Boris Johnson, former Prime Minister

[Ethel Street]

20 hours ago, honeybee13 said:

Even his sister said she didn't agree with what he was saying.

 

Mind you Rachel Johnson's a staunch Remainer and doesn't agree with most of what Boris says! 

 

Although unsurprisngly, as has she a professional career of her own, she gets fed with of being introduced as "Boris's sister" and always being asked what she thinks about something Boris has said.

[Ethel Street]

1 hour ago, honeybee13 said:

So Johnson's done his last cabinet meeting and may or may not do PMQs tomorrow. But he's staying as PM until a successor is voted in, early September.

 

Does anyone know who's in charge?

 

Johnson is. He remains PM until he formally goes to see the Queen and resigns. Which her will do only when the the election of his successor as party leader is announced.

 

In the meantime the convention is that he just keeps things ticking over and doesn't announce any new initiatives, but legally he has full PM powers until the moment the Queen accepts his resignation.

[Ethel Street]

1 minute ago, honeybee13 said:

Thank you Ethel. So the cabinet won't meet over the summer?

 

It seems like an odd way to run a country.

 

I've never checked but I don't think cabinet meetings are routinely scheduled over the summer. But if circumstances require it emergency cabinet meetings can be called at any time. Ministers, like with the PM, remain in post.

 

But as there's not supposed to be any new initiatives happening, they're just implementing already announced policies, do they actually need to meet?

[Ethel Street]

That wouldn't surprise me!. I was a only thinking about what convention says is supposed to happen!

 

[Ethel Street]

1 hour ago, theoldrouge said:

Early release from the initial covid lockdown due to the speedy vaccine rollout whilst EU dithered 

The ability to quickly send weapons to Ukraine 

 

Erm, neither were controlled by the EU and we could have done exactly the same as we did if we'd remained in the EU.

 

So neither are 'Brexit benefits'.

 

 

[Ethel Street]

29 minutes ago, theoldrouge said:

Absolute nonsense from obviously another obsessive remainer

Do you not think that we would have had to conform with everything the EU ordered 

The main at risk groups were vaccinated 

before the EU got its act together 

As for weapons as I said ,we acted whilst the Germans were offering helmets and Napoleon was doing his Neville Chamberlain impersonation 

 

 

Not nonsense and pointing out that you are wrong about how the EU works in relation to public health and military matters doesn't make anyone either obsessive or a remainer. They are 'national competencies' and the EU does not control them.  

[Ethel Street]

1 hour ago, theoldrouge said:

Oh really “France 24 “wrong as well then about The European Health Union 

 

Before Covid-19, the EU left health policy to national governments. However, Brussels took charge of vaccine procurement in the summer of 2020, as part of what Von der Leyen called a “European Health Union” in her September “State of the Union” address.

Member states were free to opt out of this supranational scheme, but none did so. Brexit made it “easy” for the UK to go its own way on vaccines, Bouzou observed.

 

 

Thank you for confirming exactly what I said. If we'd still been in the EU we could, and no doubt would, have done exactly the same as we did do and the EU couldn't have stopped us or made us do anything different.

 

And as you also confirm no EU state was required to join the the voluntary support scheme the EU put together. Of course few of them opted out. Very few EU countries have their own global pharmaceutical industry or vaccine research facilities. Malta or Cyprus or Bulgaria (for example) were hardly likely to start developing their own vaccine research and pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity in the middle of a pandemic were they? So of course they opted to go with an an EU led purchasing programme.

 

If you don't mind me saying so you seem to be rather missing the point. No-one disputes that the UK had a successful vaccine rollout programme. The point is that it would have had just as successful a programme if we were still in the EU. Brexit is irrelevant to the success of the rollout.

 

And anyway the EU programme was about procurement, buying the vaccines, not about rollout. Every EU country, even when it stayed in the procurement programme, made its own decisons about rollout.

 

Incidentally did you notice that the France24 article was published right back in the early days of the pandemic - 6th February 2021 - so isn't an assessment of the overall strengths and weaknesses of anyone's  vaccine roll out? Britain's early lead was soon eroded.

[Ethel Street]

52 minutes ago, honeybee13 said:

I wonder if Sunak's part of Yorkshire has drought restrictions? A swimming pool is huge amount of water to take out of the system.

I'm no supporter of sunak but in fairness there's no suggestion in the article that he's about to fill it during the drought, they've only just started construction. Unless his builders work a lot faster than the ones I can get at the moment it won't be ready until the winter!

 

Edit: My builders aren't building me a pool, just replacing guttering (just to clarify )

[Ethel Street]

FT is paywalled for me, free version here

 

Why rage is no substitute for political strategy | Financial Times (archive.ph)