Today

8 Apr 2021

Can Boris beat the vaccine passport rebels?

No prime minister wants to be dependent on the opposition to get the government’s business through the House of Commons. But it is likely that Boris Johnson will be in this position when it comes to ‘Covid status certificates’, other-wise known as domestic vaccine passports. More than 40 Tory MPs have already signed a pledge to oppose them, and the government’s majority is 80. ‘It is just down to Starmer. If he whips against, Boris will lose,’ says one of the leaders of the Tory rebellion. The policy has hit a nerve in the Conservative party. The view in government is that these MPs are unlikely to change their minds. They won’t be assuaged by promises to limit the scheme to mass events or anything like that. Tory opponents of Covid status certificates see them as a step towards identity cards and a shift in the balance of power between the individual and the state.

Can Boris beat the vaccine passport rebels?

Yesterday

7 Apr 2021

Tuesday

6 Apr 2021

Friday

2 Apr 2021

London’s mayoral race is a warning to Tories nationwide

The London Mayoral election is more of a procession than a race. The only real question is whether Sadiq Khan can manage to win on the first round or not. Shaun Bailey, the Tory challenger, is struggling badly. As I say in The Times today, there are a slew of reasons why the Tories are doing poorly in London: the capital was heavily for Remain and its demographics skew against the Tories. But perhaps the single most important factor is housing.  At the end of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, in 1990, the home ownership rate for London households headed by someone aged 35 to 44 was 69 per cent. At the time, the Tories held 57 out of 84 seats in the capital. By 2018, less than half of this age group were homeowners and in last general election the Tories were down to 21 out of 73 London seats.

London’s mayoral race is a warning to Tories nationwide

Thursday

1 Apr 2021

Why is New Zealand afraid of criticising China?

It is becoming harder and harder to ignore China’s aggressive behaviour. As I say in the magazine this week, China wants to pick off its opponents. Only a unified western response can stop this, but all too often that has been lacking. When Beijing turned on Australia for suggesting that there should be an independent inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus, there was a shocking lack of solidarity from New Zealand. Wellington’s trade minister, while negotiating an upgrade to its trade deal with China, suggested Australia should ‘show respect’ to China. New Zealand now exports almost half its meat and wool to China. Revealingly, it also dropped out of a statement by the Five Eyes — the intelligence grouping that joins together the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — that was particularly critical of China’s behaviour in Hong Kong.

Why is New Zealand afraid of criticising China?

Wednesday

31 Mar 2021

Tuesday

30 Mar 2021

The fightback: it’s time for the West to take on China

Boris Johnson says it is a mistake to ‘call for a new Cold War on China’. Yet China is, in many ways, a more formidable foe than the Soviet Union ever was. It is more integrated into the world trading system and its economic model is less flawed. This gives it a commercial pull in the West that the USSR never had. Its purchase over businesses and institutions goes some way to explaining why there is such reluctance in the UK, and the West more broadly, to take a tougher line on Beijing. ‘It’s the money, there wasn’t that complication in the Cold War,’ laments one cabinet minister. Yet in the past year China has made a series of tactical missteps. The most recent was last week’s imposition of sanctions on the EU and UK politicians most critical of the Chinese Communist party.

The fightback: it’s time for the West to take on China

Monday

29 Mar 2021

Saturday

27 Mar 2021

Friday

26 Mar 2021

Why ministers are worried about foreign holidays this summer

On 5 April, the government will publish its framework for deciding what foreign travel will be allowed this summer. As I say in the Times today, there is very little optimism in Whitehall about European holidays this summer. This might seem odd given that every adult will have been offered at least their first dose by then. Surely the vaccine should allow us to go abroad even to places where there is Covid in circulation? But not if the worry is about a vaccine-evading variant being imported into the country. As one of those involved in devising the way out of lockdown puts it:  ‘Variants of concern are the one big threat to the whole programme. If you get a vaccine resistant strain, then we are up the creek.’ The nightmare scenario is that all the restrictions are removed and then a vaccine-evading variant emerges and rips through the population.

Why ministers are worried about foreign holidays this summer

Thursday

25 Mar 2021

Sturgeon’s rush for a referendum could backfire

The Holyrood election campaign kicks off with Nicola Sturgeon buoyed by James Hamilton’s report concluding that she did not break the ministerial code. Unionists in both London and Edinburgh have been taken aback by how decisively Hamilton stated that Sturgeon had not broken the code. But, as I say in the magazine this week, it would be wrong to think Sturgeon hasn’t been damaged by this whole business.  The independence bill her government published this week was also a misjudgement. It states that the referendum will be held in the first half of the next Scottish parliament. In other words, before November 2023. This is a more aggressive timetable than public opinion is comfortable with. Polling for the think tank Onward shows that more voters want a referendum after 2027 — or never — than in the next two years.

Sturgeon’s rush for a referendum could backfire

Wednesday

24 Mar 2021

Tuesday

23 Mar 2021

Monday

22 Mar 2021

Saturday

20 Mar 2021

Friday

19 Mar 2021

No one wins a vaccine trade war

Ursula von der Leyen’s threat to invoke emergency powers blocking EU vaccine exports and requisitioning factories was fairly extreme. Her justification was that 41 million doses have been exported from the EU to 33 countries in the last six weeks alone at a time when its own vaccination programmes are struggling. But, as I say in the Times today, this ignores two crucial points. First, it is not the EU making these vaccines but rather private companies. Second, the supply chains for vaccines are global and complex. 'They can’t really be autarkic on this,' says one cabinet minister. For example, the lipids used in the Pfizer vaccine tend to come from the UK. When I asked one minister if we’d bar the export of these if the EU blocked Pfizer shipments, I was told: 'We are not threatening that'.

No one wins a vaccine trade war

Thursday

18 Mar 2021

Unopposed: why is Keir Starmer making life so easy for the PM?

If there is one thing worse than being talked about, it is not being talked about — and this is the fate beginning to befall Keir Starmer. He is at risk of becoming an irrelevance. After not even a year of being Labour leader, Starmer finds his personal ratings on the slide: a YouGov poll this week showed his rating at minus 13, down from plus 22 last summer. Just over half of voters think he doesn’t look like a PM-in-waiting and Labour itself is consistently trailing the Tories in the polls. It’s not clear yet what Starmer stands for, and he is running out of time to make an impression on the public. There is some nervousness about the upcoming Hartlepool by-election despite the fact Hartlepool has never elected a Tory.

Unopposed: why is Keir Starmer making life so easy for the PM?

Wednesday

17 Mar 2021
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