Well I would hope that the lockdown isn't in place too long after March to require 'monthly' votes on it.
It should be weekly votes on it!!!

I just want to say that the reason Conservative Home editors keep bringing the idiot Gauke back time and time again is deliberately to annoy the readers and generate clicks and comments.
They will only stop giving him publicity if we stop playing along with their games.

Its really great to see that so far, this Gauke article has generated so few comments (about 59 to date instead of the 280 plus that he normally generates).

So this will be the final comment I ever make on a David Gauke article and the final time that I will ever click on a David Gauke article.
I urge others of similar mind to do the same and boycott Gauke as well. Whatever controversial rubbish he publishes, just ignore him.
He will soon find himself cancelled for lack of interest. Lets reclaim this site for the genuine Conservatives.

"As the SNP chief executive faces the threat of a perjury investigation, the Salmond fiasco goes from bad to worse"

...and makes ABSOLUTELY no difference whatsoever to peoples voting intentions.
In the only part of the UK where racism (anti English of course) is not only allowed but ENCOURAGED by political leaders, and in the only part of the UK where big state socialism is expected to a spoon fed Scottish people, it was NEVER going to have any impact.
Scots aren't voting based on rationality, they are voting based on prejudice and patriotism.

Ironically, if the Scots want to maintain their socialist utopia, then they need to support the Union. Because it will all come crashing down around them if they have independence.
I think many of us in England are starting to look on with disinterest and some bemusement as to how the stupid Scots are going to react to independence when it is too late and they start to realise what the consequences are after they inevitably vote for it.

Neither is when we refuse extradtion to the US in high profile cases on spurious grounds, Mr Gale.

Perhaps its time we just ended the extradition treaty and had done then?

We are indeed becoming a fascist state. The Covid response is just a part of it. The problem goes much deeper into our political discourse.

It is what I have previously described as "democratic fascism" and it seems to be the natural concludion to 21st Century post-materialist Western liberal democracy.

When a Conservative party candidate can be removed and expelled for expressing a legitimate policy viewpoint, and when a government minister can be put under investigation for daring to criticise a journalist who was attacking her, what else can you call it but fascism?

But this is not fascism by governmrnt. It is a fascism of the elites who will not tolerate opposing viewpoints and seek to actively bully and destroy those who express them in public in order to control and silence debate about things that they don't want to debate.

Given the SNPs insistance that every part of the UK should need to agree before we left the EU, surely all parts of the UK should agree before Scotland goes independent?
The SNP are not so keen on that logical extrapolation from their argument.
I wonder why?

The Remoaners thought that turning around a 52-48% Brexit advantage in the referendum would be "inevitable". Particularly when they gloated about the deaths of the Brexit voting elderly and the rise of the Remoaner youth to voting age.

But I think that that was always a fallacy. They are going to find taking us back into the EU more difficult than they imagined. The EU itself is doing them no favours by their petty and pathetic actions, losing them a lot of goodwill. The chances are other member states could leave the block in the decades ahead, taking the shine off the EU project further.

And the longer we stay out, and make a SUCCESS of Brexit, the more likely that young people will start to lose their EU fanaticism. Much of it was fueled by fear, and as that reduces, so will support for rejoining the EU.
In the years to come, there are going to be young people coming of voting age who will never have even known we were once members of the EU at all, and they will have no ideological opinion towards joining the EU either way.

I think we are going to be independent now for the rest of my lifetime and beyond.

Well they are very silly and short sighted then.

But in the modern Tory party, we cannot really be surprised.

Apologies. I was using the term innocently. I would fall into that category according to most on here, so I was applying it to myself in absence of anything better.

I hear what you are saying, but consider this:
How much more difficult is it going to be to convince COVID sceptics who are struggling to follow the rules to actually isolate and do as they are told by the government, if we are seen to be making exceptions for things that are apparently 'more important' than saving lives?

We are already holding local elections because it would create too much trouble to hold-over the 2020 and 2021 polls again. So THAT is obviously more important than saving lives (all, by the way, whilst demanding that parties and candidates don't campaign in those elections! which is crazy. Just imagine hearing on the news that Russia were holding elections but the government was prosecuting and fining people who tried to campaign in them, we would rightly say that those elections are not free or fair. But that is another story).

And now it seems that keeping schools closed is storing too many and too big problems for the it to be worth doing, and so now we are saying that getting kids back to school is more important than saving lives as well!

How can you then go on and tell me I have to carry on isolating and following the rules? How can you carry on telling businesses they have to suffer and go to the wall by remaining closed, when in the next breath we are listing a whole host of exemptions and things that are 'more important' than following the rules?