Politics

After several hours of rage that Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak were going to be able to avoid self-isolation — despite being contacted by NHS Test and Trace — the pair have performed a screeching U-turn. They’ve now said they will ignore the pilot that they were a part of and stay at home like everyone else has to. Sunak was first out of the blocks, tweeting: Minutes later, Johnson followed suit, with a Downing Street spokesman saying:  The Prime Minister has been contacted by NHS Test and Trace to say he is a contact of someone with Covid. He was at Chequers when contacted by Test and Trace and

It’s hard to break into the global top ten of insufferably arrogant political acts. You need to do something really memorable — something to match Imelda Marcos’s shoe collection, assembled while her husband presided over an increasingly impoverished country. Or the Soviet regime’s creation of special reserved ‘ZiL lanes’ in Moscow to speed government high-ups through the rush hour traffic. But Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak may well have just managed it. The pair decided to use a ‘pilot scheme’ to exempt themselves from a requirement to self-isolate after coming into close contact with a Covid carrier (the health secretary). Fortunately, someone persuaded them of the folly of that approach and so they have

It’s the eve of so-called ‘freedom day’ and the government has been forced into a U-turn over its use of a pilot testing scheme. After Sajid Javid tested positive for Covid, both Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak were contacted by NHS Test and Trace having met with the health secretary on Friday.  However, rather than actually self isolate, Downing Street initially announced that the pair would be exempt — instead needing to simply take daily tests as part of the scheme. Following a furious backlash from all sides, that decision has been reversed less than three hours later. Announcing the news, a Downing Street spokesperson said: The Prime Minister has been contacted by NHS Test and

There are just six days left before the Commons rises for recess but there’s still time for one last election. The 1922 Committee, that bastion of Tory backbenchers, is currently holding elections to fill two vacant slots on its executive, with the results announced on Tuesday. Ministers, whips and paid vice chairmen of the party do not participate in voting. Both slots are for the position of vice chairman, with one being caused by the death of former Welsh Secretary Cheryl Gillan in April and the other triggered by the decision of Sir Charles Walker to step down after 11 years in the post. The elections come less than a fortnight after 1922 chairman Sir Graham

Half a century ago, Willie Whitelaw accused Harold Wilson of ‘going around the country stirring up apathy’. I can think of no finer description to apply to Keir Starmer’s summer tour of Britain, during which we are told he intends to listen to the concerns of voters in a bid to win back their trust. His first such excursion, on which he was accompanied by BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg, saw him encounter a dozen former Labour voters in Blackpool. Several of them confided that they had never heard of him, a revelation he described as ‘utterly frustrating’. Ms Kuenssberg reported that the gathering gave Starmer quite a rough ride

Not content with winning Euro 2020, many Italians have spent the days since the final engaged in a febrile orgy of moral supremacy. Italians are not just much better than the English at football, you see (which is fair enough, although they did only win on penalties), but many Italians are insisting, even more excitedly, that the Italians are much better people than the English. To which I, as a Brexiteer expat Briton who has lived amongst Italians for donkey’s years, have this to say: Si calmino, signori, si calmino! (Calm down dears!). The English football team have been branded as bad losers and cheats; their supporters have been labelled as rude, arrogant,