Will this crisis lead to a change in Conservative attitudes?

I’m not the one suggesting it - just using the crazy logic suggested by others that public school, uni education means you’re highly unlikely to be grounded. Perhaps it only applies to the evil Tories and lovely Labour mps are immune to the vile influence of it all!

Pantglas Where people come from can make a difference to their attitudes. So, whilst Corbyn and McDonnell might be well educated they have striven to improve the lot of the ordinary person. Whilst Corbyn comes from a relatively comfortable, middleclass background McDonnell certainly doesn't.

So it's wrong of you to impute that McDonnell doesn't know how ordinary people coped. As regards Corbyn, his parents were both members of the Labour Party and they too would have known about the lives of the working people.

McDonnell's father was a bus driver and a trades union man. The young McDonnell went to Gt Yarmouth Grammar School and being born in 1951 he was the right age to benefit from taking the 11 plus.

Thinking that he had a religious vocation he later won a Local Authority grant to go to a Catholic Boarding school in Ipswich. Apparently he discovered girls and changed his mind. Later he studied for A levels at night school before going to Brunel aged 23. He later did a Masters at Birkbeck.

Furthermore I doubt that Sunak's parents made the decision for him to go to Oxford and Stanford. The latter being after his tenure at Goldman Sachs.

So, we are judging people on their actions and beliefs and not on the decisions made by their parents.

Our death toll is shocking! MY DS is a New Zealander and there has been one death there so far. Ok it's a small country but similar in size to Scotland which has sadly suffered hundreds of deaths. Care homes being particularly dangerous places.

I cannot admire a government, whose leader, despite warnings and when the situation in China and on cruise ships was dire, attended an international rugby match and who allowed the Cheltenham festival to go ahead and allowed 3000 Spanish football fans to attend a match at Liverpool.

He does not care very much about any of us. He just likes being head boy.
Will he change? I doubt it.

Perhaps details of Sunak's subsequent career might help to dispel the 'grounded' notion, Pantglas?

Why do you suggest that John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn are 'ungrounded'?

Lots of very interesting interpretations and thoughts I’ve enjoyed reading all the different takes on the situation but I’m not as knowledgable as most of you seem to be so I’ve learnt some things too.

So Rishi is only slightly more ‘ungrounded’ than Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell then.....I don’t recall it being suggested before December elections that because they’d not been educated at the local comp they were unlikely to know how the majority cope.

Can’t we get away from how and where people came from - how would any of us like to be judged purely on the decisions our parents made?

Rishi Sunak: Father a GP, mother a pharmacist who ran a local pharmacy. Educated at Winchester (Public School) and Oxford. Highly unlikely to be 'grounded'.

Urm you are right about his parents, but Winchester College, not exactly cheap, Oxford and Stanford. That sort of education can change peoples' outlook and certainly his career before parliament is not conducive to seeing how the majority live.

EllanVannin I hope you haven’t misread my post by choosing to ask me ‘could you do any better?’ - I really hope I would have more scruples and integrity than to treat the NHS as merely a business to profit from which is what the Conservative party policy has actively encouraged and tacitly chosen to allow to occur- we are now seeing the results of that policy laid bare.

Good point tanith.
The only time in the previous century when everyone was in the same boat socially, and economically, was post WW2.
But that had lasted much longer than (hopefully) this crisis will.
Then slowly everything returned to the normal for this country - ie the old wealth/class system.

Oh I don’t know re Sunak. Isn’t/wasn’t his mother or father an NHS doctor or pharmacist? I bet he’s quite grounded, even though he married ‘rich’.

Ilovecheese It's highly likely that there will be masses of businesses going bust as well as mass unemployment.

The vast majority of the business in the UK are SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises).

The total number of SMEs is 5.9 million
Of these 5.82 million employ between 0 and 49 people

4.5 million SME's had no employees. Of these 3.5 milion were sole proprietorships (ie self employed)
2 million were actively trading companies
405,000 were ordinary partnerships

SME's provide 3/5 of the employment in the UK.

Many of these business are going to find it difficult to start up again once this crisis is over.

Unfortunately the likes of Rishi Sunak - formerly an anlayst for Goldman Saks followed by partnerships in hedge funds - do not, and probably cannot, understand how these business work and there are many more in the government like him, only maybe not quite so rich. He comes across as being sincere but as someone else wrote in on of these threads, he won't have undergone a damascene convrsion.

In 1995, Boris Johnson called for patients to be charged to use the National Health Service to prevent free care being "abused" by people who can afford to pay. I do hope he's paid up!

www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-said-patients-charged-to-use-the-nhs-2019-12?r=US&IR=T

Can we have some examples of their good work please - anybody?

Sorry Dinahmo - I was agreeing with you about China and pointing out to the same poster that the right on here never criticise the Tories even though they’ve made numerous errors since the start of the pandemic.

I suppose Rishi Sunak could have followed the Conservative philosophy of letting the markets decide the outcome. Mass unemployment and a host of businesses going bust would be the logical outcome of their beliefs in market led economics.

Paddyanne I expect they'll quietly forget about the non hospital deaths. Or maybe they'll slip them into the papers when there's a good news day, whenever that will be. It could be when Beatrice gets married since she seem to think that a large wedding will benefit the country by cheering us up!!!!

This government had knowledge about how ill prepared the UK was for a pandemic such as we are now experiencing. If you doubt this look at Exercise Cygnus. This was the code name given to a national pandemic flu exercise the government ran in 2016.
It was never published but you can read comments on its findings.
It would be interesting to know why this report was never acted upon as serious deficiencies were identified then.
Does this give me confidence that things will change when this is over? Sadly no.

Plenty of criticism of China from those on the left. I try to avoid buying stuff made there if possible. What’s that got to do with anything I don’t know,
Boris could repay the NHS by giving them £350m a week as promised and treating foreign NHS staff fairly for a start

SirChenjin Re China - I understood the post to infer that because we don't criticise China on here then we must support the Chinese government. I'm probably being thick but I don't see the relevance of the rest of your post, if directed at my earlier one.

It’s occurred to the rest of us Jabberwok which is probably why so many people are surprised that the IPSA have chosen to relax its rules about providing evidence of expenditure. A very astute Labour MP did point out that an equipment loan scheme would have been better in terms of removing doubt, and he’s right, especially when millions of other key workers are having to fund homeworking from their own pockets.

Last time I looked China wasn't running things here ...mind you neither are the tories...they couldn't run a p up in a brewery .Its been a disaster from the start .lies on a daily basis and thousands of unnecessary deaths ..Good job eh! Why DO some of you think Boris is doing such a great job?

Are they going to get real figures to the public anytime soon.That the ones that include deaths in the community and care homes and an ACCURATE figure for NHS staff deaths

Has it ever occurred to anyone that the new financial arrangements could and possibly will lead to fraudulent claims unless they are closely monitored by the treasury?! I think any government would do their best to avoid a free for all!

It’s here www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-politics-52231592 - it’s on top of the £26k they already receive for the same purpose and the IPSA “is also suspending the 90-day limit for claiming costs and relaxing the requirements on producing evidence of money spent.”

Do you know how much I got as an NHS keyworker to work from home? Take 10000 away from £10000 and you’re spot on!

and yet another excuse for a dust up on gn!