Quote Originally Posted by caytonmiller View Post
I wonder what would have happened to the economy if COVID didnt happen? Would the torys still have feked up or was it a COVID, Brexit, Ukraine war that snowballed the effect?
It wouldn't be fair to assess the performance of the Tories without having regard to the impact of covid and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but most governments have to deal with the unexpected. Would Labour have lost in 2010 without the 2008 financial crash?

I'd be very slow to allow the Tories to use covid as an excuse though. If anything it exposed just how bare the cupboard was - we entered the pandemic with an understaffed NHS and with fewer ICU beds than comparative nations and found ourselves scrabbling around for overpriced PPE and undertaking a bizarre project in the form of Nightingale Hospitals- beds with no doctors or nurses to attend to prospective occupants. People died because of that.

I am a keen watcher of the criminal justice system. I see a huge queue of cases waiting be heard, but there are courtrooms standing unused because there aren't enough judges and with trials being adjourned because there aren't enough barristers willing to undertake work at legal aid rates. Those problems were well on the way well before covid and Ukraine, just as the lack of prison spaces was.