Winning doesn't prove a gambler to be right

Tweet

 

The compulsive gambler who stakes all the money he has on the spin of a roulette wheel producing a red number will see a win as a vindication of his strategy, whilst a loss is merely a spur to find more money to try again. He ‘knows’ that his strategy is right: it’s just a matter of time. Most of us can see and understand that whether the wheel comes up red or black is purely down to chance, a matter of luck rather than judgement; but winners always need to believe that there’s more to it than that; that they possess a special skill and ability to judge.

It is our great misfortune at a time of pandemic to have the UK led by a gambler, prepared to take risks with the lives of others in the belief that he knows better than the rest of us. If Omicron turns out not to have the hospitalisation and death rates which some feared, he and his supporters will describe it as a vindication of his approach; if things go the other way, it will simply be a case of bad luck. In truth, of course, the biggest factor is simply luck either way; there wasn’t enough information available to be able to claim that it’s about the application of any skill or ability. If ignoring all those voices who warned him that strong urgent action was needed turns out not to be a disaster, that actually tells us nothing about his judgement – but will probably encourage him to do the same again in the future.

If it really turns out that the cost of his recklessness is only in the hundreds or low thousands of additional premature deaths (which is the best case scenario), that doesn’t prove that he was right not to do more to prevent them, any more than it proves that Mark Drakeford and Nicola Sturgeon were wrong to take stronger action. Equally, the converse is true – if it all goes horribly wrong and there are tens of thousands of additional premature deaths, that doesn’t prove Johnson wrong and Drakeford and Sturgeon right. The truth is that they’re using different criteria to judge ‘success’, and those criteria are based on completely different sets of values and priorities.

The leader elected by the voters of England, albeit under their badly-flawed electoral system, prioritises money and wealth over lives and health. As his remark about ‘letting the bodies pile high’ indicates, he regards the number of deaths – however high it might go – as a price worth paying for protecting the economic interests of the few. Measured against that criteria, his decision not to act was always the ‘right’ one, regardless of the consequences. He’s not so much hemmed in by the crazies on his party’s fringes, as some have presented it, but freed by them to follow his instincts rather than having to accept the advice of experts who don’t share his values. The leaders elected by the people of Wales and Scotland, on the other hand, prioritise the protection of citizens over mere monetary considerations, and their natural instinct would be to act even more strongly were they not hamstrung by London’s control of the necessary resources. From their perspective, acting strongly was always the ‘right’ thing to do, even if the number of premature deaths avoided was much lower than it has been.

People often claim that the UK is a single country with a single set of values, but the pandemic has clearly shown that to be a gross oversimplification. Our problem has been not that Wales and Scotland have dared to express that difference by diverging from England in responding to the pandemic (as the Tories and their media supporters keep claiming) but that the union prevents us from diverging as much as electoral politics in Wales and Scotland suggests that we might have liked to do. The union has become an obstacle to expressing our values, and we could well do without it.

Don't let them take us down with them

Tweet

 

The old headline which some say is apocryphal but which others attribute to the Times in 1957, which read “Heavy Fog in the Channel. Continent cut off.”, serves as a classic indicator of that special English sense of being exceptional and at the centre of everything. We had a contemporary indication of that same attitude this week, when Sir Somebody Tufton-Bufton MP declared that if England does something different to what he referred to as ‘the principalities’ then it is not England which is out of step, but everybody else. Given his obvious ignorance of the nature of the UK and its component parts, it will surely come as a surprise to no-one to discover that he is, like his party’s leader, yet another Old Etonian, another product of that network of so-called ‘educational’ institutions which seem to exist primarily to remove any feelings of empathy and humanity from their charges and replace them with an innate sense of superiority and exceptionalism. Accurate and useful knowledge seems to play only a minor role in the curriculum.

Anyway, the basic difference between the more civilised parts of the UK on the one hand and England on the other in this case is about whether it is sensible to take formal precautions to try and slow the spread of Omicron before it gets completely out of control, or whether we should rely on the common sense of people to take their own decisions about the level of risk involved and wait until the health service is overwhelmed before acting. And the problem for the civilised parts is that it’s only when England acts that money will be available in the quantities required to support the affected individuals and businesses. Notwithstanding certain obvious exceptions, and without playing down the damage that those exceptions can do in spreading the virus, it is true that many people, even in England where their leader is still exhorting them to party on and leading by example, are showing a great deal of common sense and voting with heir feet. Some of the businesses affected are effectively being closed by customer withdrawal rather than by government dictat – something which the Chancellor apparently considers a good thing since he doesn’t need to subsidise them, but which will not feel quite so good from the perspective of either the businesses themselves or those working in them.

The argument of the so-called ‘freedom lovers’ of the swivel-eyed crazy tendency which has infiltrated and taken over the Tory party is that setting rules infringes our rights to take our own decisions. I suppose we should be glad that they haven’t – not yet anyway – tried to apply this to certain other offences, like murder or theft. There is a sense in which they have a point: what events have shown us is that, whether we are given rules or merely guidance, most people do the sensible thing. For most of us the outcome (in terms of our behaviour) is much the same. In the same way, most of us don’t need a law banning us from killing other people to prevent us from doing it. The difference between rules and guidance, though, is about the lack of enforcement. With rules, we can and do take action against those who transgress and endanger the rest of us (unless, of course, they are cabinet ministers, advisers, Tory MPs or donors), whereas with guidance, they are free to continue to act as they wish (and may even gain unfair advantage from their actions). Specifically, in this instance, to spread a virus variant the potency of which is still not fully known or understood. Underlying their argument is an ideological aversion to any action being taken collectively rather than individually.

Some might object to the distinction drawn above between England and the more civilised countries of the UK, but doesn’t this go to the heart of an important aspect of what civilisation is about? Acting collectively, in the interests of the many rather than the few, setting rules which allow us to live side by side in a commonly-agreed framework rather than allowing individuals to do as they please regardless of the consequences for others  – aren’t these all aspects of a developed civilisation? Under the leadership of an ignorant and exceptionalist elite, England is rapidly turning its back on civilised values. And that applies not only in the specific dealt with here, but in the treatment of the least fortunate in society and of refugees, to pick just two examples. Remaining attached to what England is becoming is not a future which offers much hope to anyone.

It takes more than a pint to drown Brexit sorrows

Tweet

 

In what appears to be a temporary diversion from the Great Cheese War, it seems that Liz Truss has decided to promote the ability to buy champagne in pint bottles as some sort of massive Brexit bonus. All she needs to do now is persuade those pesky French champagne producers that putting their product in 568 millilitre bottles for the UK Market is an idea worth pursuing.

She’s missed the point, though – and not just because outside Tory circles, champagne isn’t always the tipple of choice. The ability to drown one’s sorrows at what Brexit has done in smaller bottles won’t look like much of a ‘bonus’ to many. Now, if she were talking about buying wine in good old-fashioned quarts…

Criminalising the bullied

Tweet

 

One of the problems faced by the first capitalists with their mills and their machinery was the pre-existing work culture amongst a largely agricultural population. The idea of working the same hours every day all year round was a strange one to a population used to the idea of working when things needed to be done, spending longer in the fields in the summer and staying indoors more during the dark winter months. In time, the idea that ‘work’ required regular hours on regular days in a regular location became so deeply ingrained that most workers – to say nothing of most employers – now find it difficult to conceive of an alternative model.

One of the few ‘benefits’ of the pandemic has been to challenge that concept of ‘work’. Whilst many tasks still require a physical presence at a set location (although increasing use of robots and AI will reduce that number over time), what the pandemic has shown us is that with modern technology at our disposal an awful lot of work does not require that workers are in a set location or even working set hours. Some employers are even seeing this as an opportunity to reduce office costs (and improve staff morale and motivation) by no longer requiring physical attendance on a regular basis. Others are in a state of near panic, so tightly bound by the old paradigm that they don’t understand how they can ever manage people without physically policing their activities.

As we know from ‘Britannia Unchained’, the idea that workers are essentially idle is not only the strong belief of many employers, it is also rife at cabinet level. From their perspective, they work hard and deserve the rewards that go with that; the rest of us are born idlers who need to be kept in line with clear rules and firm discipline. It’s part of the explanation which Raab and others have repeated for those Downing Street ‘gatherings’ – these were people working under extreme pressure and needed the relaxation, whereas the rest of us (including front line health service workers) needed to be kept in line and observe the rules. They seem to genuinely believe that preparing for, and debriefing after, press conferences is more exhausting than simply looking after the sick.

Anyone who has ever considered the question of productivity in relation to much office-based work knows how difficult a concept it is. At its simplest, productivity is simply output divided by input, but in many – perhaps most – office jobs, ‘output’ is difficult to define and measure. Lazy employers therefore fall back on measuring the easy part – input. Or, as it’s otherwise known, hours worked. They even build up a bureaucracy around time keeping, with a host of rules and exceptions, in order to train their staff to work by the clock. No surprise that many end up presiding over a workforce of clock-watchers as a result. They’re measuring completely the wrong thing, of course – output is far more important than input. Most of us who’ve ever worked in an office will be able to think of at least one person who’s worked long hours without producing very much (or even who has done more harm than good during the hours worked!), as well as someone else who’s managed to appear totally on top of his or her job without ever staying after the end of the day. For employers measuring only input, ‘working from home’ has left them feeling threatened and vulnerable. Instead of asking how they can assess what their staff are producing, or even think about how to encourage a culture of wanting to be productive, they’ve resorted to using fancy monitoring software and demanding that staff return to the office prematurely.

The decision of the Welsh Government yesterday to introduce fines for those who go to work when they could be working from home is very badly targeted. Whilst the objective (reducing contact) is the right one in the face of the pandemic, fining workers who are bullied and feel threatened by incompetent employers who are unable to manage a workforce other than through monitoring their presence in the workplace is merely adding to the pressures on the individuals. It’s taking the easy option – just like those employers who only measure input – rather than the difficult one, which is about encouraging and helping employers to find new working methods (or, as a last resort, fining those who don’t). At a time when the people of Wales have shown, in general, an amazing willingness to act collectively and follow the leadership of Drakeford and his government, criminalising people who are in fear of losing their jobs because of the actions of bad employers is intensely counter-productive. It’s a surprising lapse in judgement from a man who has generally been seen to be doing a good job.

Update:  The First Minister has subsequently clarified that there has been some misreporting over this issue, and the intention is not to punish those attending their place of work, but to support them by providing a solid reason for them to refuse a request from their employers. It's a welcome clarification, although it says something about some employers that their staff need to be threatened with prosecution in order to persuade them to behave reasonably and lawfully. There is also a danger, of course, that announcing that there is, in effect, no intention ever to actually fine anyone might serve to weaken that protection. Still, not enforcing laws seems to be the in thing when it comes to Covid, as we've seen with certain parties... 

With one bound, PM leaps out of frying pan

Tweet

 

“We will not hesitate to act!”, declared the PM yesterday as he announced that his government has, in fact, decided to hesitate rather than act. Despite all the warnings from scientists and those working in the NHS that after Christmas is too late for any action to have a meaningful impact on the spread of Omicron, the government has decided to wait until there is hard evidence that the number of hospital admissions is too large for the NHS to cope with before taking any action to reduce that number. The Cabinet clearly understand neither what exponential growth is, nor that the lag between infections and hospital admissions means that waiting until they’re already too high means not only that even more drastic action is required, but also that hospitalisations will continue going up for a week or two even after action is taken. It amounts to a policy of waiting until there are too many, and then loading on even more. And even if, as we all hope, most infections are milder than with previous variants, there will still be many, many additional premature deaths as a direct result of government hesitation, purely because of the sheer number of people likely to be catching the disease.

We know that the headline figure of around 90,000 per day new infections is an understatement. Many of those infected will either be asymptomatic or else driven to avoid taking a test by the government’s total unwillingness to provide adequate support for those who are unable to work. At a doubling rate of every two days (current estimates are between 1.5 and 3 days), the number infected will double twice between now and Christmas Day, and another three times by the end of the year. Unchecked, that could mean 2.8 million recorded cases a day by the end of the month. The ‘good’ news (for the government’s spin doctors at least) is that the headline figures will never reach that level. The UK only has capacity to do around 800,000 tests per day, and there is no way of increasing that capacity in line with the rate of infection. By the end of the year, the headline figures are likely to have reached the peak allowed by that capacity constraint – and also to have been rendered utterly meaningless as any reflection of what is actually happening as a result. On the particular measure of infection rate, the UK government’s policy of  ‘waiting until we have more data’ is equivalent to ‘waiting until events render the data meaningless’.

There is one other piece of ‘good’ news for the PM in all this as well. Watching the numbers soar out of control is likely to divert attention – for the time being at least – away from parties and rule-breaking. Whether encouraging people to worry instead about catching Covid, and about which of their friends and family will be hospitalised or die, is an entirely positive change is another question entirely.

Choosing the right border to control

Tweet

 

Historically, by-elections are a poor guide to anything of much import. However much anyone tries to generalise, the reality is that there are always unique factors in play which won’t necessarily be in play when a general election comes along, even if the ‘special factor’ is no more than the overall context in which the by-election is held. The result is that pundits and politicians can draw their own conclusions on the flimsiest of premises. And that brings us to John Redwood, a man whose principal claim to fame in Wales relates to his amazing crooning ability. His interpretation of the Shropshire North by-election last week is that it was the result of the government wandering away from the one true path of Conservatism, by increasing taxes and spending. Apparently, the electorate voted against the Tories because they wanted more austerity. Maybe his rather dodgy approach to logic is just another failing attempt to persuade us that he isn’t a Vulcan after all.

Talking of ministers from distant planets, Liz Truss has now been placed in charge of Brexit, a minor part time task which she will be required to perform whenever she isn’t on tank-driving duty following cuts to the UK’s armed forces. Her appointment will be bad news for cheese importers. It’s probably good news for Boris Johnson, however – placing the minister who is, by the strange alien logic of the Tory Party, his likeliest successor, in a role in which it is inherently impossible to succeed might buy him a bit more time to reduce the UK’s population whilst enjoying the party atmosphere at Downing Street. Whether it’s good news for anyone else is highly dubious, although Truss’s capacity to make things worse is significantly lessened by the extent to which things are already extremely bad in the Brexit department. And she can always call on Liam Fox (planet of origin currently unknown) to help with a major push to sell jam and marmalade abroad. Maybe she’ll even appoint him as a special envoy, selling ice to eskimos for the purposes of.

Meanwhile, the Sontaran in charge of health in England seems to be deliberately trying to undermine the message being given out by Number 10 about there being no more restrictions by talking up the possibility of imposing further curbs within days. Whether it’s all part of a cunning plan to rule by sowing confusion and division, or whether it’s simply the result of chaos and incompetence is a matter on which people will hold different opinions. Mere earthlings, given our inability to comprehend intergalactic logic, will probably tend towards the latter explanation.

In truth, of course, it’s all – everything – our own collective fault. Electing a bunch of aliens with no conception of ordinary human values, concerns, morality, or way of life to govern us was always going to be a bad idea. Electing aliens from a host of different planets with conflicting objectives who can’t even agree with each other was an even worse one. If we want to prevent a repeat in the future, one obvious step is to move the UK’s border forces away from patrolling ports and airports and set up an iron cordon around a certain school near Windsor which apparently acts as the HQ for the programme to convert human beings into aliens. If there was ever a border over which we needed to take back control, that is surely it. And it’s a lot shorter and easier to control than the UK’s coastline.

In pursuit of truth?

Tweet

 

“In all humility, I have got to accept that verdict”, said Boris Johnson in response to the result of the by-election on Thursday. The idea of Boris Johnson expressing – let alone feeling – humility is so far removed from reality that some conspiracy theorists may even wonder how the deep state managed to replace the real thing with a fake. Normal service was quickly resumed, however, when the PM added that people have been hearing “a litany of stuff about politics and politicians” from the media. What he seems to mean by that is that the problem isn’t anything that he and his gang have said and done, but that the media have dared to report it. He dismissed all the reports about parties, corruption, sleaze, flat refurbishments, and Peppa Pig as “exactly the kind of questions about politics, politicians, the running of government” which he believes that people really neither want nor need to hear about. From his perspective, the media should be concentrating, Pravda-style, on reporting only what the government tells them to report. Having proved over the past two years that the journalist-turned-pm doesn’t understand what being PM is all about, he neatly demonstrates that he doesn’t actually know very much about journalism either.

A few days ago, he was reported to be furious with the BBC in particular for continuing to report stories about parties and broken rules. Apparently, he thought that the media had ‘made their point’ and should now move on. It is the approach he has adopted throughout his life; do what you like, lie, bluster, and obfuscate, and wait for the fuss to die down. The idea that actions should have consequences, or that he should be in any way held to account, is one around which he cannot get his head. And, as the infamous Eton letter demonstrates, he’s been the same since childhood. The problem – for the rest of us, if not for him – is that, to date, the approach has generally worked. How a man sacked – twice – for lying, and who was party to a conspiracy to have a journalist beaten up, could ever have got to be PM is a puzzle to which there is only one possible solution: the utter amorality of his party, from top to bottom. The members of that party, from MPs through to the ordinary members who voted him in as leader, have not only indulged him, they have positively cheered him on, even when his actions are prima facie criminal. For the whole rotten party, power is more important than principle or honesty – especially the power to line their own nests and look after their own at the expense of others.

Johnson seems to believe that he can prevent or deter the media from asking the ‘wrong’ questions by simply refusing to answer, telling journalists that they are asking “the kind of question that breaks the golden rule”, as though it is for him to set any rules about what questions they should be allowed to ask. In a robust democracy, journalists would refuse to publish or air interviews in which a PM decided which questions to answer, and the media would decline to report any statement which they know to be factually untrue (a category which would almost completely remove Johnson from the airwaves). Instead we have mostly had sycophancy and compliance – one might suspect that the only reason the government doesn’t take action to control the media in line with the PM’s ‘golden rule’ is that, as Humbert Wolfe wrote, they are usually quite good at controlling themselves. At the moment, the media are actually showing an unusual degree of backbone in continuing to report things which the PM would rather see kept quiet. Whether they will continue to do so, or eventually conclude instead that, faced with a government able to ‘exonerate’ itself from all sins and willing to stonewall indefinitely, they’ll get fed up and move on remains to be seen. The latter of those two options would be a bad omen for all of us.

Sticking to pretend principles

Tweet

 

Of the 361 Tory MP’s in the House of Commons, 135 are considered to be part of the ‘payroll vote’, that is, MPs who must either resign before voting against the government, or be sacked after doing so. Of the remaining 226, over 100 – nearly half – chose to vote against the government last night. We can be reasonably sure that a number of the 135 on the payroll vote agreed with them, but decided (surely not?) that their careers were more important than what passes for their principles.

The main arguments that the rebels used against the idea of people having to display their Covid vaccination status were firstly that they are opposed to the idea of people having to display their ‘papers’ before entering certain venues, and secondly the lack of evidence that such a move would be effective against transmission. It’s worth comparing their stance on this issue with their stance on other issues.

Whilst I haven’t checked the lists in detail, it is clear that most – perhaps even all – of the rebels also voted recently in favour of demanding that voters should be required to show ID before voting. They clearly believe that requiring all electors to show their ‘papers’ in an attempt to reduce the almost non-existent incidence of electoral fraud is a good thing, but requiring only those who wish to enter venues where large numbers of people gather to show their ‘papers’ in an attempt to reduce hospitalisations and premature deaths is a bad thing.

What could possibly be the huge difference between the two propositions? Two things immediately spring to mind. The first is that the requirement for ID to vote will disproportionately benefit the Conservative Party, and the second is that the requirement for ID to enter venues will disadvantage Conservative donors and supporters certain businesses. Still, the rebels pretend to have their principles – and as Marx (Groucho, not Karl) didn’t quite say, if people don’t like them, then they will pretend to have others. But only ever ones from which they and their ilk will benefit.

Giving Boris his due

Tweet

 

As the Johnson era winds slowly and painfully towards its inevitable demise, many will conclude that it has been a premiership marked by utter failure. That may not be entirely fair or true, however. Whilst there have certainly been many failures (corruption, sleaze, driving people into poverty, crashing the economy, and tens of thousands of unnecessary premature deaths amongst them), his government has either achieved, or laid solid foundations for, a number of very significant developments:

·        Strengthening the EU: the remaining member states of the EU have been united as never before by the strains of Brexit, and talk of other defections has all but disappeared.

·        Irish unity: No British Prime Minister in history has done as much as Johnson to bring about an end to partition and reunite the island of Ireland.

·        Scottish independence: Some of the latest opinion polls are showing record levels of support for independence; by using all the means at his disposal to delay a second referendum, the PM has dramatically increased the probability of success.

·        Welsh independence: Whilst not quite there yet, the current UK government has managed to turn a fringe interest into a widely-discussed proposition, which may well become the dominant view after Irish unity and Scottish independence.

·        Nuclear disarmament: After the loss of Faslane, which will inevitably occur soon after Scottish independence, England will find its nuclear weapons homeless and be forced to base them, temporarily at least, in either the US or France. (Yes, France! Oh, the irony!) It will probably take at least ten years to build a replacement base, even if they can find a location in England willing to host them. Few things are more certain to increase people’s opposition to nuclear weapons than a proposal to site them on their doorstep.

·        Electoral Reform: Likely to rise up the agenda as people come to understand the problems associated with giving an absolute majority to a single party on the basis of a minority share of the vote.

·        House of Lords reform: removing Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish peers from the chamber, coupled with the way in which peerages have effectively been sold in exchange for large donations, will cause a rethink of the whole system when England becomes an independent country following the breakup of the UK.

·        Monetary Policy: Johnson has clearly demonstrated that the fundamental basis of economic policy on which the UK (and the Tories in particular) has operated for the past 40 years – the idea that the government is like a household – is just a myth.

I’ve never been a particular fan of Corbyn, most particularly because of his blind spot when it comes to Wales and Scotland, but had I been forced to choose between him and Johnson in the 2019 election, I would reluctantly have opted for Corbyn. Looking back though, I doubt that I’d be able to draw up a similar list of successes after two years of a Corbyn premiership. Johnson’s government has done a great deal to promote these key changes, whereas under Corbyn we would probably have stood still for two years (although there would have been many more of us still around to see it, a far from inconsequential benefit).

Some might argue that none of the above is what Johnson set out to achieve, or even that he actually set out to achieve quite the opposite. They’d be right, although MacMillan’s dictum about ‘events’ comes to mind. No doubt the immediate aftermath to his regime will be overwhelmingly negative, not least from within his own party; but that isn’t the point. History is written by the winners, not the losers, and in the long term the history of the Johnson era will come to be written not by those who lament the passing of the old but by those who celebrate the birth of the new. In that context, it will surely come to be seen as the government which (albeit accidentally) facilitated the emergence of the new from the ruins of the old. Johnson as Gramsci’s midwife. The cost of the Johnson era for the UK’s citizens has been a high one, though, as a result of which I somehow doubt that we’ll ever end up feeling any debt of gratitude towards him.

Escaping the kitchen

Tweet

 

Lord Geidt, the PM’s ethics adviser (a pointless job if ever there was one) is allegedly considering his position after being made to look a complete fool by believing what the PM told him in the first place, and then seeing that contradicted by the report of the Electoral Commission. He does indeed face a very difficult choice. He can either believe the new assurances provided by the pathological liar in Downing Street and see his own reputation further trashed when the inevitable happens and the Johnson regime implodes, or he can take the opportunity which the PM has, entirely unintentionally, provided to him and quit now in the hope of salvaging what remains of his reputation. On second thoughts, it might not be that difficult a decision after all – it certainly wouldn’t be for most people, although, there again, most people wouldn’t have been so foolish as to accept a job as an ‘ethics adviser’ to a man like Boris Johnson in the first place. Mathew Parris sums up the reason why Geidt has been placed in this position as follows: “Geidt assumed a gentleman wouldn’t tell him a barefaced lie about his scratching around for inappropriate ways of paying his interior decorator. Geidt’s assumption was correct. A gentleman wouldn’t.”

There is an increasing sense of ‘fin de siècle’ about the current regime, and the sharks other Tories can sense it. Liz Truss’ response to questions about ‘that’ party was to emphasise that last Christmas she hadn’t been partying – she’d been off signing trade deals. Leaving aside the minor little detail that these trade deals were basically about replicating deals we already had until we decided to leave the EU, and that all that ‘hard work’ wouldn’t have been needed at all had the government done what the leavers promised and kept the UK in the Single Market / Customs Union, it was a blatant leadership pitch, drawing a clear line between her and Johnson. (Although Parris was pretty blunt about the ‘benefits’ of a Truss premiership as well!) How long it takes for them to dislodge a man who is incapable of realising how bad he is at the job or how serious things have become is yet to be seen. Tory MPs are traditionally a very loyal bunch, until the day that they aren’t, at which point their innate brutality in pursuit of self-preservation comes to the fore.

Cummings reckons it will probably be next summer that Johnson is finally told to go and spend more time with his families – for most of us, that looks like a lot of pain to go through in the meantime. The bigger question is what comes next. A belief that any of the current crop of likely replacements would be any better would be seriously misplaced. Pinning hopes of salvation on replacing Johnson with a proper austerity-supporting Tory just looks like choosing a different frying pan, when what we need is to get ourselves out of the kitchen.