Remainers: Brexit led to Covid deaths

Oh dear. For four years, Best for Britain have fought the most ferocious rearguard action since Dunkirk, desperately seeking to overturn the 2016 Brexit vote. But despite their millions, a sixteen-man team and the dubious patronage of newly appointed chair Lord Darroch – our former man in Washington – the rabid Remainers have yet to see much in the way of success, save for launching Gina Miller’s flatlining political career.

But despite regularly pumping out paeans to ‘values, morals and basic decency’ it seems that in their desperation these last hold-outs from a long-concluded war have been forced to abandon such principles. For today Best for Britain launched their latest attack line to rile the Remainers and energise their ever-online base by boasting that ‘Brexit-voting areas of UK have (the) highest COVID-19 death rate[s]’.

Sneering that ‘there is a group of people in the population who just rejects any official advice, any mainstream advice, any expert advice,’ it pays lip service to the ‘usual caveats about correlation not being causation’ before crowing ‘the correlation really is quite striking.’ Not exactly a great look for a partisan campaign group to be trumpeting such claims about their opponents.

The implication of Best for Britain’s claims is that Leave voters have refused to listen to ‘mainstream advice’ when it comes to Covid. If that is the case, then why has it today been revealed that one in three people in London – the city which voted 60 per cent Remain – have still not got ANY of their three jabs? Indeed the proportion of the population without a single jab is three times as high in London as in the country as a whole. 

Still, with such brilliant statistical wizardry it’s not hard to see why Best for Britain failed so miserably, is it?

Royston Smith’s vaccine passports U-turn

Southampton – it’s where so many great chapters in English history have begun. From the Agincourt archers to the Pilgrim Fathers’ discovery, the ‘Gateway to the Empire’ has seen countless memorable journeys over the years. Unfortunately, one of those leaving Soton’s berth yesterday did not live up to such past glories after exercising a last minute U-turn with all the adroitness of the Titanic, trying to avoid that iceberg.

For Royston Smith – the Member for Southampton Itchen – last night pulled off something of a reverse Mission Impossible, snatching shame from the mouth of glory after being one of just two self-declared vaccine passport rebels to instead vote for the measure. Smith, who told his local newspaper just six days ago that: ‘As for covid passports, I have never supported them and still don’t,’ was in a feisty mood on the morning of the vote, criticising George Osborne for backing such measures, declaring: ‘The point is George we’re not being ‘asked’ we’re being mandated’. 

Yet the former RAF engineer seems to have lost his bearings in the voting lobbies last night for he ended being one of the 227 Tories to back vaccine passports. Curiously, his social media accounts seem remarkably silent about this sudden U-turn, with not a single tweet or Facebook status issued since yesterday lunchtime. Smith has subsequently told constituents that he got confused on the parliamentary procedure and, having planned to rebel, he found himself accidentally in the wrong voting lobby and voted for the measure by mistake. The other rebel who did a volte face was Robert Goodwill, who wrote to a constituent to express his opposition, only to then change his mind.  

Others who emerged with less credit from last night’s vote include the anonymous Parliamentary Private Secretaries (PPSs) who were briefing that they could resign over the measure. The Daily Telegraph profiled ten of them – none quit. In the event, the only frontbench to lose a spokesman over Plan B was Labour’s Rachael Maskell quitting over mandatory jabs for NHS and social care workers.

Interestingly though, is one minor act of rebellion which appears to have escaped under the radar. For Craig Williams, PPS to the Treasury, voted for both compulsory vaccinations and more mandatory face coverings but appears to have skipped the vote on vaccine passports. An abstention is not a vote against the measures of course but it’s still a rebellion, given the three-line whip.

Still, at least he didn’t say one thing then do another.

Can the Bank of England get a grip on soaring inflation?

Yet again, inflation has surged past expectations – this time hitting 5.1 per cent in November, a ten-year high, up from 4.2 per cent in October. This threatens a political crisis as well as tough economic times: unless inflation is quelled, next year will be one of declining living standards for most people. Anyone whose pay is not rising by at least five per cent will, in effect, feel like they’ve experienced a pay cut.

It was assumed that five per cent would be about as high as inflation would go but all this is proving hard to predict. This has gone past the Bank of England’s peak forecast, which wasn’t expected to be hit until next year.

The increase has been largely driven this month by price hikes in transport (motor fuels and second-hand cars), as well as increases in housing and ‘household services’ – costs that are guaranteed to be felt by the public on a daily basis. Once again, the rise in inflation has outpaced market predictions, for which the consensus was around 4.7 per cent. As the graph above shows, the Bank of England, too, has low-balled its predictions for price rises, illustrating the increased difficulty of predicting how fast inflation is surging.

In recent weeks, senior members of the BoE have distanced themselves from their own official forecasts: Huw Pill, the chief economist, told the Financial Times that inflation could hit five per cent in the new year, while Ben Broadbent, the deputy governor, told the same paper that inflation could ‘comfortably exceed’ five per cent next year. Both seemed to spot that the Bank’s forecast from just last month was already out of date, with inflationary pressures building rapidly. But today’s figures will still likely come as a shock – it appears that predictions are struggling to keep up with just how quickly prices are rising.

Will the Bank take quick action to curb inflation? It has the opportunity to do so tomorrow, when the Monetary Policy Committee will vote on whether to hold interest rates, yet again, at a record low of 0.1 per cent, or vote to increase them. Today’s inflation figures will put significant pressure on the Bank to act, but they will be weighed against worries about the economy: with October’s lacklustre growth figure of 0.1 per cent, and now the Omicron variant and renewed restrictions set to knock the economy sideways yet again, the Bank will be balancing inflation with competing concerns that any interest rate hike could stunt the UK’s economic recovery further.

But it’s becoming clear that it’s a matter of ‘when’, not ‘if’ the Bank will need to take action. After nearly a year of central bankers and politicians insisting this inflation is simply transitory – a short blip caused by global reopenings after lockdowns – it is finally sinking in that inflation is back, and it doesn’t need to hit 1970s levels for it to cause real pain to households, and real problems for the public finances. 

This has been a concern of Rishi Sunak’s all year: the Chancellor has been using his Budgets to hedge against the threat of inflation, in case a combination of inflation and even a relatively small rise in rates forced him to find tens of billions of pounds more just to service the increased debt. The question now is how quickly others will act, including the Bank, to try and keep inflation under control.

UK government outlines plans for regulation of buy now pay later industry

The buy now pay later industry has exploded in recent years, with the industry now worth $100 billion (circa £70 billion).

Also known as BNPL, it is used by shoppers to delay payments on any kind of product from champagne to clothes and kitchens, and the option to pay nothing today and repay over 12 months in instalments or one lump sum, either interest-free or a little interest on top.

While the Financial Conduct Authority requires anyone offering consumer credit to be authorised, this is not currently the case with BNPL. The industry remains unregulated if customers make no more than 12 payments within 12 months or less and many other businesses are able to use this exemption including invoice financing, season tickets and white goods.

But given the size of the industry and its huge presence online, the FCA has been putting measures in place to introduce regulation to BNPL. In particular, the regulator wants to raise awareness about the offers that are being promoted to customers, the role or absence of credit checks, the costs involved and understanding of the product by consumers.

A consultation to regulate the industry was announced by the HM Treasury on 21 October 2021 and responses to be provided by the government by 6 January 2022. We hear from experts in the consumer finance space to get their thoughts on introducing regulation to BNPL.

Is regulation for buy now pay later a good thing?

David Green, head of brand at Fund Ourselves said: ‘Introducing regulation would be welcomed. A lot of online purchases through different websites are sometimes so quick that the majority of customers do not fully understand how buy now pay later works and the potential implications of non-payment.

‘Buy now pay later has a lot of advantages for the website selling the product, the third-party processor and of course, the customer. But there is certainly a case for having strong credit and affordability checks in place and making sure that customers are aware that late fees apply for missing payment and how this could impact their credit score.’

David Beard, CEO of price comparison Lending Expert said: ‘Adding new regulation for buy now pay later is a good thing and can certainly be done in a way that all parties benefit from it.

‘Too much regulation has been introduced in the payday and guarantor industry and this has made it hard for lenders to be profitable and has caused a huge exodus in the industry. Ultimately, the customer suffers because they can no longer access the product they need, so finding the balance is key.

There is bound to be a percentage of customers that use buy now pay later and are accumulating a lot of debt behind the scenes, building up a balance which will eventually be sky-high. Hence, with more stringent checks and better transparency about the products available, some new regulation could add a lot more protection to vulnerable customers.

What rules should be introduced?

Dan Kettle, founder of finance provider, Pheabs.com, said: ‘Much like the regulation for high cost loan products, providers are required to provide a repayment example and warning label whenever they are trying to sell a product or an application. Some very basic warning signs and payment examples would certainly be welcomed in the buy now pay later industry.

‘It is so appealing to simply buy something today and worry about the payment tomorrow, that people who do not even need to borrow money are very drawn to this attractive proposition. But it would certainly be worthwhile to make it more transparent that money is owed at a certain point and that non-repayment leads to late fees and could negatively impact your credit score.’

Richard Dent, of Finger Finance, said: ‘Credit checking should become part of the buy now pay later experience. Currently, the suppliers are running soft checks or no checks at all and this is unfortunately giving credit to people who cannot afford it.

‘Whether it is credit checking for each customer or for purchases over a certain amount, this could help match customers with products that they can afford, rather than being left with debt further down the line.

‘The long-winded and strict authorisation process is probably not well suited for buy now pay later — but if authorisation is introduced, certainly a fast-tracked or toned down version could be merited.’

Why Omicron may overwhelm the NHS

What we know from the imperfect data we have is that Omicron is vastly more infectious but less virulent than the Delta variant. If the UK Health Security Agency is right in its modelling estimate that as of last Sunday, there were already 200,000 cases of Omicron in the country, compared to 60,000 confirmed and 40,000 suspected cases, we cannot exclude a mass pandemic of Omicron infections in the new year. At this rate, even a much milder virus would still overwhelm our hospital capacities.

A study by Discovery Health, a South African private health insurance administrator, based on 211,000 positive test results, showed that the hospitalisation rate of Omicron is 30 per cent less than the previous variants. Just to get an order of magnitude for these numbers: if we round the Delta variant hospitalisation rate to 2 per cent, then a reduction by one third would translate to a hospitalisation rate of around 1.3 per cent. If infections double, that’s still more hospitalisations in absolute numbers for Omicron compared to Delta.

The study also showed that two shots of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine offered a 70 per cent protection against hospitalisation. For a vaccine, this is still a high degree of protection, but European hospitals could still be overwhelmed if millions get infected.

We should be careful with the data from South Africa. Stephane Bancel, the CEO of Moderna, said South Africa may not be a good predictor of the variant’s virulence in other parts of the world because the country has a much younger and healthier population than European nations and the US. It’s also worth noting that Bancel, in his public pronouncement, was much more cautious than the more bullish people from Pfizer/BioNTech. The South African study also showed that the Pfizer vaccine only offers around 30 per cent protection against infection.

The South African data is interesting, but not directly applicable to the situation in Europe. There is a much broader spread of vaccines here between Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, not all of which offer the same rate of protection against the virus. If the UK projections about the spread of Omicron are even remotely right, the country could face a de facto lockdown, not brought about by officially mandated stay-at-home rules, but through missing employees at work.

A University of Oxford study released this week is also much more cautious than BioNTech. Blood samples from people with two shots of the Moderna vaccine showed a 30-fold drop in antibodies. The results were similar for the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines. In some cases, vaccinated people had no antibodies against Omicron whatsoever.

It is as yet unknown whether the vaccines offer protection against severe disease. It is reasonable to assume that they do, but it will take a few more weeks of data to arrive at more precise estimates.

In continental Europe, meanwhile, Omicron is not yet on the public radar screen, where it is seen as mostly a British problem. Germany is now registering a fall in officially recorded infection rates, but death rates are still running at 400 to 500 a day, much higher than during previous waves.

The booster campaign in Germany is finally getting off the ground, but is unlikely to reach critical mass before Omicron infections start to mirror those in the UK. It is fair to assume that the UK is a few weeks ahead in the infection cycle, but it is also much further ahead in the booster campaign. While the booster campaign is now gathering speed in Europe, the campaign to vaccinate those who have refused vaccinations so far is falling off. When Omicron hits Germany, it will hit a less vaccinated population.

Can Boris Johnson take back control of No. 10?

There’s a mutinous mood in Westminster this Christmas. In quiet corridors on the parliamentary estate the question is being asked: has Boris outlived his usefulness? Ministers are laying low. Tory WhatsApp groups are hushed. MPs are dodging calls from the whips, claiming to be sick or working from home. In conversations with Tory MPs, it isn’t long before the topic of Johnson’s long-term future comes up.

‘Everyone’s sniffing the air — you can just feel it,’ says a former adviser to the Prime Minister. Members of the cabinet, from Liz Truss to Rishi Sunak, are accused of being on manoeuvres. One former minister has taken to measuring his office to work out how many desks he can fit into it, should a contest begin sooner rather than later. The answer: 16, enough to host a small campaign team.

This isn’t how Johnson’s team imagined the Prime Minister would mark the two-year anniversary of the day the Tories won a majority of 80. Just a month ago, cabinet ministers were joking about which one of them could claim the credit for ‘saving Christmas’, thanks to the vaccine rollout. Instead, Christmas once again hangs in the balance and Britain is plunged back into uncertainty, not just over the Omicron variant but the government’s confused response to it.

It’s hard for Johnson to tell people not to go to parties when he is beating back stories that his own staff broke lockdown rules last winter and held as many as four parties in No. 10. His approach — to deny any parties took place — ran into problems when leaked footage emerged showing senior aides joking about a Downing Street Christmas party in a mock press conference. When Johnson moved to his Covid ‘Plan B’ and introduced vaccine passports just hours after the video became public, Tory MPs openly accused him of trying to distract attention from an uncomfortable story.

Ministers were also caught off guard. Those privy to the Prime Minister’s thinking insist the sudden change of heart was driven by new data. On 7 December, No. 10 received worrying information which suggested that the variant was doubling every two to three days as opposed to two to six days. Early vaccine data also suggested Omicron led to a 40-fold drop in efficacy for the Pfizer vaccine, and tests found Astra-Zeneca to give ‘zero’ effectiveness against symptom-atic disease from the variant (although it likely offers some protection against serious illness).

No. 10 had previously assured Tory MPs that there would be no further restrictions until more conclusive data was in. Instead, Downing Street has acted pre-emptively. The thinking went that if Omicron cases were growing fast and vaccines offer less protection, then the NHS had to be in danger, so restrictions were needed to ‘buy time’. But it’s unclear how much (if any) time was bought by a mask mandate. Sage believes that work-from-home guidance has only cut the R-number from 4.0 to 3.6.

Although the cabinet is divided on how to tackle Omicron, everyone can see the direction of travel. ‘On the current logic, we are heading to a lockdown in around three weeks,’ predicts one downbeat government source. ‘The government has decided cases are a problem. A million cases could be in about three weeks’ time.’ A new lockdown would mean more furlough and huge costs, at a time when the Treasury is reluctant to find any new Covid emergency funds. Several cabinet ministers say they will need to be shown clear data (as opposed to modelling) on the new variant before they will back further restrictions.

It’s unclear, too, what the way out would be this time. Last year, Johnson said restrictions were only necessary until the vaccine ‘cavalry’ arrived. Now the bulk of the country is jabbed, yet restrictions have returned. ‘We can’t become a Covid state that locks down every winter,’ moans a minister. The emergency booster campaign is intended to stop this happening. But since Johnson suffered his biggest Tory rebellion to date over vaccine passports, it’s easy to see a situation where he has to rely on Labour support to go further — a dangerous place for a Prime Minister already on thin ice with his MPs.

The row over Downing Street parties isn’t just about Covid and how it could hurt public compliance with the rules. The debacle is viewed by MPs as one in a series of examples of systemic — perhaps terminal — dysfunction in No. 10. It fits a pattern with the Owen Paterson row, the rambling ‘Peppa Pig’ CBI speech and the ongoing question regarding what Johnson knew about the funding for the refurbishment of the Downing Street flat. The public, too, are starting to notice — the Labour party has its largest poll lead since 2014.

‘The story perfectly crystallises Boris’s problems — to lie for about a week and a half saying there was no party in the hope of brazening it out, only to have it blow up,’ says a former confidant to Johnson. ‘The Prime Minister has a complicated relationship with the truth most of the time he’s talking.’ One member of the original Johnson campaign team says: ‘We need to replace him with a conservative.’

MPs complain that there’s no consultation or strategy. Even several of the whips no longer bother to hide their lack of faith in the Downing Street operation. ‘There’s no grip — no direction or proper thinking going on at all,’ says one MP. It doesn’t help that Tories have little to shout about on the doorstep — tax rises are detested by MPs and the levelling-up agenda is struggling to take off. After Dominic Cummings and the Vote Leave team departed in November last year, there was much talk in the media of the return of ‘adults in the room’ at No. 10. Instead, MPs complain that these days Downing Street is filled with courtiers who are too afraid to tell the Prime Minister when he is wrong. ‘It’s Gove-ites and friends of Carrie,’ says one MP, in reference to the Prime Minister’s wife. ‘When it was Dom [Cummings] in there, it was easier for the PM as he was so divisive, everyone just blamed Dom,’ says a government adviser. ‘Now he has a bunch of yes-men, it’s much harder to say they are the problem.’

Simon Case, the young cabinet secretary, has been tasked with investigating claims of parties in No. 10. More staff members could soon be shown the door. It’s not entirely clear who would replace them and if they would do a better job. ‘The chaos is not going to change. The only question is how long we tolerate it. Everyone is tired,’ says a senior Tory.

The 2019 intake of ‘red wall’ MPs, once seen as uber-loyalists to Johnson, are the most critical. The whips believe the handful of letters of no confidence sent to the 1922 Committee so far come from this newer group. ‘It’s interesting how quickly the scales have dropped from the eyes of the 2019-ers,’ says one old-timer. ‘It shows they don’t have the connection to the party many of us do.’

When it comes to toppling a Prime Minister, the eventual ‘cause of death’ (as one senior Tory calls it) can be a slow waning of authority or an unexpected event that speeds things up. For Johnson — who has few loyalists in the Commons — many MPs think the latter is more likely. One old hand says that deposing a Prime Minister takes much longer than newbie MPs think. As one senior minister puts it: ‘It took a very long time to get to 48 letters to oust Theresa — and back then we didn’t have a majority because she screwed up. This time we do have an 80-seat majority and it’s because Boris won it.’

What’s more, no one is really sure who would be better. Of the current ministers, Sunak and Truss are viewed as the two frontrunners. There are already indications of how such a contest could play out. Truss posed for pictures on a tank in Estonia, an obvious reference to Margaret Thatcher, and she is keen to talk up free markets at any opportunity. Sunak has been developing a narrative that ought to play well to the Tory base: any extra cash he gets, he says, should be used to cut taxes.

Not everyone is sold. ‘Rishi is a photocopy of a free marketer,’ says one member of government. ‘He’s a management consultant who knows what to say but falls short on action. Liz believes in free markets, but you get the sense she’s posturing.’

Any race would see more candidates appear. Jeremy Hunt is viewed as the dark horse — the man who made it to the final two in the last leadership contest. He could clearly pitch himself as a serious candidate not associated with any of Johnson’s chaos. Priti Patel, Sajid Javid and (don’t put it past him) Matt Hancock are also tipped to enter the race if it takes place.

In the Prime Minister’s favour, however, is the fact that most would-be candidates could do with more time to prepare. Johnson has been written off many times before and has always bounced back. He could very likely do so again. ‘The only politician anyone wants to talk about is Boris — he is a political celebrity,’ says a minister. ‘People are a long way from thinking their seat will only be secure if Truss or Rishi takes over. They’re not ready to gamble their seats just yet.’

Johnson’s relationship with his MPs always was transactional: they didn’t much like him in the first place, nor he them. He’d take them to government and they’d take him to No. 10. So in a way, it doesn’t matter much how furious they are with him. As long as his party believes there is no one else who would do a better job of winning the north, Johnson stays.

Sturgeon’s war on business is strangling Scotland’s economy

There was one minor and one big surprise in the Scottish government’s latest budget, which was set out by Kate Forbes, the finance secretary, last week.

The minor surprise was the Sturgeon administration’s decision to provide less business rates relief, in comparison with England, to the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors during the next financial year. Businesses in Scotland will be eligible for 50 per cent relief, capped at £27,500 per rate payer, but only for the first three months of the 2022-23 financial year. In England, the same businesses will be eligible for 50 per cent relief for the whole financial year.

A winding down of rates relief was anticipated, but the full withdrawal of support just three months into the next financial year was unexpected. It reinforced the sense, especially pertinent in Scotland since Nicola Sturgeon replaced Alex Salmond as first minister, that business and enterprise is a long way down the list of Scottish government priorities.

The big surprise came from the Scottish Fiscal Commission (SFC), Scotland’s official economic and fiscal forecaster charged with supplying the government with independently produced numbers for its budgets. One of its tasks is to forecast income tax receipts (income tax was mostly devolved in 2017-18). Having dramatically revised its forecasts from earlier this year, the SFC now expects upcoming Scottish budgets to be lower as a result of income tax devolution, despite the Scottish government pushing those taxes up.

It is worth digging into the numbers. Diverging Edinburgh-London income tax policies mean people in Scotland earning over £27,850 pay higher tax than those in the rest of the UK. On a macro basis that equates to Scots forking out over £500 million more in income tax this year than they would under UK policy. But, and here’s the kicker, the Scottish government is set to collect just £6 million more in extra spending this year compared to income tax not being devolved. Scots are paying hundreds of millions of pounds more in tax just to stand still.

Looking ahead, it gets even grimmer. For 2022-23, the SFC is predicting Scotland’s budget will be worse off to the tune of £190 million compared to the comparable position were income tax not devolved, with the funding shortfall expected to reach £417 million by 2026-27. The chart below from the SFC shows the negative impact income tax devolution will have on Scotland’s budget in coming years.

Income tax net position and illustrative position excluding Scottish policy change

So why the negative impact? It is because Scottish employment and earnings have grown more slowly than in the rest of the UK since Holyrood took control of income tax, and that’s even after accounting for differences in population growth.

‘From 2022-23, total earnings and employment are expected to continue to grow more slowly in Scotland than in the rest of the UK, and these economic factors are increasingly outweighing the additional income tax revenues from policy changes,’ says the SFC.

The Commission says the relatively slower earnings and employment growth in Scotland compared to the UK arises from several underlying factors. These include Scotland’s changing demographics and a faster growing share of the population among older age groups. Falling labour market participation of younger age groups, slow growth in Scottish average earnings, particularly in North East Scotland relating to oil and gas activity, and more rapid growth in earnings in the UK, driven in part by strong growth in financial services, are also to blame.

To move the net position back towards zero or into positive territory, Scotland would need a period of relatively faster growth in income tax revenues per head. That would require a change in tack from the Scottish government — a move away from populist policies towards pragmatic ones. The chances of that seem low.

A direct line can be drawn from populist SNP policies implemented since 2007 and today’s increasingly sclerotic economy.

Take one area: education. Between 2008 and 2014, the SNP made cuts to further education colleges that led to a 48 per cent fall in part-time students and a 41 per cent reduction in the number of students aged 25 and over. It did this so it could prioritise free university tuition. But the further education courses (training for would-be chefs, electricians, hairdressers etc) were vital to skilling and re-skilling workers so they could play a productive role in the economy. The impact of those cuts is playing out today.

Scotland has now had 14 years of governance by people whose primary aim is the break-up of the state, and it shows. Scotland needs a period of anti-populism if its economy is to become competitive again, but that looks further away than ever.

Forbes’ decision to take a hard line on business rates relief is just the latest signal of an administration that is at best uncomfortable with business, and at worst anti business. There is no stronger confirmation of this than Sturgeon’s decision earlier this year to bring the Scottish Greens into government with her.

Populism has scarred Scotland’s economy, and it looks like it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

The rise of the London pied à terre

There’s nothing new about having a London pied à terre. For many based in the country yet working in the city having a ‘flat in town’ is a matter of convenience, whilst for those seeking to enjoy theatre trips or other metropolitan pleasures, it’s rather a luxury.

Yet it’s been an increasingly expensive to acquire one since April 2016 when a stamp duty surcharge on second homes added an extra three per cent to each tax band, and when last year’s coronavirus lockdown made everyone flee to the country, flats in the capital were cast off rather than coveted.

But what a difference a year can make. With the daily commute having partly revived for many, an appetite for metropolitan life regained, demand has shifted back towards London. According to the estate agent Knight Frank, prospective buyers registering in the three months to November have increased most considerably – on the same period last year – in prime central London, led by Marylebone (86 per cent) Belgravia (85 per cent) and Mayfair (78 per cent).

According to Christian Lock-Necrews of the agent’s Marylebone office, ‘Most of our activity is still linked to domestic buyers who have sold their house in outer London, moved to the country and now want a central London base.’

So where are the hot spots for these ‘boomerang buyers’ keen not to waste their money on hotels? Traditional pied à terre hunting grounds have included portered mansion blocks in Westminster or Pimlico for proximity to Parliament; or elegantly proportioned flats in the elegant Georgian townhouses of Bloomsbury or Fitzrovia close to academia or art galleries.

For the estate agent Hamptons, the London areas with the highest ratio of second-home hunters in 2021 are Pimlico (24 per cent), Knightsbridge (21 per cent), Sloane Square (18 per cent) and Hyde Park/Bayswater (17 per cent) suggesting classic areas are still in vogue.

Yet access to both transport links and the office is now key, with proximity to Euston, King’s Cross or Paddington ideal to get back to the family home in the Cotswolds or the North. According to Elias Raymond of Savills a third of their buyers in Primrose Hill are looking for a pied à terre. ‘With budgets of £600,000-£700,000 they want a good “lock up and leave” – first and second floor modern or recently refurbished apartments are popular,’ he says. Outside space isn’t a necessity – people would rather have good-sized living room and double bedroom, as offered by a flat for sale at £695,000.

Soon the Elizabeth Line will whizz commuters from Paddington to the City within ten minutes, and the Paddington Basin has become increasingly popular with its improved roster of waterside bars and restaurants. ‘With the regeneration of Whiteleys shopping centre the W2 postcode offers good potential as a long-term investment, with properties trading at £1,000 per sq foot,’ says James Hyman, head of residential at Cluttons, who says most buyers spend £400,000 – £700,000 on a one/two-bedroom flat.

Nearby Marylebone has also become fashionable as well as practical – for both theatreland and the new Crossrail links – and now offers a choice of luxury new-build schemes ideal for part-time residents, such as 98 Baker Street for £850,000.

Rental rates for flats at the £400-1500 per week level have gone up by 10 per cent since the pandemic started, according to Mr Hyman, yet the sale prices of flats haven’t followed suit – yet. Prices achieved in November 2021 are 1.6 per cent below that of February 2020, according to LonRes, who track the prime London market.

Pied à terre buyers tend to have one eye on investment potential so will pay less than the £925,000 at which point second-home stamp duty notches up from 8 per cent to 13 per cent (above your £250,000 allowance). Inheritance planning is often a motivation – a Pied à terre  is often purchased in a child’s name so it can be passed on, perhaps with tax savings. Although annual running costs need to be considered, serviced new-build schemes with concierge and security are also popular – including those at the King’s Cross redevelopment where buyers can hop off their train, drop off their bags and be at the office within half an hour.

Several owners of apartments at the development’s triplet of refurbished cast-iron Gasholders are pied à terre  owners from the north of England, according to Robert Evans, CEO of King’s Cross. Apart from the connectivity – York to King’s Cross by train takes 2.5 hours – the restoration of the Victorian listed frames took place in Yorkshire. Prices start at £7.4m, although buyers prizing heritage buildings might also like a two-bedroom flat within the gothic splendour of St Pancras Chambers at £1.1m (handy for Eurostar trips to Paris too).

For a trophy pied à terre  rather than purely functional crash pad, One Bishopsgate Plaza in the Square Mile offers owners of private apartments on floors 21 to 41 a la carte services from the Pan Pacific hotel below, as well as skyline views. High-net-worth buyers seeking discretion for their city sojourns are amongst purchasers there, according to Stanhope, the developer. Prices start from £1.3m.

The best of this year’s Christmas TV

Sometimes you have to feel sorry for the BBC. Upon publishing its 2021 Christmas schedule, the corporation was quickly attacked by some of its more trenchant critics who pointed out that – shock horror – its Xmas day line-up was completely identical to last year’s. What kind of fools do they take us for, they cried.

Yet this brutal accusation breaks down almost entirely when you look at the schedule and realise that the vast majority of these alleged ‘repeats’ are actually nothing of the sort – but rather entirely new episodes of the same old Christmas staples. Is that a problem? Maybe. But imagine the backlash if the BBC didn’t commission the likes of Call the Midwife and Strictly?

But while saccharine tales of East End newborns might be watched by millions, they’re not exactly the pinnacle of good television – even after a boozy Christmas afternoon. So where are the nuggets of gold amongst the more predictable seasonal offerings this holiday season?

For all its alleged laziness, the Beeb isn’t actually a bad place to start. Their Christmas dramas begin with a four-part adaptation of J.P. Delaney’s psychological thriller The Girl Before (19-22 December). It stars Selma’s David Oyelowo as a minimalist-obsessed architect who offers his chic London apartment at ultra-low rent provided his (female) tenants are willing to live by a series of strict rules. The rest of the plot, I’m told, is best kept unspoiled.

Over on BBC Two, Sherlock and Dracula co-creator Mark Gatiss adapts another work from M.R. James – the great Victorian horror writer . This time, it’s The Mezzotint (24 December), in which Rory Kinnear plays a university art master who comes into possession of a seemingly ghostly engraving with demonic intent. Downton Abbey’s Robert Bathurst and the excellent Frances Barber also have leading roles.

Perhaps the pick of the dramas, though, is A Very British Scandal (26-28 December): a spiritual successor to A Very English Scandal, Russell T. Davies’ superb take on the Jeremy Thorpe story. This time around, Paul Bettany and Claire Foy star in a dramatisation of the headline-grabbing divorce of the Duke and Duchess of Argyll. Screenwriter Sarah Phelps has stoked the culture war fires by revealing her interest in the story was inspired by the media’s treatment of Meghan Markle.

Amongst the Beeb’s more festive-sounding offerings are a new Shaun the Sheep (24 December), an animated adaptation of Julia Donaldson’s Superworm (25 December) and a return of Michael McIntyre’s The Wheel (ditto). Having just wrapped up its best season in yonks (albeit with a slightly poor finale), Doctor Who returns on new year’s day, while one-time Tardis pilot David Tennant stars in a new version of Around the World in Eighty Days (25 December).

ITV also scores points for uncancelling John Barrowman: recently banished from the Doctor Who universe after historic revelations of his Carry On-esque horseplay behind the scenes. Barrowman hosts All Star Musicals At Christmas (26 December), in which Fern Britton, Gyles Brandreth and Catherine Tyldesley are mentored by West End stars to perform their favourite musical hits with a full orchestra. Let’s hope he behaves himself.

Channel 4 has Sue Perkins returning with The Greatest Showman (24 December): a Bake Off style show in which stars – well, Johnny Vegas, Dani Dyer and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen – are whisked off to the Alpine mountains to try their luck as ice sculptors. The Bake Off itself is back on Christmas day, with half the cast of It’s a Sin in the tent, and Joe Lycett takes over the popular Travel Man (27 December).

As a rule of thumb, the streaming services invest less in the Christmas battle (preferring to aim for year-round dominance), letting their vast archives of Christmas movies do the trick. Probably the biggest seasonal offering comes from Disney+ which plunders further into the Star Wars universe to bring The Book of Boba Fett (29 December): a new spin-off series carefully cultivated to tap into the success of The Mandalorian. Families will no doubt enjoy Disney’s latest children’s release Encanto (Disney+, 24 December) where a magical family from Colombia raise a seemingly non-magical daughter Mirabel. Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda brings his signature pizzazz to the film’s musical numbers.

Netflix, meanwhile, takes a venture into Brit drama with Stay Close (31 December): all-star mini-series based on a Haran Coben novel and featuring Cush Jumbo, James Nesbitt, Richard Armitage, Eddie Izzard and Sarah Parish. It’s the fifth of 14 (!) Coben novels that the streaming giant has vowed to turn into miniseries. The Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio comedy Don’t Look Up, released on 10 December, has also been turning heads, at least on the American talk show circuit. It has more Hollywood stars on its cast list than you can shake a stick at, including Meryl Streep. Not always the sign of a surefire hit but we’ll see.

And after a massively underwhelming first outing in 2020, Charlie Brooker’s new satirical vehicle returns too – as Hugh Grant, Diane Morgan and others play fake celebrity pundits in Netflix’s Death to 2021 (27 December). If it doesn’t give us something better this time around, it will certainly be one ‘repeat’ we can all do without next Christmas. Fingers crossed they’ve pulled their socks up.

A gourmand’s guide to Christmas chocolate

Christmas is coming and you know what that means? More Lindor truffles than any human being can decently put away, family size boxes of Quality Street and, for the upwardly mobile, Ferrero Rocher. My friends, I am as keen on Lindor truffles as the next greedy pig but there is another way. There is a whole world of chocolate out there which is respectful of the defining ingredient, cocoa, often imaginative and delicious. The starting point, the founding principle, for decent chocolate is, More Cocoa, Less Sugar. Simple as that. And this principle doesn’t just apply to Christmas chocolate, obviously, but to chocolate all year round.

Chocolate is a bit like wine, and interestingly, is grown in those areas where grapes don’t, as Nature’s compensation for the absence of vineyards. At its best, the cocoa bean partakes of the nature of the terroir, and varies according to the country of origin: Venezuala, Peruvian and Ecuadorian chocolate (where the bean originated) is mellow and nutty, whereas cocoa from Madagascar is fruitier and livelier. One heartening development is that several supermarkets sell single origin chocolate. M&S (Single Origin), Sainsbury (Taste the Difference) and Waitrose (no.1 range) have chocolate designated not just by cocoa content but by origin, and they’re very good, ranging in price from £1.45 – £2.99 for 100g, which is genuinely accessible. Hotel Chocolat, which has been a leader in the field since it began business, sells Rare and Vintage chocolate bars (£7.50 for 70g) which are designated by origin. For serious chocolate buffs, calling a bar of chocolate as dark, milk or white is all very well, but a bit like telling you that a wine is red or white…you’d like to know a little more.

In general – and we’re not just talking festive stuff – there are two things you need to look at when it comes to chocolate: the percentage of cocoa and the percentage of sugar and both are in the small print on the back of the label. If you want to know why sugar percentages are so high, follow the money: sugar is a tenth of the price of decent cocoa. I’d say myself that if the percentage of cocoa in chocolate is less than 30 per cent for a milk chocolate, you should move on; and if the percentage of sugar is much over 40 per cent, ditto, and certainly if it’s over half. Dark chocolate should ideally have a minimum of 65-100 per cent cocoa, and milk chocolate a minimum of 35-49 per cent cocoa. There are exceptions; if, like me, you’re partial to truffles with liquid salted caramel fillings – can I just, in passing, recommend the inexpensive Waitrose version or the insanely delicious M&S chocolate pine cones – that could ratchet up the overall sugar content to over 50 per cent on account of the caramel.

Yet some of the most popular brands have a very different cocoa to sugar ratio. Cadbury’s Dairy Milk is 56 per cent sugar. That leaves space for about 23 per cent milk solids and a minimum of 20 per cent cocoa solids. Interestingly, the company recently introduced a new range, with 40 per cent cocoa, which it describes as ‘a bit grown up’; in fact, it’s closer to the cocoa ratio that Cadbury’s once used to have for all its chocolate.

Middle class consumers are savvier about these things than we used to be, but it’d be all wrong if the high cocoa, low sugar thing were the preserve of the middle classes, while poorer consumers were left with stuff that’s mostly sugar. Really, it’s all about habit. Once you’ve got used to lower sugar chocolate, the very sweet version is inedible. We’re also much more aware of how chocolate is produced when it comes to worker conditions and environmental standards. Tesco’s own-brand chocolate, for instance, is certified by the Rainforest Alliance, which monitors farmers’ income as well as sustainability.

One of the game changers in the field has been Hotel Chocolat, whose motto was precisely More Cocoa, Less Sugar. Its Rare and Vintage range is very fine, and its Supermilk (£4.50 for 100g) has a 65 per cent cocoa content, and low sugar, with enough milk to make it taste like milk, not dark, chocolate, which many people find bitter. It has its own plantation in St Lucia, and works with individual farmers in Ghana.

At the other end of the scale there are the small artisan chocolate producers who have revolutionised high end chocolate in the last 20 years. Time was, you got interesting chocolate flavours from Belgian or Italian chocolatiers – though I am very keen on the old staples like chocolate gingers and violet creams. Now there are any number of small scale makers in the British isles. The internet means that they can operate from a production unit anywhere in the country, and sell anywhere in the country. Indeed, the internet has been the saviour of small manufacturers everywhere: I like the hazelnut chocolate (£8 for 150g) produced by the Roman Trappist monastery, Frattochie abbey, from holyart.com, not least for its swanky packet.

Of the British artisan producers, my own favourites are William Curley and Paul A Young, wonderful chocolatiers whose ranges of flavours are extraordinarily imaginative. William Curley’s filled chocolates in his little Soho shop include Japanese flavours and intense fruit pastes. His other party trick is to take familiar bars, like Snickers and Bounty, and make them sublime.

What’s the difference between these boxes of chocolates and the expensive ones you buy in Duty Free in the aiport or in supermarkets? ‘Simple’, says William Curley. ‘My ingredients are fresh, like butter and cream. You need to eat them within a fortnight.’ William, my friend, it won’t take that long.

Some small producers see the entire manufacturing process through themselves – the Bean to Bar makers – while others use couverture chocolate as their base, and add their own fillings, shapes and colours. Both make lovely chocolate but the Bean-to-Bar people have more control over all the aspects that affect quality, like the length of time they conch, or grind, the bean, which makes for greater smoothness. The excellent BareBones Chocolate in Glasgow, for instance, sees through the whole process. Check out their lively Madagascar 70 per cent.

With modern chocolatiers, the boundaries between art and edibles can be fluid. Brik, a small London producer, specialises in chocolate that looks like concrete or marble tiles, with assorted surface textures and unexpected flavours: sour cherry and almond, or smoked salted caramel. It’s design-led, but delicious with it.

MPs who voted for vaccine passports

In spite of a last-minute plea from Boris Johnson to the 1922 committee, exactly one hundred Tory backbenchers voted against the government on the introduction of Covid certification passes. With Labour announcing in advance that they would support Sajid Javid in implementing the so-called ‘Plan B’ measures, it was obvious that they would always pass.

But few were expecting such a large Tory revolt, with audible gasps being heard when the tellers read out the result. The rebellion was nearly twice as large as the previous biggest revolt of Johnson’s administration in December 2020, also on Covid and the introduction of tier restrictions. For context, some 118 Tory MPs voted against Theresa May on the first meaningful vote.

With the measure passing by 369 votes to 126, below is a list of every MP who voted for Covid certification passes. You can see the corresponding list for all those who voted for the measure here.

Conservatives (payroll-vote):

1. Steve Double (teller)

2. Michael Tomlinson (teller)

3. Nigel Adams

4. Bim Afolami

5. Lucy Allan

6. Stuart Andrew

7. Sarah Atherton

8. Gareth Bacon

9. Kemi Badenoch

10. Steve Barclay

11. Saqib Bhatti

12. Suella Braverman

13. Jack Brereton

14. Sara Britcliffe

15. Felicity Buchan

16. Conor Burns

17. James Cartlidge

18. Maria Caulfield

19. Alex Chalk

20. Jo Churchill

21. Simon Clarke

22. Chris Clarkson

23. James Cleverly

24. Dr Therese Coffey

25. Alberto Costa

26. Robert Courts

27. Claire Coutinho

28. Virginia Crosbie

29. David T C Davies

30. Mims Davies

31. Sarah Dines

32. Leo Docherty

33. Nadine Dorries

34. Oliver Dowden

35. Flick Drummond

36. Ruth Edwards

37. Michael Ellis

38. Natalie Elphicke

39. George Eustice

40. Katherine Fletcher

41. Mark Fletcher

42. Vicky Ford

43. Kevin Foster

44. Lucy Frazer

45. George Freeman

46. Mike Freer

47. Peter Gibson

48. John Glen

49. Michael Gove

50. Andrew Griffith

51. Jonathan Gullis

52. Greg Hands

53. Trudy Harrison

54. Simon Hart

55. James Heappey

56. Chris Heaton-Harris

57. Damian Hinds

58. Paul Holmes

59. Nigel Huddleston

60. Eddie Hughes

61. Jane Hunt

62. Sajid Javid

63. Andrea Jenkyns

64. David Johnston

65. Marcus Jones

66. Gillian Keegan

67. Danny Kruger

68. Kwasi Kwarteng

69. Ian Levy

70. Brandon Lewis

71. Julia Lopez

72. Rachel Maclean

73. Alan Mak

74. Kit Malthouse

75. Scott Mann

76. Julie Marson

77. Amanda Milling

78. Gagan Mohindra

79. James Morris

80. Joy Morrissey

81. Wendy Morton

82. Lia Nici

83. Neil O’Brien

84. Guy Opperman

85. Priti Patel

86. Chris Philip

87. Chris Pincher

88. Rebecca Pow

89. Victoria Prentis

90. Tom Pursglove

91. Dominic Raab

92. Jacob Rees-Mogg

93. Nicola Richards

94. Angela Richardson

95. Lee Rowley

96. David Rutley

97. Selaine Saxby

98. Paul Scully

99. Grant Shapps

100. Alok Sharma

101. Chloe Smith

102. Amanda Solloway

103. Mark Spencer

104. Andrew Stephenson

105. Iain Stewart

106. James Sunderland

107. Maggie Throup

108. Anne-Marie Trevelyan

109. Laura Trott

110. Liz Truss

111. Suzanne Webb

112. Helen Whately

113. Heather Wheeler

114. Craig Whittaker

115. James Wild

116. Mike Wood

117. Jeremy Wright

118. Jacob Young

119. Nadhim Zahawi

Conservatives (non-payroll vote):

1. Peter Aldous 

2. Stuart Anderson 

3. Richard Bacon 

4. Duncan Baker 

5. Simon Baynes 

6. Aaron Bell 

7. Sir Paul Beresford 

8. Jake Berry 

9. Crispin Blunt 

10. Sir Peter Bottomley 

11. Paul Bristow 

12. Anthony Browne 

13. Fiona Bruce 

14. Robert Buckland

15. Alex Burghart 

16. Rob Butler 

17. Alun Cairns 

18. Andy Carter

19. Sir William Cash 

20. Rehman Chishti 

21. Greg Clark 

22. Theo Clarke 

23. Damian Collins

24. Sir Geoffrey Cox 

25. Stephen Crabb 

26. James Daly 

27. Dr James Davies 

28. Gareth Davies 

29. James Duddridge 

30. Philip Dunne

31. Mark Eastwood 

32. Sir David Evennett 

33. Ben Everitt 

34. Michael Fabricant 

35. Laura Farris 

36. Nick Fletcher 

37. Sir Roger Gale 

38. Mark Garnier 

39. Nick Gibb 

40. Robert Goodwill 

41. Richard Graham 

42. Helen Grant 

43. James Gray 

44. Kate Griffiths 

45. Luke Hall 

46. Matt Hancock 

47. Sally-Ann Hart

48. Sir Oliver Heald

49. Gordon Henderson

50. Antony Higginbotham

51. Simon Hoare

52. Richard Holden

53. Kevin Hollinrake

54. John Howell

55. Paul Howell

56. Dr Neil Hudson

57. Jeremy Hunt

58. Sir Bernard Jenkin

59. Robert Jenrick

60. Dr Caroline Johnson 

61. Gareth Johnson 

62. Andrew Jones 

63. Daniel Kawczynski 

64. Marco Longhi 

65. Cherilyn Mackrory 

66. Jerome Mayhew 

67. Paul Maynard 

68. Jason McCartney 

69. Huw Merriman 

70. Robin Millar 

71. Maria Miller 

72. Nigel Mills 

73. David Morris

74. Dr Kieran Mullan

75. Sheryll Murray

76. Dr Andrew Murrison

77. Caroline Nokes

78. Neil Parish

79. Dr Dan Poulter 

80. Mark Pritchard 

81. Will Quince 

82. Mary Robinson 

83. Dean Russell 

84. Andrew Selous 

85. Alec Shelbrooke 

86. David Simmonds

87. Chris Skidmore 

88. Julian Smith 

89. Royston Smith 

90. Alexander Stafford 

91. Bob Stewart 

92. Sir Gary Streeter 

93. Mel Stride 

94. Graham Stuart 

95. Edward Timpson 

96. Kelly Tolhurst 

97. Justin Tomlinson

98. Shailesh Vara

99. Martin Vickers

100. Robin Walker

101. Dr Jamie Wallis

102. Matt Warman

103. John Whittingdale

104. Bill Wiggin

105. Gavin Williamson 

Labour

1. Debbie Abrahams 

2. Rushanara Ali 

3. Mike Amesbury 

4. Fleur Anderson 

5. Jon Ashworth 

6. Paula Barker 

7. Hilary Benn 

8. Clive Betts 

9. Ben Bradshaw 

10. Nick Brown 

11. Lyn Brown 

12. Chris Bryant 

13. Karen Buck 

14. Ian Byrne 

15. Ruth Cadbury 

16. Sir Alan Campbell 

17. Bambos Charalambous 

18. Yvette Cooper

19. Neil Coyle

20. Stella Creasy

21. Jon Cruddas

22. John Cryer

23. Judith Cummins

24. Alex Cunningham

25. Geraint Davies

26. Thangam Debbonaire

27. Tanmanjeet Singh

28. Anneliese Dodds

29. Stephen Doughty

30. Peter Dowd

31. Jack Dromey

32. Rosie Duffield

33. Dame Angela Eagle

34. Maria Eagle

35. Clive Efford

36. Julie Elliott

37. Chris Elmore 

38. Bill Esterson 

39. Chris Evans 

40. Colleen Fletcher 

41. Yvonne Fovargue 

42. Vicky Foxcroft 

43. Gill Furniss 

44. Preet Kaur Gill 

45. Mary Glindon 

46. Kate Green 

47. Lilian Greenwood 

48. Margaret Greenwood 

49. Nia Griffith 

50. Andrew Gwynne 

51. Louise Haigh 

52. Fabian Hamilton 

53. Harriet Harman 

54. Carolyn Harris

55. Helen Hayes 

56. Sir Mark Hendrick 

57. Dame Meg Hillier 

58. Dame Margaret Hodge 

59. Sharon Hodgson 

60. Kate Hollern 

61. Rachel Hopkins 

62. Sir George Howarth 

63. Dr Rupa Huq 

64. Dame Diana Johnson 

65. Kim Johnson 

66. Darren Jones 

67. Gerald Jones 

68. Kevan Jones 

69. Sarah Jones 

70. Barbara Keeley 

71. Liz Kendall 

72. Afzal Khan

73. Stephen Kinnock 

74. Kim Leadbeater 

75. Tony Lloyd 

76. Holly Lynch 

77. Justin Madders 

78. Khalid Mahmood 

79. Seema Malhotra 

80. Rachael Maskell 

81. Steve McCabe 

82. Kerry McCarthy 

83. Andy McDonald 

84. John McDonnell 

85. Pat McFadden 

86. Conor McGinn 

87. Alison McGovern 

88. Cat McKinnell 

89. Anna McMorrin 

90. Ed Miliband

91. Navendu Mishra 

92. Jessica Morden 

93. Stephen Morgan 

94. Ian Murray 

95. James Murray 

96. Lisa Nandy 

97. Alex Norris 

98. Chi Onwurah 

99. Abena Oppong-Asare 

100. Taiwo Owatemi 

101. Sarah Owen 

102. Stephanie Peacock 

103. Matthew Pennycook 

104. Toby Perkins 

105. Yasmin Qureshi 

106. Angela Rayner 

107. Steve Reed 

108. Christina Rees

109. Ellie Reeves 

110. Jonathan Reynolds 

111. Marie Rimmer

112. Matt Rodda 

113. Lloyd Russell-Moyle 

114. Naz Shah 

115. Virendra Sharma 

116. Barry Sheerman 

117. Tulip Siddiq

118. Andy Slaughter 

119. Nick Smith 

120. Karin Smyth 

121. John Spellar 

122. Sir Keir Starmer 

123. Jo Stevens

124. Wes Streeting 

125. Mark Tami 

126. Sam Tarry 

127. Gareth Thomas 

128. Nick Thomas-Symonds 

129. Emily Thornberry 

130. Stephen Timms 

131. Karl Turner 

132. Derek Twigg 

133. Liz Twist 

134. Valerie Vaz 

135. Catherine West 

136. Matt Western 

137. Dr Alan Whitehead 

138. Mick Whitley 

139. Nadia Whittome 

140. Beth Winter 

141. Mohammad Yasin 

142. Daniel Zeichner

SDLP

1. Colum Eastwood

Boris is in deep trouble

This evening feels eerily familiar to anyone who remembers the meaningful votes of Theresa May’s premiership. The Tory rebellion on the Covid measures is bigger than expected; the rebels are claiming to be the mainstream of the parliamentary party; the cabinet ministers loyalists to the PM are blaming the whips office; there are mutterings about how long this can go on for. There is, of course, one crucial difference: thanks to Labour, Boris Johnson won tonight’s vote. But it is clear that if he wants to tighten restrictions further, he will be reliant on Starmer’s party’s support in doing so. Relying on the opposition to get their business through is never a comfortable place for a Prime Minister to be.

The size of the rebellion — 100 MPs — is a shot across the bow of No. 10. There’ll be those rebels whose sole concern was vaccine passports, but there’ll be lots of others who wanted to send a message that they wouldn’t put up with any more restrictions and others who wanted to vent their fury at Boris Johnson. It is quite something for this many Tory MPs to rebel minutes after their leader had made a direct, personal appeal to them to support him at the 1922 committee of backbenchers.

It isn’t clear how Boris Johnson gets out of the bind he is in. Chris Whitty’s warning to the cabinet suggests that he thinks more restrictions will soon be needed, which will only further strain Johnson’s relations with his own party. At the same time, Tory MPs have begun to talk openly about when there might be a leadership contest if things don’t improve — Geoffrey Clifton Brown, the treasurer of the 1922 committee, has done an interview tonight saying there’ll be a confidence vote next summer if things don’t improve.

Johnson can hope that the North Shropshire by-election might be a Tory hold on Thursday: I suspect Number 10 would — despite how safe this seat normally is — bite your hand off for any majority there at all. In terms of the next month, he has to hope that the booster campaign can start doing really big numbers, so he doesn’t end up having to go for more restrictions. But tonight he is, undoubtedly, in the weakest position of his premiership to date.

Roll of honour: every MP who voted against vaccine passports

So despite a last-minute plea from Boris Johnson to the 1922 committee, exactly 100 Tory backbenchers voted against the government on the introduction of Covid certification passes. With Labour announcing in advance that they would support Sajid Javid in implementing the so-called ‘Plan B’ measures, it was obvious that they would always pass. 

But few were expecting such a large Tory revolt, with audible gasps being heard when the tellers read out the result. The rebellion was nearly twice as large as the previous biggest revolt of Johnson’s administration in December 2020, also on Covid and the introduction of tier restrictions. For context, some 118 Tory MPs voted against Theresa May on the first meaningful vote.

With the measure passing by 369 votes to 126, below is a list of every MP who voted against Covid certification passes. You can find a list of all those who voted for the measures here.

Tories:

1. Jackie Doyle-Price (teller) 

2. Philip Hollobone (teller) 

3. Adam Afriyie 

4. Lee Anderson 

5. Steve Baker 

6. Shaun Bailey 

7. Siobhan Baillie 

8. Harriet Baldwin 

9. John Baron 

10. Scott Benton 

11. Bob Blackman 

12. Peter Bone 

13. Ben Bradley 

14.Karen Bradley 

15. Sir Graham Brady 

16. Andrew Bridgen 

17. Steve Brine  

18. Miriam Cates 

19. Sir Christopher Chope 

20. Brendan Clarke-Smith 

21. Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown 

22. Tracey Crouch 

23. Philip Davies 

24. David Davis 

25. Dehenna Davison 

26. Jonathan Djanogly 

27. Richard Drax 

28. Sir Iain Duncan Smith 

29. Tobias Ellwood 

30. William Wragg

31. Dr Liam Fox 

32. Louie French 

33. Richard Fuller 

34. Marcus Fysh 

35. Nus Ghani 

36. Jo Gideon 

37. Chris Grayling 

38. Chris Green 

39. Damian Green 

40. James Grundy 

41. Robert Halfon 

42. Stephen Hammond 

43. Mark Harper 

44. Sir John Hayes 

45. Adam Holloway 

46. Tom Hunt 

47. Mark Jenkinson 

48. David Jones 

49. Simon Jupp 

50. Alicia Kearns 

51. Julian Knight 

52. Sir Greg Knight 

53. Robert Largan 

54. Andrea Leadsom 

55. Sir Edward Leigh 

56. Andrew Lewer 

57. Dr Julian Lewis 

58. Chris Loder 

59. Mark Logan 

60. Jonathan Lord 

61. Tim Loughton 

62. Craig Mackinlay 

63. Anthony Mangnall 

64. Karl McCartney 

65. Stephen McPartland 

66. Esther McVey 

67. Stephen Metcalfe 

68. Damien Moore 

69. Robbie Moore 

70. Anne Marie Morris 

71. Holly Mumby-Croft 

72. Sir Bob Neill 

73. Dr Matthew Offord 

74. Mark Pawsey 

75. Sir Mike Penning 

76. John Penrose 

77. Andrew Percy 

78. Tom Randall 

79. John Redwood 

80. Laurence Robertson 

81. Andrew Rosindell 

82. Gary Sambrook

83. Bob Seely 

84. Greg Smith 

85. Henry Smith 

86. Dr Ben Spencer 

87. Jane Stevenson 

88. John Stevenson 

89. Julian Sturdy 

90. Sir Robert Syms 

91. Derek Thomas 

92. Craig Tracey 

93. Tom Tugendhat

94. Theresa Villiers

95. Christian Wakeford

96. Sir Charles Walker 

97. David Warburton

98. Giles Watling

99. Sir Desmond Swayne

100. Pauline Latham

The DUP:

1. Sir Jeffrey Donaldson

2. Paul Girvan

3. Carla Lockhart

4. Ian Paisley

5. Jim Shannon

6. Sammy Wilson

Green:

1. Caroline Lucas

Labour:

1. Diane Abbott

2. Apsana Begum

3. Dawn Butler

4. Emma Lewell-Buck

5. Clive Lewis

6. Rebecca Long Bailey

7. Bell Ribeiro-Addy

8. Graham Stringer

Independent:

1. Jeremy Corbyn

2. Rob Roberts

Liberal Democrat:

1. Alistair Carmichael

2. Wendy Chamberlain

3, Daisy Cooper

4. Tim Farron

5. Sarah Green

6. Wera Hobhouse 

7. Christine Jardine

8. Layla Moran

9. Sarah Olney 

10. Munira Wilson

And the following eleven Tories were on the Coffee House list as indicating that they planned to vote against vaccine passports but did not do so:

1. Robert Goodwill – voted for it

2. Royston Smith – voted for it

3. Simon Fell – no vote recorded

4. Andrew Bowie – no vote recorded

5. Douglas Ross – no vote recorded

6. Johnny Mercer – no vote recorded

7. Darren Henry – no vote recorded

8. Mark Francois – no vote recorded

9. Jill Mortimer – no vote recorded

10. Matt Vickers – no vote recorded

11. Dr Luke Evans – voted both ways, abstention

Boris suffers huge Tory revolt over vaccine passports

Boris Johnson has just suffered a large majority-busting revolt in the House of Commons over vaccine passports, with 100 Conservatives rebelling against the government. The measure passed with Labour support, and 369 voted in favour with 126 against. Before the debate, some 86 Tories had said they would vote against. There had been concerted attempts by the whips to drive down those numbers. Johnson himself had been on the phone to individuals identified as possibly wavering.

That this many Conservative MPs voted against the government not long after a personal address by Boris Johnson to an emergency meeting of the 1922 Committee shows how deep the feeling runs in the party on this. The debate, as it wore on, did too. There were backbenchers who you might once have considered automatic loyalists and keen to support the government who spoke and then voted against, such as Alicia Kearns. There was a great deal of anger from usually quite sanguine MPs such as Steve Brine about the way in which Johnson in particular had sought to ‘frighten’ their constituents with his Sunday night broadcast to the nation.

This was quite obviously not a rebellion just from the usual suspects of the Covid Recovery Group and malcontents. To underline that, one of the Tories who voted no tonight has only been an MP for a matter of days: Louie French, who won the Old Bexley and Sidcup by-election.

Perhaps if you were measuring things merely by avoiding junior ministerial resignations, then you could call this a success. The whips had been busy working on ten parliamentary private secretaries who were on ‘resignation watch’ over the measure. None of them appears to have voted against the government tonight. Indeed, those named in this piece all voted in favour.

What does this tell us about Boris Johnson’s relationship with his party? It tells us that things really are very serious indeed, far more so than the prime minister appears to think. His MPs do not take him at his word any more. They think he is happy to frighten voters, rather than charm them. And they don’t care about damaging his authority. Indeed, many of them seem to think that it’s rather important to do so

The sex work divide in British politics

They seem like completely unrelated questions: ‘Is sex work real work?, and ‘Who will replace Yvette Cooper as chair of the Commons Home Affairs Committee?’ Yet the two are deeply linked.

Sex work first. If you’re not familiar with the phrase ‘sex work is work’, get used to it, because you’re going to be hearing it a lot more in public debate in the next few years. The phrase has been around since at least the 1970s, but is now being used with growing frequency and energy by people on the self-appointed ‘progressive’ side of politics.

As a result, ‘sex work is work’ is looking like being a new dividing line for people who enjoy identity and culture politics. Not just on Twitter but increasingly in the real world, that mantra is becoming yet another purity test: if you don’t say those holy words, you’re guilty of demonising and stigmatising women (and others) who have sex in exchange for money.

This is purely anecdotal, of course, but quite a lot of people who champion this way of thinking and insist that ‘sex work is work’ appear to be young men with beards, who presumably have little chance of ending up as suppliers in this particular marketplace.

‘Sex work is work’ is also finding its way into the world of politics and policy, sometimes as an unquestioned statement of fact. As someone who runs a thinktank, I’m obviously inclined to regard thinktank reports as important. But I was struck to read this recent report from Autonomy, a newish think-shop, looking at the night-time economy. 

What’s striking about that report is that its authors treat sex work as an economic activity like any other, listing alongside delivery riding, care work and working in warehouses when making suggestions for how urban policy can better support workers of various sorts.

I doubt the chaps at Autonomy would object to being described as left-wing (that report was funded by the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation) but the fact that a credible thinktank has embedded ‘sex work is work’ in its thinking can have implications for wider political discourse. This is normalisation, the sort of thing that shifts the Overton window of what can and cannot be discussed.

Here there is a parallel to be drawn with another mantra of progressive politics: ‘transwomen are women’. A few years ago, that catechism was largely confined to the fringes of social media. These days, we see its implications explored in politics, policy and journalism on a regular basis. I won’t explore the parallel here, beyond noting that quite a few people who say ‘transwomen are women’ also say that ‘sex work is work’.

And as my friend Sonia Sodha described recently in the Observer, ‘sex work is work’ is another issue that divides feminists. Some argue that the way to make having sex for money safer is to fully decriminalise it: making sex work into work like any other would allow it to be regulated and policed, they argue. Others argue that there is no way to make having sex for money safe or healthy, since it is inherently exploitative and harmful.

That second group of feminists argue for the ‘Nordic model’, where the people who sell sex face no criminal sanction but the people (men) who pay for it are criminalised. The aim is to reduce demand.

This is not the place for me to discuss the merits of these arguments, though I should make clear that I like and admire several of the leading advocates on the Nordic model side of this debate. To put it another way: when Julie Bindel says something, I think it’s wise to listen.

The more immediate issue is whether the question at hand — is sex work work? — is going to become a matter of live political importance. Which brings me, at last, to the Home Affairs Select Committee chair.

That post is vacant because Yvette Cooper has left to become shadow home secretary. Her fellow MPs will elect a replacement on Wednesday.

One of the contenders for the chair is Dame Diana Johnson, the MP for Hull North since 2005. Like most long-serving MPs, Johnson’s parliamentary career has been varied. Some highlights: she’s campaigned with great success on contaminated blood; opposed sanctions against Israel; served on Jeremy Corbyn’s front bench; resigned from Jeremy Corbyn’s frontbench;  and campaigned to liberalise abortion rules.

And most recently, she has supported that Nordic model on sex work and prostitution. Johnson earlier this year tabled a Ten Minute Rule Bill in the Commons that would have criminalised the buying of sex while ensuring no penalty for those who have sex for money.

The bill was supported by some old-school Labour feminists* and a few Tories. It was opposed by Momentum, the Left-Labour faction that is home to quite a lot of young men with beards, as well as other people who also insist that ‘sex work is work’. Other opponents of the Johnson bill included the GMB trade union, Amnesty International and Stonewall.

That opposition to Johnson’s bill is now spilling over into the contest for the Home Affairs committee chair. The ‘sex work is work’ camp is keen to argue that Johnson’s views on sex work and prostitution should disqualify her from the chair of a select committee whose views on sex work and prostitution carry great weight.

Here’s SWARM, a ‘sex-worker-led collective’ that is part of the wider network of ‘sex work is work’ advocates (the group contributed to that Autonomy report) on Johnson and the committee:

Diana Johnson MP consistently ignores sex workers — even her own constituents in Hull — who oppose her dangerous obsession with imposing the Nordic Model. She would be disastrous as Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee.

Among Labour MPs, the expectation is that younger, Corbyn-leaning members — for whom ‘sex work is work’ is often an article of faith — will vote against Johnson for the Home Affairs chair, while those of a Blair-Brown vintage (and earlier) will support her.

These splits aren’t just about sex work and prostitution, of course — there are several other divisions at play — but I think it’s safe to say that those words ‘sex work is work’ are testing the British political left, and the election of Yvette Cooper’s successor might demonstrate what that means in practical terms.

I also think it’s inevitable that this won’t be the last time this issue causes tension in British political debate. Remember those words — ‘sex work is work’ — and start thinking about what they mean.

*Declaration: one of the Bill’s backers was Dame Margaret Hodge, who is a trustee of the Social Market Foundation where I am Director, and therefore one of my bosses. I have had no conversations with her about this article or the topic in general. As with everything I write, this column reflects my views, no one else’s.

Labour is the real winner of tonight’s vote

Sajid Javid found himself wading through treacle as he tried to make the case for the government’s ‘Plan B’ to MPs this afternoon. The impediments to his progress were constant interventions from all sides, including his own, questioning the wisdom of these measures, the data behind them and the principles at stake. The Health Secretary tried to be as mollifying as possible, taking the majority of these interventions, even when they were from an MP who had interrupted him before. His respectful manner did mean that colleagues weren’t visibly angry with Javid, but given their ire is largely directed at Boris Johnson, this tells us very little about the size of tonight’s looming rebellion.

It wasn’t just Javid who was making the case for the restrictions. In fact, he was ably assisted with this by his opponent, shadow health secretary Wes Streeting. He gave a strong speech in favour of the measures which both helped and humiliated the government. Early on, he said: 

‘No matter how dysfunctional the Conservative party has become, the country can rely on Labour. We will act in the national interest as we have done throughout the pandemic, putting public health before party politics by supporting the motions under consideration this afternoon.’

The Labour frontbencher repeatedly emphasised that his party wasn’t ‘playing games’ with these measures and that it was instead working with the government in the national interest. He also scolded those who had suggested vaccine passports were in some way comparable to the policies of Nazi Germany, which was a swipe at Tory backbencher Marcus Fysh. The whole tenor of his speech was that Labour was taking responsibility where the party of government had relinquished it.

This is where the danger of tonight’s win really lies. Relying on Labour votes isn’t just a bit annoying. It elevates the party to being a government in waiting, rather than just an opportunistic opposition. The rebel side are talking up the possibility that many of those who’ve said they don’t want to support the government will yet turn on that commitment. One source tells me: ‘It will be pitiful if people who publicly committed then renege.’

This is classic expectations management ahead of a vote. But it is also beside the point because the damage has largely already been done: the case has been made by the Conservative frontbench and the Labour Party, not the Conservative party as a whole and that shows the precariousness of Boris Johnson’s authority over his party.

Desmond Swayne rails against the ‘Ministry of Fear’

It’s match day in Parliament as MPs gather to vote on Boris Johnson’s ‘Plan B.’ Sajid Javid kicked things off in the Commons with a plea to Tory rebels to back Boris Johnson’s last-minute compromise, there’s still much anger on the green benches, with Mr S hearing further names could be added to the 85-strong list of Conservatives who won’t vote for tonight’s measures. 

And such sentiment was given voice early on this afternoon after Sir Desmond Swayne, the maverick member for New Forest West, rose shortly after Wes Streeting’s 40 minute long address gave paroxysms of pleasure to every Britpopping centrist dad.

Deploying his usual tact and moderation, Swayne launched into a three minute attack on ministers and their scientific advisers, with much talk of the ‘dogs of war, ‘Stanlist minds,’ advisers ‘twisting the fear factor’ and the ‘Ministry of Fear.’ Declaring that the necessity of more Covid measures is a ‘matter of opinion, a matter of our prejudice’ the former Cameron aide declared that the  government ‘have abandoned any principle of liberal democracy’ – quite the charge from a onetime Tory minister. 

Asking his colleagues: ‘Do you take seriously some of the extraordinary extrapolations we have been given?” he compared Covid fatalities to road deaths, concluding by saying ‘Having abandoned what might have been their ideology, they are rudderless and as a consequence of that, so much more at risk of the opinions and predictions of the advisers to which they are in hock.’

If his colleagues follow in a similar vein, it could be quite the long afternoon for Sajid Javid. 

Will Valérie Pécresse vanquish Macron?

It seems like just minutes ago that Michel Barnier, former Brexit negotiator, centre-right Républicain exiled to Brussels two decades ago, was being widely touted (not least by British correspondents in Paris) as the respectable opposition to President Emmanuel Macron in the 2022 presidential election campaign. As I predicted here and here, he’s subsequently disappeared in a puff of smoke, finishing third in the party’s candidate selection.

So meet Valérie Pécresse, 54, the somewhat surprisingly selected candidate of Les Républicains for president of France, and now in her turn being touted as the acceptable face of opposition. She’s certainly more credible than Barnier. Excited journalists inside the périphérique are reporting polls suggesting that she could even beat Macron in the second round of voting. (She dislikes him intensely, which puts her on side with many voters.) The polls do indeed show her within a whisker of Macron in a hypothetical second-round face off. There’s but one potential problem with this scenario. Can she actually get to the second round?

Pécresse, a former budget minister in the Sarkozy era, is presentable and respectable, but whether she’s really in tune with voters is a wide open question. Although Macron has the same problem. President of the Île-de-France region, which includes Paris, Pécresse is in many ways hard to differentiate from Macron. They are both graduates of the École National d’Administration, the elite finishing school for politicians, civil servants and bosses. She was born in Neuilly-Sur-Seine, which is as posh as it gets. Among her talents, she speaks French, Russian, English and Japanese.

She describes herself as a Gaullist, and also ‘two thirds Angela Merkel, one third Margaret Thatcher.’ But when she clarifies this claim, it’s plain that her identification with Thatcher is fairly tenuous.

‘If the idea is that I’m a strong woman, I say yes I am like Thatcher. That I am concerned for the middle class, certainly. That I want to put the public finances in order, yes. But as for the manner of exercising power, my model rests Angela Merkel, who has overcome political differences, as we’ve done in my region, which is socially to the left.’

She says the difference between her and Macron is that he’s fundamentally of the left and she’s of the right. In practical terms that doesn’t leave a huge gulf between them. She’s a believer in the big state and sees private enterprise mainly as a way to pay for it.

Outside the bourgeois enclaves of France, I don’t detect a tsunami of enthusiasm for her. And assumptions that anyone can untangle the calculus of a first round vote – with at least five serious candidates and perhaps many more less serious candidates nevertheless capable of shaving votes off the leaders – seem far-fetched.

As a detail, it’s worth noting that President Macron himself has yet to declare his candidacy but this is obviously merely expedient since he has been campaigning for months, flying around the country at taxpayer expense, promising billions of new spending for law and order, schools, the nuclear industry, space exploration, health care and in simple handouts to voters. Where the money is coming from is unexplained. Covid has left the public finances in tatters. There’s no longer much talk of structural economic reforms. Macron has been loyally supported by most of the media but not all.

That he can make it into the second round is assumed.

The left and its green allies look for the moment hors de combat. Anne Hidalgo, candidate of the Socialist Party, is marooned on 5 per cent. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, candidate of the further left party La France Insoumise is on roughly 10 per cent.

If it remains difficult to predict who will ultimately be offered to French voters in the second tour, it looks as if this election is unlikely to result in much of a mandate for the winner, or even a presidential majority in the National Assembly. Would Zemmour or Le Pen’s voters support the Républicains to oust Macron?

Of all the gifts bequeathed by General de Gaulle to France, liberation from the Germans in 1944 is arguably secondary. Hitler would have been defeated anyway. Nor was it France’s 30 glorious years of post-war economic growth (he played a part, but it wasn’t singular). It’s the Fifth Republic that is his legacy, and above all a two-round presidential electoral system designed to keep extremists out of the Élysée. It’s a system that’s endured now for more than half a century, which is an eternity in a country that’s segued from monarchy to one republic after another via empire and dictatorship. It’s a system that reflects de Gaulle’s fundamental mistrust of the French themselves. The Fifth Republic imposed a continuity of moderation, notwithstanding the baser instincts of voters. The president is practically an elected monarch, served by an elite technocracy that keeps communists and fascists in their place.

This constitutional settlement is now facing a severe test as the field of candidates emerges to present French voters with choices with a potential to upset the political geometry. Zemmour and Le Pen combined still have the allegiance of more voters than either Macron or Pécresse. Pécresse will be hoping they’ll split the first round vote among the further right, letting her face Macron. But dodgy French polls may not currently be a reliable guide to prediction.

Macron must still be counted as favourite, but perhaps no longer quite a sure thing.

Can the rebels trust Boris’s word?

There’s white smoke blowing over the House of Commons today as Sajid Javid declares ‘Peace in our Time.’ The Health Secretary – Daladier to Johnson’s Chamberlain – has emerged with an olive branch to the dozens of Tory MPs opposed to Covid passes. In a bid to placate potential rebels like Danny Kruger, Javid and Johnson are offering a compromise: they won’t proceed with mandatory jabs and vaccine passports will always carry the option of showing a lateral flow test (LFT). Many MPs remain unconvinced, with many citing the government’s failure to produce evidence that vaccine passports actually work. 

Still, the concession by Johnson shows even he recognises the limits of coercion. Yet Mr S would have more faith in the word of the Prime Minister had he and his ministers not repeatedly broken it before. When assessing the credibility of the PM’s pledges to always allow an LFT and rule out compulsory credibility, it’s worth looking at the similar assurances he and his colleagues gave on the issue of vaccine passports. The then vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi said they were ‘discriminatory’ and unBritish; he said there were ‘no plans’ to introduce them – even as thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money was being spent on digital ‘certificates’ to would allow people to prove their immunity when asked. What safeguards are there to prevent another such occurrence?

Amid all the shenanigans ahead of tonight’s vote – with Boris set to address the 1922 in a last minute appearance to ward off the rebels – Mr S was amused to see Dominic Raab this morning championing reform of the Human Rights Act. The Lord Chancellor told the House that ‘In this country, we have a proud tradition of liberty, which we must cherish and nurture’ adding that ‘a modern Bill of Rights will strengthen our freedoms.’

A rich irony on the day that MPs meet to rubber-stamp Covid passes eh?

Are a growing number of Brits choosing not to work?

It wasn’t long ago that we were fearing the end of the furlough scheme might be accompanied by a significant rise in unemployment. According to the latest labour market figures released by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) this morning, that doesn’t appear to have happened. What they do show, however, is that the pandemic has led to growth in a section of the population which generally receives little comment: adults of working age who are economically inactive – i.e. not in work and not seeking work either. Moreover, those who are in work are working fewer hours than they did before the pandemic.

The figures cover the period August to October, the last month of which falls after the end of the furlough scheme on 30 September. They show that unemployment is a modest 4.2 per cent – just 0.2 higher than in the period December 2019 to February 2020, immediately prior to the first lockdown.

However, the employment rate, at 75.5 per cent, is 1.1 percentage points lower in the most recent period than it was prior to the pandemic. The different is accounted for by growth in the percentage of people who are economically inactive – which at 21.2 per cent is a whole percentage point above what it was before the pandemic.

Much has been said about the labour market being squeezed by the loss of eastern European workers, either because of Covid, Brexit or both. And certainly employers in some sectors have been complaining about the difficulties in recruiting suitable staff. But there appears to be another factor: a small proportion of UK citizens, perhaps having tasted enforced idleness during lockdown, have decided that they do not wish to return to their jobs – nor indeed to work at all. Whether this group will return to the workplace in time, or subside into early retirement, remains to be seen.

Even those who have returned to, or remained in, work seem to be working less than they did before the pandemic. The ONS figures show that 1.02 billion hours were worked in the last quarter, 17.6 million higher than the quarter before that but still 27.8 million hours in the quarter before the pandemic. That is equivalent to around an hour less a week per worker.

Today’s figures also show earnings continuing to rise at a fair rate: 4.3 per cent over the year if you exclude bonuses and 4.9 per cent if you include them. This is markedly lower than in recent months when the year-on-year increased briefly topped 8 per cent as the effects of the first lockdown distorted the figures. In fact, with the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) at 4.2 per cent, wages are only just about keeping up with inflation. Workers might feel happier to have extra money in their pockets, but it is not giving them any greater buying power in the shops.