Politics Archives

Thursday

12 Nov 2020

Will the government be left suffering from ‘long Covid’?

The first full week of the new national lockdown had the potential to be very difficult for Boris Johnson. Although just 34 Tory MPs voted against this England-wide measure, many more are unhappy about it. They have, as Tory MPs now do when they come across things they dislike, set up a group with a three-letter abbreviation: in this case, the CRG (Covid Recovery Group), which will oppose further lockdowns. Adding to the discontent among backbenchers, No. 10 had just U-turned on extending free school meals into the holidays. Tory MPs were left wondering why — as with exam result appeals — they had bothered taking so much flak from

Martin Vander Weyer

China’s rockstar-of-tech has fallen foul of Xi

FTSE indices soared as the Biden Bounce met vaccine euphoria, underpinned by the Bank of England’s announcement of another £150 billion injection of quantitative easing. It was heartening to see shares in airlines, hotels and Rolls-Royce, the aero engine maker, perking up — and hardly surprising to see lockdown winners such as Ocado and Just Eat among the fallers. Across the Atlantic, even mighty Amazon shed 5 per cent on Monday. But stock markets are one thing and real life is another. What matters in the short term is whether Boris Johnson can get us out of the lockdown he clearly didn’t want before the tide of redundancies, heading towards

Kate Andrews

Treasury reveals it didn’t forecast economic impact of second lockdown

Lockdowns are designed to temporarily delay the spread of the virus – but at what cost? This was the line of questioning that kicked off yesterday’s evidence session for the Treasury Select Committee, scrutinising the work HM Treasury has conducted in relation to lockdown. Chair of the committee Mel Stride asked Clare Lombardelli, Chief Economic Adviser to the Treasury, to comment on specific economic analyses conducted around lockdown restrictions, ranging from the closure of pubs, gyms and restaurants to ‘circuit breakers’ and working from home directives. It was quickly revealed that no analysis has been done. Stride’s interest stemmed from Sage meeting minutes dated 21 September, which referenced a ‘package

James Kirkup

Florida’s minimum wage fight has a key lesson for the Tories

Ever since I covered the end of the Bush-Gore presidential election in 2000, I have been wary of drawing lessons from US elections about UK politics: America is much less like Britain than too many British journalists tend to assume. But there’s one bit of the US voting last week that intrigues me in the context of British politics and policy, and which might just be a signpost to one of the big issues here in the next couple of years: the politics of the minimum wage. Florida last week voted for Trump: he got 51 per cent. It also voted, 60:40, for a proposal to increase the state’s minimum

Wednesday

11 Nov 2020

Katy Balls

What the latest Downing Street row is about

The clock may be ticking when it comes to the Brexit talks but the news dominating Westminster today relates not to legal texts but personnel changes in Downing Street. Overnight the Times and Daily Mail both ran reports suggesting Number 10’s Director of Communications Lee Cain was in line for a promotion to Chief of Staff. However, shortly after the news broke, briefings against Cain (a Vote Leave alumnus who has worked with Boris Johnson in government since his Foreign Office days) began – and government sources suggested no final decision had been made. The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg has alleged that Johnson’s partner Carrie Symonds is thought to be deeply opposed to the move and made this

Lloyd Evans

Keir Starmer’s undiplomatic incident at PMQs

America loomed large at PMQs. The Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, blundered immediately. None of his advisers seem to know that Americans are highly sensitive to putdowns from snooty Brits. And Sir Keir – who is not just a posh Englishman but a Knight of the Bath as well – reinforced the stereotype by smearing the 70 million citizens who voted Republican. He called the Democratic victory ‘a new era of decency and compassion in the White House.’ In return for suggesting that half of America is indecent and uncaring, Sir Keir gained absolutely nothing. Keep him away from foreign affairs. He also struggled to score against Boris. Sir Keir

Debbie Hayton

Covid or no Covid, next year’s exams must go ahead

The decision to cancel next summer’s GCSE and A-Level exams in Wales has left teachers and pupils in uncharted waters. After Scotland scrapped its GCSE-equivalent National 5 exams in 2021 – opting for teacher assessments and coursework instead – England is under pressure to follow suit. But education secretary Gavin Williamson must stick to his guns and ensure that next year’s exams do go ahead. Why? Because it’s worth remembering that we are not in the same position we were in back in March. The UK-wide decision taken then, to replace school exams with ‘centre assessed grades’ was made at the tail end of the school year. Whether this was wise or not is debatable, but in the midst

Gus Carter

Could the vaccine trigger another Tory divide?

13 min listen

Backbench Tory MPs are questioning the government’s plan for rolling out the vaccine. Meanwhile, rumours over a new Downing Street chief of staff have triggered a spat inside No. 10. Gus Carter talks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls.

Joanna Rossiter

Did Brexit boost Britain’s vaccine deal?

The government’s successful deal to secure 40 million shots of Pfizer’s vaccine is a political coup in more ways than one. Not only have ministers successfully backed what looks like the winning vaccine from a pool of 150, it has also pipped the EU to the post. The EU has only just signed on the dotted line with Pfizer to secure 200 million shots of the vaccine, with the coordinator of the European parliament’s committee on public health Peter Liese saying that pharmaceuticals ‘need to respect EU law and that’s why it took a while’. Yet free from the shackles of having to balance the interests of 28 member states, Britain has shown

Steerpike

Islington North’s Labour rebellion

When Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader and MP for Islington North, was suspended from the Labour party, many wondered how his fellow party members in the leafiest groves of north London would take the news. Today, it appears we may have the answer – and it seems as if all is not well in Labour’s Islington branch. Early this morning the local party’s official social media account declared that it had ‘left the party’ in protest at Jeremy’s ‘unjust’ suspension, and warned that Starmer was dismantling the movement that Corbyn had built to fight for a better world: Soon afterwards, control was clearly wrested back of the social media

Nick Tyrone

Keir Starmer should welcome a Labour party split

‘A split party will be doomed to defeat,’ says Len McCluskey, with a hint of threat. The left of Labour are sabre rattling behind the scenes and starting to go public; talk of them actually leaving the party is becoming louder. They are annoyed at Jeremy Corbyn’s ongoing suspension more than anything, but there are other gripes. They are irritated at Keir Starmer avoiding the culture wars as much as he can instead of taking their side without question. They are angered by the fact that Biden’s victory has robbed them of the ‘centrists can’t win’ narrative they were hoping to promote. But if the Labour party does split as

James Forsyth

The next parliamentary scandal waiting to happen

David Davis said something remarkable yesterday. In a debate on the membership of the Committee on Standards, he told MPs that the Tory deputy chief whip has 203 proxy votes. If Davis’s numbers are right, that is more than half the Tory parliamentary party. Obviously this is a consequence of Covid. But it has profound constitutional implications. If MPs can simply let their whips vote for them, they won’t have to think about what they are supporting in the same way they would if they had to walk through the division lobbies. The system will also, if left unchecked, lead to pressure on MPs to simply give their whip their vote and exercise

Jamie Njoku-Goodwin

Three key questions on the Pfizer Covid vaccine

News that the Pfizer vaccine is 90 per cent effective has sparked a number of questions about the prospect of a vaccine ending this pandemic. As a special adviser in the Department of Health and Social Care until recently, my job was not to be an expert in epidemiology or science. My job was to ask questions, challenge answers, and ensure ministers had the right advice to be able to take important decisions. When it comes to working out how successful a vaccination programme will be, and what they can do to make it as successful as possible, there are three key questions ministers will be considering. First question: how

Alex Massie

The ghastly race to phone the American president

Boris Johnson spoke to Joe Biden yesterday! Did you feel the thrill of it all? These Romans may be uncouth but they still know their Greeks. Or were you, instead, secretly annoyed that the new American president did not make good on all those breathless intimations that, summoning the ghosts of ancient persecutions and more recent insults, he would ‘snub’ the Prime Minister? Much of the Westminster village appears consumed by this absurdity on a quadrennial basis. Hence the manner in which the presence – or absence – of a bust of Winston Churchill in the Oval Office is deemed a reflection of the specialness of the special relationship. If

Tuesday

10 Nov 2020

Isabel Hardman

Can the NHS get the vaccine roll-out right?

What could possibly go wrong with the coronavirus vaccine? Boris Johnson has boasted that the UK is ‘towards the front of the pack’ when it comes to orders of the Pfizer/BioNTech inoculation, and health chiefs say they hope to start rolling it out from December, if it gets approval. The biggest ‘if’ now isn’t so much the approval process as it is the government’s ability to deliver a vaccination programme at such a big scale. So far, large government projects involving coronavirus have not inspired a great deal of confidence. First there was the government’s insistence that it was on top of demand for personal protective equipment for hospitals and

Katy Balls

Boris gets Biden’s first European call

Although there has been much speculation of late that Boris Johnson will struggle to forge ties with Joe Biden, the pair’s relationship has got off to a promising start. After making his first phone call to America’s neighbour Canada, the president-elect shared a phone call with the UK Prime Minister. A Downing Street spokesperson says Johnson used the call to congratulate Biden on his election as president of the United States and vice president-elect Kamala Harris on her historic achievement: ‘They discussed the close and longstanding relationship between our countries and committed to building on this partnership in the years ahead, in areas such as trade and security – including through Nato’. As

Steerpike

Taoiseach’s Biden fail

Oh dear. There has been much amusement today over the revelation that the graphic Boris Johnson shared to congratulate Joe Biden on winning the US election had originally been meant for Donald Trump. Still, it could be worse. Although there has been a lot of talk in the media of the Irish government’s close links to the President-Elect, it turns out that there is still some work to do. This afternoon the Prime Minister of Ireland Michael Martin took to social media to share the news that he had shared a much coveted early phone call with Biden. Only shortly after that tweet aired, it was deleted. It turns out at the

Katy Balls

Why is No. 10 so cautious about a Covid vaccine?

14 min listen

The Pfizer vaccine is being lauded by many as the silver bullet that could end the Covid crisis. Meanwhile, the UK has seen a record number of redundancies. Also, No. 10 suffered serious defeat in the Lords last night over its controversial Brexit bill. Katy Balls talks to James Forsyth and Kate Andrews.

Michael Forsyth

John Major’s double Scottish referendum plan is a big mistake

John Major has been a stalwart defender of the Union so it was disappointing to see his musings suggesting we should have two referendums on Scottish Independence. With the Scottish economy in serious decline the last thing we need is another three or four years of bitter division and uncertainty in Scotland. Appeasing the separatists is a disastrous policy and can only strengthen their cause. The 2014 referendum was promised as a once in a generation opportunity to decide the independence question. Does anyone seriously believe that the SNP will ever give up on their zeal for an independent Scotland? They call for more referendums whilst, like Trump, refusing to accept the

Matthew Lynn

Pfizer’s Covid vaccine is a victory for the free market

There are still safety trials to be completed. Data has to be collected, checked, double-checked, and then peer-reviewed. And we still need to find out whether it is the most effective of the various candidates currently in development or whether there is something even better just around the corner. But the Pfizer vaccine has already proved something beyond any reasonable doubt. Free enterprise works. And for all its flaws, it remains the best system for solving complex problems. Amid all the justifiable excitement over the potential approval of the first safe and effective vaccine against Covid-19 it would be easy to overlook one point: the vaccine was developed with private