be grateful! - but that doesn't mean online learning is as effective. In general I think the work and sacrifice of teachers is criminally understated in normal times, let alone in a pandemic. But there are also sections of the left who seem pretty cavalier about the costs of closing schools. Providing kids with laptops won't be enough!

Peake's statement was ill-judged & the specific claim she made untrue. Equally, this tendency to assume worst when anyone makes an error is problematic. Israel isn't just the world's 'only majority jewish state'. Its also the site of the world's longest running occupation (1/) 2. Israel is still practising settler colonialism. The state sponsors jewish people to move into Palestinian lands in order to expand its territory. That's not unique - one could say same about China in Tibet - but it separates Israel from the UK or France (2/)

The centre left have Labour back.

On both sides of Atlantic, it's been shown the populist left can't yet win majorities. But it does have the young, and will have the future.

For the meantime, the centre and left need each other to win. Let's hope @Keir_Starmer remembers that. There will be many around him desperate to expunge any memory of Corbynism from the party, including by purging members. That's no route to victory, it's the reflex of a political tradition that hates the Labour left more than the Conservatives.

"What we do know about the virus is that you're unlikely to be infectious when you don't have symptoms"

This is how the Deputy Director at @PHE_uk National Infections Service re-assured the public (of any age!) that they were safe go to weddings and pubs. How did this happen?

https://twitter.com/BBCNewsnight/status/1238600688676089857

Many studies now suggest (and suggested before this statement was made!) that people without symptoms can spread the virus. With this degree of uncertainty - why would a public health official not err on the side of caution? buzzfeednews.com/article/stepha…

Why is the government's messaging on testing all over the place? [THREAD] 1 - The best way to limit human and economic costs of coronavirus is test-and-trace. The reason this wasn't adopted in UK was capacity constraints, but unwilling to admit this, the government made up bull about test-and-trace being unnecessary in a developed country.

You could write an entire PhD on how the medical officers in this crisis have been used to make political questions appear to be ones about science. The idea we aren’t mass testing because of ‘epidemiology’ is nonsense -> Germany has a healthcare system far more capable of treating mass cases of COVID-19, yet they have decided to do mass testing because it’s better to contain virus until vaccine available. It also means they need less draconian distancing measures ->

Germany and UK COVID-19 response compared:

Ventilators
🇩🇪: 25k, with 10k on order
🇬🇧: 5k, plus a Twitter shout-out

Tests per week
🇩🇪: 160k
🇬🇧: 35k

Social distancing
🇩🇪: Social venues closed
🇬🇧: ‘Advice’ to socially distance

Deaths
🇩🇪: 48
🇬🇧: 144 Source for stats on German testing and ventilators here: ft.com/content/c0755b…

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think something has been missed in commentary that Labour policy, as passed at conference, dictates a referendum should only happen after a GE. Its this claim that forms basis of @skwawkbox's attack on @johnmcdonnellMP et al 1/ The policy dispute at conference was about what would be in our manifesto in a general election - it assumed a general election came first. The victory over @Another_Europe was whether in an *election campaign* the party would commit to backing remain in a future referendum. 2/

No Deal isn't popular. Parties don't go into elections with their principle policy being unpopular.

If we have an election, we can guess Cummings et al are confident they can agree something with EU. That means Labour basing campaign on stopping no deal a risk. Imagine: An election is penned for 24th October, Labour tour the country arguing against no deal, then on 17th October Johnson comes back with something from the EU summit. Perhaps this, suggested by @TomKibasi last July.

Going by this, only evidence in Panorama doc is an email from Milne saying something entirely correct, Formby challenging who would be on one disciplinary panel, and then a bunch of unverified claims from employees who just happen to hate Jeremy Corbyn 🤷‍♂️ bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politi… So, ex-members of the Compliance Unit, who took months to deal with high-profile cases of antisemitism, and also happen to hate Jeremy Corbyn, reveal Corbyn once seconded aides to get through the backlog.

This is apparently worthy of BBC prime-time.. buzzfeed.com/alexwickham/le…

Hard to avoid conclusion left have played this IHRA drama badly. Polling shows Israel is wildly unpopular among British public, and with justification. If from the start we’d said “no definition of AS should include reference to Israel” -> And explained that Israel lobby uses claims of AS to silence criticism of Israel we would’ve had public on our side. Instead we argued we’d made the definition “stronger”. What we should have expressed as a political red line has become a technical debate over wording ->