Tim, when you are behind in the polls the solution is to move towards the popular centre.
Boris is moving away from the centre in order to appease his own MP's during this leadership crisis. But in moving away from the centre he is actually crystallising the poll reversal and dooming those very same MP's to defeat in 2024.
You have to conclude that the Tory MP's are not so bright. Boris is making promises to them that he cannot keep, because by promising them in the first place it precludes him from being in power at the time of delivery. The MP's are hearing what the want to hear, and can't grasp the fact that they are being herded into a trap.
The only way out for the Tory's is to dump Boris post haste, move towards the popular centre and fight Kier Starmer toe to toe.
What are the chances that a coronavirus pandemic begins within 20km of the worlds leading coronavirus research facility? The land area of the Earth is 510,000,000 kmsq.
This commercially produced video predates the pandemic and gives you a good idea of the kind of work that was done at the Wuhan Institute.
Lab staff were literally travelling 1,000's of miles around China to large bat caves, picking up bat excrement and scraping the throats of live and dead bats to harvest as many coronaviruses as possible.
They were then shipping these samples back to Wuhan (a major population centre), and infecting 100's of generations of human cells in the lab with these wild virus samples and bombarding them with radiation.
They engaged in genetic engineering and gain of function research on these viruses, claiming they were researching a vaccine.
All of this was going on inside the lab in Wuhan.
So the worlds leading coronavirus research facility was researching coronavirus vaccines? Yet not one single COVID vaccine was produced from this research work? They didn't even share any of their masses of coronavirus research with vaccine makers once the pandemic took off.
If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck...
Can you imagine if the pandemic started in the West?
You would have people from the lab on TV every day, explaining what happened or why they are innocent. The press would be all over the place, the innocent staff would be on TV in tears wondering what they had done.
Also the Wuhan Lab is the worlds leading research institute for coronaviruses. We are in the middle of a coronavirus pandemic... Now imagine the pandemic started in Afghanistan or Africa or the Amazon... don't you think someone from this institute might have something useful to add in the scenario of a coronavirus pandemic?
Yet we got crickets.
There are many dogs that are not barking, lots of stories missing from the news that would be there if this really were a natural pandemic.
It is 100% a lab leak, this was obvious from the very start. It was particularly scary to see WHO denounce it as such. Rather than pour water on the lab leak theory, statements from WHO merely illuminated an even larger problem of institutional coercion / infiltration.
I don't think it was intentional leak. China are just very bad at biosecurity inside their exceedingly dangerous bioweapons facilities.
They're very lucky they didn't kill all their people, the virus has become much less deadly over time, as viruses do. But who knows when this really started or how lethal that first epidemic was.
To conclude; the biosphere has just become another domain of geopolitics.
Imagine an asymptomatic virus that caused people to produce 10% more testosterone or 15% less dopamine or did some other mild endocrinological thing. You could decide election outcomes of your rivals quite easily with such a technology.
These technologies already exist in the world today.
I have 2 Qs that I cannot get any satisfactory answers to...
1-why have China and Russia not gone down the MRNA vax route?
2-where has the world beating (non MRNA) Dame Sarah Gilbert's Oxford Astra Zeneca disappeared to and why is it not being offered any longer to anyone? Does it mean AZ fully vaxxed will have to have to have 2 doses of MRNA to be considered vaxxed...what is the story?
100%. The Tories are cemented into "business as usual" with regard to policy. They have a substantial majority and have not exercised power in forcing through legislation that the opposition hates, nor rescinded legislation that they love. There are no radicals in the Conservative Party because they are screened out very early in their career. The entire party is an endless parade of cucks and wets, simultaneously desperate for the approval of people who hate them and acidly contemptuous of those who support them.
I wouldn’t trust individuals in the party anymore. If they haven’t shown integrity or taken a stand by now, then they’re part of problem. We’re stuck with those that have their own agenda, are clueless, lack vision or are not strong enough to lead. Anyone who puts party before country doesn’t belong in position of power. Boris is not the only one to blame here. He may be a spineless sociopath but the party is enabling him.
Not that other parties better (sorry). We need real change but that can only come when public demands it.
…but would you respect /trust people that are choosing to wait and watch while Boris et al keep messing up. Should leaders not have the courage to act because it’s the ‘right’ (rather than ‘easy’) thing to do?
Had never heard of Pearl and hadn't dug into causality since taking a course or two at university - thanks for the tip! Some of these books look fascinating.
A pleasure - try 'The Book Of Why' first, as a good general intro, with an insightful historical narrative on the development of statistical inference, Bayes, and the unlikely and overlooked originator of the bones of causal reasoning, taken up again with great perspicacity by Pearl himself.
The technical books are imo best read once you have the background, since it's a science-philosophical topic as much as a mathematical one.
Jan 7, 2022·edited Jan 7, 2022Liked by Dominic Cummings
I can't really afford another sub, but you're so good when you get really mad at people, I guess I'm going to have to..
Oh btw I don't necessarily agree with everything you say about the V, or the Vx's, but I bow to your knowledge of the politics and the technocracy (or rather , the ridiculous lack of it). Please write more here as I don't do Twitter.
The party story is another media distraction, and whilst the Napoleon quote 'Never interrupt your enemy whilst they are making a mistake' applies to this situation and could be another nail in the coffin, we are facing essential crises such as living costs and energy that don't seem to be being addressed and that are far more important.
Has there been any work on investing and advocating for new energy output such as nuclear power, as you wrote in your previous blog, infrastructure is a 'strategic asset', Britain used to have 38 nuclear reactors in 1988 and we are now down to 12. Energy not just massively affects cost of living but also means we do not have to rely on other regimes to be able to have a functioning country. Is any work being done on this? Obviously it would require massive investment and planning but it cannot be ignored.
Also, why won't you name officials such as the official who sent the email about the party? Do we not deserve accountability?
We gotta get the trolley out asap so can focus on things like cost of living... Name will come... Yes theres lots of work on energy - but with trolley in only Media Entertainment Mode...
You’re right to withhold for now as it will just feed media. Accountability appears to keep shifting in UK politics so we’ll get more of a slow bleed with little change.
Perhaps need to have some concrete alternatives and a clear path forward before shaking things up.
Shouldn’t end up going from ‘egregious’ to ‘rotten’ behaviour. UK deserves better than to ‘tolerate’ selfish political agendas…
Dominic - I agree removing Boris has to be an early objective but the major prize has to be removing/transforming the existing political system. This is the BIG JOB which I thought was also yours? Please look at my email.
Is our national debt now *absolutely* unpayable? Does this completely put a stop to re-industrialising, other than the glib and phony 'service/hitech' version that has such feet of clay? Are we about to fall into the welcoming arms of global(ist) financial 'support' in the same way that SE Asia was 'supported' and 'managed' into the ground, and indirectly into the hands of a Chinese bloc-building strategy?
Real questions for me, as I am no economist or financial expert, but am concerned that we've not only flogged off all the crown jewels, but the cabinets they were in, and the means to re-engineer them (how many nuclear engineers do we train in a year; how many musical instrument makers? It's that diverse).
If you read the right books when you are young, go to university, speak confidently soon you might find yourself running things, he went on to say most of the staff working in Number 10 are in their 30's. The majority have never bought a house, and many of them have never even bought a car!
Is the second part of this paragraph remotely accurate of the Number 10 staff?
I've worked in a lot of places, and I usually find that after a certain age most people really struggle to do a lot of writing or to produce a lot of material of any kind (obvious exceptions but generalising). However, grey heads still add a lot of value because they do know how the world works and tend to be much better at predicting most things. Good greys can identify the 95% of activities that are a waste of time.
You usually need a kind of 80 : 20 split, with a majority of hyper-productive younger people surrounding a kernel of good greys.
I guess I am asking, is Peston right about the demographics of Downing St?
If so, is that by design? and the kernel of greys are just bad?
Or is this Carrie nepotism run wild?
Or thirdly... was it a mixture of the above? Initially by design, but then corrupted by nepotism?
Ok I have resumed my subscription but only to say this. I’ve heard you on the mishandling of the pandemic and how the No 10 trolley works or rather doesn’t work. I admire your thinking and many of the thinkers you cite. I want to hear you on how we can extract economic and political benefit out of Brexit which so far has been a flop. I remain conservative, just. But where is the political imagination, and will, to take the country forward?
Agree 100%. We can go on discussing why things are /went wrong - meanwhile Government still doesn’t get that Brexit was meant to benefit the UK and is more interested in provoking, alienating or sticking to it’s silly ‘red lines’. It would rather hurt the EU and gloat than focus on what’s right for country.
Time to reevaluate and take action based on where we are today. Given current position (regardless of reason / fault), what do we need to do to realise benefits of Brexit? How do we get everyone to pull together towards the same goal?
Another very good article Dom, the problem is How do we actually get Westminster to reform? What you have described reminds me of Mancur Olson's 'the logic of collective action' and how a small group within an institution can subvert the wishes of the majority. Though the situation is bad for the majority because it suits powerful people in powerful positions its virtually impossible to reform. The only solutions Olson suggests is either being conquered by another country or have a civil war that smashes everything in site. Neither of the options are desirable.
My huge fear with Starmer is that he will go down Blair's path of yet more Government spending with no attention paid to reforming Whitehall. Indeed he will probably institutionalise inefficiency and incompetency even more, especially in the realms of education and defense (Goodbye to the hard won reforms you and Gove instituted). To make up for the publics frustration he simply bang the culture war drum ever louder (expect a lot more wokeness).
Is there any real way that we can make real reforms that make Whitehall actually deliver for the Public? I agree that Johnson has outlived his usefulness at No.10 but even if he is removed (not likely given how long it took to get rid of Theresa May) would his successor have anymore chance of executing the reforms needed? Labour can never again be trusted with the leavers of power but I doubt the Tories are up to the task.
Joseph – nice one. What happens to Boris is for sure relevant to governance of our nation but it won’t be a game changer. As you say reforming the infrastructure and protocols in Westminster (primarily Government, House of Commons, Civil Service) is the big task and indeed what I thought was the essence of Dominic’s blog. We should address such fundamental political reform head-on.
I have some ideas on how to unleash politics from the stranglehold of history as I’m sure Dominic, you and others on this blog also have. How do we bring this to the fore?
There are already posts querying what actually can be achieved by acting within the current system. As interesting as Dominic’s output is, including condemnation of Boris, not much will really change for the better until the system is changed.
We need to move so that a new ethos of governance is established - and on show to the people who have absolute trust in what is done - not dissimilar to what LKY achieved.
We need exceptional individuals to help define policy and certainly to deliver it. But they need to work in an environment which has genuine democracy at its core.
Seeing this transition on a protracted timeline is a BIG MISTAKE. With sympathetic philanthropists on board all is absolutely doable within a parliamentary term.
As with Brexit the people will get engaged and then excited about creating a new way of living together.
For goodness sake let’s get on with it - not pussyfoot about in the foothills of the current methods of democratic politics. There are some bright sparks on the blog. Let it be the catalyst for transforming government and all our lives.
Tim, when you are behind in the polls the solution is to move towards the popular centre.
Boris is moving away from the centre in order to appease his own MP's during this leadership crisis. But in moving away from the centre he is actually crystallising the poll reversal and dooming those very same MP's to defeat in 2024.
You have to conclude that the Tory MP's are not so bright. Boris is making promises to them that he cannot keep, because by promising them in the first place it precludes him from being in power at the time of delivery. The MP's are hearing what the want to hear, and can't grasp the fact that they are being herded into a trap.
The only way out for the Tory's is to dump Boris post haste, move towards the popular centre and fight Kier Starmer toe to toe.
It should have been pretty clear to anyone at the very outset that it was a lab leak. Biosecurity leaks are actually very common (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents)
What are the chances that a coronavirus pandemic begins within 20km of the worlds leading coronavirus research facility? The land area of the Earth is 510,000,000 kmsq.
This commercially produced video predates the pandemic and gives you a good idea of the kind of work that was done at the Wuhan Institute.
https://youtu.be/ovnUyTRMERI
Lab staff were literally travelling 1,000's of miles around China to large bat caves, picking up bat excrement and scraping the throats of live and dead bats to harvest as many coronaviruses as possible.
They were then shipping these samples back to Wuhan (a major population centre), and infecting 100's of generations of human cells in the lab with these wild virus samples and bombarding them with radiation.
They engaged in genetic engineering and gain of function research on these viruses, claiming they were researching a vaccine.
All of this was going on inside the lab in Wuhan.
So the worlds leading coronavirus research facility was researching coronavirus vaccines? Yet not one single COVID vaccine was produced from this research work? They didn't even share any of their masses of coronavirus research with vaccine makers once the pandemic took off.
If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck...
Can you imagine if the pandemic started in the West?
You would have people from the lab on TV every day, explaining what happened or why they are innocent. The press would be all over the place, the innocent staff would be on TV in tears wondering what they had done.
Also the Wuhan Lab is the worlds leading research institute for coronaviruses. We are in the middle of a coronavirus pandemic... Now imagine the pandemic started in Afghanistan or Africa or the Amazon... don't you think someone from this institute might have something useful to add in the scenario of a coronavirus pandemic?
Yet we got crickets.
There are many dogs that are not barking, lots of stories missing from the news that would be there if this really were a natural pandemic.
It is 100% a lab leak, this was obvious from the very start. It was particularly scary to see WHO denounce it as such. Rather than pour water on the lab leak theory, statements from WHO merely illuminated an even larger problem of institutional coercion / infiltration.
I don't think it was intentional leak. China are just very bad at biosecurity inside their exceedingly dangerous bioweapons facilities.
They're very lucky they didn't kill all their people, the virus has become much less deadly over time, as viruses do. But who knows when this really started or how lethal that first epidemic was.
To conclude; the biosphere has just become another domain of geopolitics.
Imagine an asymptomatic virus that caused people to produce 10% more testosterone or 15% less dopamine or did some other mild endocrinological thing. You could decide election outcomes of your rivals quite easily with such a technology.
These technologies already exist in the world today.
I have 2 Qs that I cannot get any satisfactory answers to...
1-why have China and Russia not gone down the MRNA vax route?
2-where has the world beating (non MRNA) Dame Sarah Gilbert's Oxford Astra Zeneca disappeared to and why is it not being offered any longer to anyone? Does it mean AZ fully vaxxed will have to have to have 2 doses of MRNA to be considered vaxxed...what is the story?
Boris, because he has no sense of direction like a trolley crashing through the aisles when pushed.
true that
Boris
100%. The Tories are cemented into "business as usual" with regard to policy. They have a substantial majority and have not exercised power in forcing through legislation that the opposition hates, nor rescinded legislation that they love. There are no radicals in the Conservative Party because they are screened out very early in their career. The entire party is an endless parade of cucks and wets, simultaneously desperate for the approval of people who hate them and acidly contemptuous of those who support them.
I wouldn’t trust individuals in the party anymore. If they haven’t shown integrity or taken a stand by now, then they’re part of problem. We’re stuck with those that have their own agenda, are clueless, lack vision or are not strong enough to lead. Anyone who puts party before country doesn’t belong in position of power. Boris is not the only one to blame here. He may be a spineless sociopath but the party is enabling him.
Not that other parties better (sorry). We need real change but that can only come when public demands it.
Yes, I think there is. They may be waiting for some colossal clusterf*** that Boris cannot recover from, before ganging up to push him out the door
…but would you respect /trust people that are choosing to wait and watch while Boris et al keep messing up. Should leaders not have the courage to act because it’s the ‘right’ (rather than ‘easy’) thing to do?
Less enthralled by Bayes than you are, but still: http://www.daviddeutsch.org.uk/2014/08/simple-refutation-of-the-bayesian-philosophy-of-science/
Judaea Pearl's work goes considerably further and better, I believe.
Pearl's work shd have a rare prize for most-important-most-undervalued!
Given how central concept of causation is AND how few even among scientists are aware of the work on it in last 30 years...
Had never heard of Pearl and hadn't dug into causality since taking a course or two at university - thanks for the tip! Some of these books look fascinating.
A pleasure - try 'The Book Of Why' first, as a good general intro, with an insightful historical narrative on the development of statistical inference, Bayes, and the unlikely and overlooked originator of the bones of causal reasoning, taken up again with great perspicacity by Pearl himself.
The technical books are imo best read once you have the background, since it's a science-philosophical topic as much as a mathematical one.
Sounds good! I was thinking of doing something like that. Cheers!
Only vaguely related but this may be of general interest: https://www.pnas.org/content/118/35/e2106292118 or the 2 minute version here: https://nautil.us/issue/112/inspiration/what-makes-group-decisions-go-wrong-and-right
I can't really afford another sub, but you're so good when you get really mad at people, I guess I'm going to have to..
Oh btw I don't necessarily agree with everything you say about the V, or the Vx's, but I bow to your knowledge of the politics and the technocracy (or rather , the ridiculous lack of it). Please write more here as I don't do Twitter.
The party story is another media distraction, and whilst the Napoleon quote 'Never interrupt your enemy whilst they are making a mistake' applies to this situation and could be another nail in the coffin, we are facing essential crises such as living costs and energy that don't seem to be being addressed and that are far more important.
Has there been any work on investing and advocating for new energy output such as nuclear power, as you wrote in your previous blog, infrastructure is a 'strategic asset', Britain used to have 38 nuclear reactors in 1988 and we are now down to 12. Energy not just massively affects cost of living but also means we do not have to rely on other regimes to be able to have a functioning country. Is any work being done on this? Obviously it would require massive investment and planning but it cannot be ignored.
Also, why won't you name officials such as the official who sent the email about the party? Do we not deserve accountability?
We gotta get the trolley out asap so can focus on things like cost of living... Name will come... Yes theres lots of work on energy - but with trolley in only Media Entertainment Mode...
agreed but not just boris, the whole system. doing all I can, more to come!
You’re right to withhold for now as it will just feed media. Accountability appears to keep shifting in UK politics so we’ll get more of a slow bleed with little change.
Perhaps need to have some concrete alternatives and a clear path forward before shaking things up.
Shouldn’t end up going from ‘egregious’ to ‘rotten’ behaviour. UK deserves better than to ‘tolerate’ selfish political agendas…
Dominic - I agree removing Boris has to be an early objective but the major prize has to be removing/transforming the existing political system. This is the BIG JOB which I thought was also yours? Please look at my email.
Is our national debt now *absolutely* unpayable? Does this completely put a stop to re-industrialising, other than the glib and phony 'service/hitech' version that has such feet of clay? Are we about to fall into the welcoming arms of global(ist) financial 'support' in the same way that SE Asia was 'supported' and 'managed' into the ground, and indirectly into the hands of a Chinese bloc-building strategy?
Real questions for me, as I am no economist or financial expert, but am concerned that we've not only flogged off all the crown jewels, but the cabinets they were in, and the means to re-engineer them (how many nuclear engineers do we train in a year; how many musical instrument makers? It's that diverse).
"Without regime change, if you live for another 30-50 years you will likely see something much worse than covid."
Chilling to read, but probably true. Regime change can't come soon enough!
Excellent of you to shout out @jburnmurdoch. I have been following him since the beginning of the pandemic and agreed on his excellent analysis.
Did the government suppress/withhold antivirals?
no, just the usual lack of urgency and gumption
On Peston last night he said...
If you read the right books when you are young, go to university, speak confidently soon you might find yourself running things, he went on to say most of the staff working in Number 10 are in their 30's. The majority have never bought a house, and many of them have never even bought a car!
Is the second part of this paragraph remotely accurate of the Number 10 staff?
I've worked in a lot of places, and I usually find that after a certain age most people really struggle to do a lot of writing or to produce a lot of material of any kind (obvious exceptions but generalising). However, grey heads still add a lot of value because they do know how the world works and tend to be much better at predicting most things. Good greys can identify the 95% of activities that are a waste of time.
You usually need a kind of 80 : 20 split, with a majority of hyper-productive younger people surrounding a kernel of good greys.
I guess I am asking, is Peston right about the demographics of Downing St?
If so, is that by design? and the kernel of greys are just bad?
Or is this Carrie nepotism run wild?
Or thirdly... was it a mixture of the above? Initially by design, but then corrupted by nepotism?
Ok I have resumed my subscription but only to say this. I’ve heard you on the mishandling of the pandemic and how the No 10 trolley works or rather doesn’t work. I admire your thinking and many of the thinkers you cite. I want to hear you on how we can extract economic and political benefit out of Brexit which so far has been a flop. I remain conservative, just. But where is the political imagination, and will, to take the country forward?
Agree 100%. We can go on discussing why things are /went wrong - meanwhile Government still doesn’t get that Brexit was meant to benefit the UK and is more interested in provoking, alienating or sticking to it’s silly ‘red lines’. It would rather hurt the EU and gloat than focus on what’s right for country.
Time to reevaluate and take action based on where we are today. Given current position (regardless of reason / fault), what do we need to do to realise benefits of Brexit? How do we get everyone to pull together towards the same goal?
Another very good article Dom, the problem is How do we actually get Westminster to reform? What you have described reminds me of Mancur Olson's 'the logic of collective action' and how a small group within an institution can subvert the wishes of the majority. Though the situation is bad for the majority because it suits powerful people in powerful positions its virtually impossible to reform. The only solutions Olson suggests is either being conquered by another country or have a civil war that smashes everything in site. Neither of the options are desirable.
My huge fear with Starmer is that he will go down Blair's path of yet more Government spending with no attention paid to reforming Whitehall. Indeed he will probably institutionalise inefficiency and incompetency even more, especially in the realms of education and defense (Goodbye to the hard won reforms you and Gove instituted). To make up for the publics frustration he simply bang the culture war drum ever louder (expect a lot more wokeness).
Is there any real way that we can make real reforms that make Whitehall actually deliver for the Public? I agree that Johnson has outlived his usefulness at No.10 but even if he is removed (not likely given how long it took to get rid of Theresa May) would his successor have anymore chance of executing the reforms needed? Labour can never again be trusted with the leavers of power but I doubt the Tories are up to the task.
Joseph – nice one. What happens to Boris is for sure relevant to governance of our nation but it won’t be a game changer. As you say reforming the infrastructure and protocols in Westminster (primarily Government, House of Commons, Civil Service) is the big task and indeed what I thought was the essence of Dominic’s blog. We should address such fundamental political reform head-on.
I have some ideas on how to unleash politics from the stranglehold of history as I’m sure Dominic, you and others on this blog also have. How do we bring this to the fore?
wowzah!! ok eyeballs swivelling from overreading here...so... who took the picture of May 15 and why?
I'm probably just being forgetful but which things are you referring to with "inability of No10 to direct the police in a crisis"?
There are already posts querying what actually can be achieved by acting within the current system. As interesting as Dominic’s output is, including condemnation of Boris, not much will really change for the better until the system is changed.
We need to move so that a new ethos of governance is established - and on show to the people who have absolute trust in what is done - not dissimilar to what LKY achieved.
We need exceptional individuals to help define policy and certainly to deliver it. But they need to work in an environment which has genuine democracy at its core.
Seeing this transition on a protracted timeline is a BIG MISTAKE. With sympathetic philanthropists on board all is absolutely doable within a parliamentary term.
As with Brexit the people will get engaged and then excited about creating a new way of living together.
For goodness sake let’s get on with it - not pussyfoot about in the foothills of the current methods of democratic politics. There are some bright sparks on the blog. Let it be the catalyst for transforming government and all our lives.