Politics

When the Prime Minister mentioned ‘Covid status certification’ as part of his route back to normal life, one man must have enjoyed the moment. For Tony Blair it was yet one more little victory in his UK comeback tour, made all the sweeter because Boris Johnson was once a principal opponent of the idea of any ID card system. Blair has been pushing vaccine passports like nobody’s business. A recent paper published by his Institute for Global Change advocated that we carry ‘digital health passports’ on our smartphones, which we could scan on entry to bars, theatres and other places. If you don’t have a smartphone, the paper suggested, the

At the stroke of five o’clock last Friday, the new head of No. 10’s Union unit was due to brief government aides on the robust new strategy to counter the SNP. It was urgently needed: campaigning for the Scottish parliament election starts in a few weeks and if Nicola Sturgeon wins a majority — as looks likely — she’ll demand another independence referendum. Even if Boris Johnson refuses, the SNP will attempt to push on regardless. Any plan to save Britain must be put into action sooner rather than later. But an hour or so before the briefing, an email went around to say it was cancelled. What’s more its author, Oliver

‘Alas’ is a word used many times by Boris Johnson during the pandemic. It is how he prefaces announcements that the data is getting worse and so the government has to impose further restrictions. In recent weeks, though, the numbers have been going in the right direction. The first stage of the vaccination programme was completed two days ahead of schedule. For the first time in this crisis, government targets are being moved forward, not back. Early results seem to show that the jabs are more effective than expected: a Public Health Scotland study suggests that the Oxford-Astra-Zeneca vaccine, the workhorse of the UK immunisation programme, cuts the risk of

What’s the phrase? Poacher turned gamekeeper? Boris Johnson was once the arch poacher — a journalist at the Telegraph before taking on the editorship of Mr S’s own illustrious publication. Now it seems Mr Johnson has discovered what it feels like to be at the other end of public scrutiny.  On a press trip to a south London school, the PM mourned the fact journalists are ‘always abusing or attacking people’. Instead, he explained to a slightly bemused school child, that ‘a lightbulb went off in [his] mind’ and that instead, he decided to give politics a go. Nothing to do with childhood dreams of being ‘world king’ eh?  Still, Mr S picked up

I’m a card carrying, Europe-loving, wishy-washy centre-left liberal. It therefore pains me to point this out: the EU in general, Ursula von der Leyen specifically, and some of the prominent European leaders such as Emmanuel Macron are getting policy and messaging on vaccines badly wrong. They need to urgently ditch the peacock displays of tribal politics. The French president, in particular, who leads one of the most vaccine sceptical western nations, should not have so publicly questioned the efficacy of what has clearly turned out to be a vaccine that is working in the fight against Covid-19. The consequences of their words could well be long-lasting. ‘The early results we

For a party so devoted to trans rights, it seems strange that the SNP is less than forthcoming over its new definition of transphobia that their National Executive Committee adopted in recent days. The mind boggles over what they may be hiding. Despite the twin pressures of Brexit and Covid-19, not to mention a key Scottish election three months away and the ongoing Alex Salmond affair, it seems that the party is prioritising the gender debate. As a trans person, even I am getting exasperated by this relentless focus.  Let’s be clear: transphobic hate crime exists but it is nowhere near as commonplace as the transgender lobby would like us to