“The Covid procurement response was marked by various points of systemic weakness and political choices that allowed cronyism to thrive, all enabled by woefully inadequate public transparency. As far as we can ascertain, no other country used a system like the UK’s VIP lane in their Covid response.”
That may be so but how many other countries can boast of being governed by a chumocracy of jolly good fellows?
Hopefully very few, but in reality probably many. 
Dear Labour : this is NOT the hill to die on.
Maybe not died but wounded.
Recriminations will be interesting.
It’s going to go-on hurting them - as a stick to beat them with - for many years to come.*
*Or until the next significant fumble…
53 Labour MPs abstained.
The interesting thing is what will Starmer do (or not do) about it,
Thatcher never got rid of the ‘Thatcher the Snatcher’ sobriquet no matter how high her star rose.
Starmer could live with this forever
I don’t think he’s going to do anything. This is similar to the then new Labour government of '97 keeping to Tory spending proposals for the first year or so. The initial bumpiness of doing so was worth the boost to the perception of being prepared to make a difficult decision rather than simply reach for the chequebook. The political landscape is different now… but not so different there isn’t validity to it.
Legislation banning foreign states from owning UK newspapers soon followed.
Unless they are Russian and they’ll get a free peerage thrown in as well.
Tories out of touch?
Where did you hear that old chap? Nothing further from the truth!
Brilliant 
Long may it continue.
Dear god, please give the current government the wisdom not to make any more decisions as fucking stupid as this one.
Failing that, just give them some wisdom. Any kind will do.
All for a saving of £1.5 billion, which is about 10 days worth of energy company profits.
Blaming the previous incumbents won’t wash, not for this.
You stupid, stupid fuckers.
Very interesting interview with John Major, caught the last part while zapping.
Not actively aware of his achievements as a PM, but long time ago that I heard a UK politician talking in a sensible way.
(For some reason not accessible to me in D (yet?) )
Save for clinging on to power for seven long years post Thatcher, there were no achievements of note IIRC.
He played quite a part in preparing the ground for the Good Friday Agreement.
But his comments about the Conservative Party are irrelevant. He has been estranged from them for many years and has no influence.
And he navigated us through the Maastricht Treaty which was the foundation of the modern EU which is basically why the modern Tories hate him.
As an individual he did attain a rarefied state of Sub-charisma. For instance the shoes you donated to the charity shop 17 years ago are in this moment positively effervescent by comparison. He was still the best Tory prime minister of my lifetime. Just typing that is like itching powder to the soul.
Keeping his affair with Edwina Currie a secret. The affair was over before he became PM and didn’t become public knowledge until afterwards.
And he grew up in the Circus, or at least his parents had been circus performers, which I am sure gave him valuable experience for the House of Commons.
