Boris Johnson told Prime Minister’s Questions today that the meeting of the four nations of the UK ended with the leaders agreeing to keep the relaxation of rules over Christmas. He said there had been ‘unanimous agreement’ at the meeting that ‘we should proceed in principle with the existing regulations because we don’t want to criminalise people’s long-made plans’.
But not long after the meeting broke up, the Welsh and Scottish governments announced they would be producing their own much tougher guidance. In Wales, the number of households who can mix will be cut to two rather than three, and the country will then go back into lockdown from 28 December. In Scotland, people will be asked to only meet for one day and not stay overnight. They will also be advised against travelling from areas with a high number of cases to ones with lower rates.
This is only guidance rather than anything legally enforceable. The Westminster approach to England seems to be to issue sterner guidance about using extreme caution and not visiting elderly relatives. But it is clear that the unanimous agreement related only to the rules rather than a unified approach to the guidance across the UK. It makes it politically harder for Johnson to stick to the line he used at Prime Minister’s Questions that politicians from all parties agreed on the same approach to Christmas. He produced this as a retort to Sir Keir Starmer, who had raised the British Medical Journal/Health Service Journal joint editorial calling for the governments to drop the Christmas easing in one of his questions. He also complained that all Starmer wants to do was to lock the entire country down. The Labour leader pointed out that the Prime Minister had been insisting throughout October that he didn’t want another lockdown but that ‘two weeks later he put it on the table and voted for it – ridiculous!’ Tory MPs are anxious that the same may end up happening again after this Christmas.
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