Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Thursday

Annabel Denham

Punishing the unvaccinated threatens everyone’s liberty

How should we treat the unvaccinated? Should we stop them from participating in normal life? Castigate them in the media? Mandate they get vaccinated or block them from accessing NHS services? It’s a creeping question across developed countries — asked on Good Morning Britain’s Twitter page yesterday, and then subsequently deleted. Germany has barred the unvaccinated from most aspects of public life, including shops and restaurants. Greece is charging the over-60s Є100 for every month they remain unvaccinated, with money going to top up the health services. In Singapore, the unvaccinated will no longer have their Covid care paid for by the state. A letter in the Times this week suggested the same should happen here too.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Boris takes his colleagues for fools

Is Boris Johnson really deploying a 'diversionary tactic' in announcing vaccine passports on the day he has had to perform a volte-face over a Christmas party in Downing Street? After watching his press conference tonight, I'm not so sure, though not because of the explanation the Prime Minister himself offered. He was asked about this accusation, which was first levelled by one of his own MPs, William Wragg, at PMQs. Johnson's response was to ask journalists to imagine what it would have been like if today's political row had forced a delay of the 'Plan B' measures to contain the spread of Covid this winter.

Michael Simmons

What’s the evidence for England’s vaccine passports?

The Prime Minister has just announced Plan B. Working from home has been all but mandated and large venues — as well as nightclubs — will be required to check for vaccine passports. But where is the evidence for this, and what does the data say? Johnson’s vaccine passport idea copies Nicola Sturgeon’s policy in Scotland which was found, in a 70-page evidence paper, not to have had any measurable effect. As evidence Chris Whitty presented South African hospitalisations — a country with less than a third vaccinated. When Omicron was discovered the government said we should wait for data to be gathered before reacting. Sensible, given the huge economic and livelihood consequences of even small restrictions. Data is published every day.

Steerpike

Durham students’ Rod Liddle protest in pictures

After eighteen months of Covid, there were some who feared the age-old tradition of the campus leftie had died out. Fortunately the furore about Rod Liddle has revived the inglorious habits of angry undergraduates at Durham University, with dozens of students assembling today to protest the travesty of a columnist's after-dinner speech. Mr S has covered the ups and downs of this sorry tale these past five days, with today's Durham demo being the culmination of efforts to undermine Principal Timothy Luckhurst of South College for inviting Rod to speak at high table. Among the highlights include Jonah Graham, Durham SU's Welfare and Liberation Officer, asserting to the assembled throng that 'this is not an issue about free speech...

Katy Balls

Stratton resigns – but the row isn’t over

The row over the Downing Street 'party' has claimed its first victim. On Wednesday Allegra Stratton announced that she was resigning from government. Her decision followed the leaked footage of a practice press briefing in which Stratton — then spokeswoman for the Prime Minister — appeared to joke about a lockdown breaching No. 10 party four days after is alleged to have taken place. Addressing reporters outside her home, Stratton — who most recently has been working on the COP26 summit — said she was deeply sorry for her comments:  My remarks seemed to make light of the rules, rules that people were doing everything to obey. That was never my intention.

Lloyd Evans

PMQs: Boris’s nadir

The bombshell at bay. That’s how Boris looked at today’s PMQs. Deflated, cornered, winded and lifeless. Gone were the chuckles and the mischievous jests, the punning quips and the poetic asides. He kicked off with a scripted apology that had two objectives: to neutralise public fury and to wrong-foot Sir Keir Starmer. It did neither. Last night, footage emerged of Downing Street staff at a mock Q&A session making jokes about parties at No. 10 during lockdown. ‘I was also furious to see that clip,’ said Boris, as if suggesting that he was angrier than the angriest person in the country. He expressed his sorrow but couched it with lawyerly care. ‘I apologise for the impression that it gives,’ he said, dodging any admission of wrong-doing.

Katy Balls

Partygate: how much trouble is Boris in?

20 min listen

It is all kicking off in Westminster. A leaked video has emerged where the former Prime Minister's spokesperson is seen laughing when questioned about a Christmas party at 10 Downing Street last year. In yet another blow, many Conservatives shared their dismay at the leaked footage. At PMQs, Boris Johnson said that he is furious about the video but remains adamant that no lockdown rules were broken last Christmas. Also on the podcast, more talk of vaccine passports are spreading through Westminster with a press conference expected later today. Should Boris be pushed into boosting restrictions, could he face another rebellion in the Commons? Possibly not, whilst Keir Stamer is around.

The Spectator

Boris’s lockdown rules are coming back to bite him

In normal circumstances, no one would care if staff in No. 10 held a Christmas party. But last year, Boris Johnson made parties illegal. Throughout most of December, London was under Tier 3 or 4 restrictions. Social gatherings were strictly forbidden and anyone who broke the rules was at risk of a £10,000 fine. The Prime Minister could have issued guidance and asked people to use their judgment. Instead, he criminalised non-compliance and sent the police after those who didn’t follow his rules. This is why it matters very much if a party was held in Downing Street last December. Despite multiple denials from No. 10 that any such event took place, a leaked video clip has revealed aides joking about the alleged party four days later.

Steven Barrett

No, the Downing Street party probably didn’t break the law

Was the law broken at the Downing Street Christmas party last year? A video has now been leaked showing a No. 10 advisor joking about the festivities. Yet this incident, which is currently dominating the news, almost certainly did not break the law – which is why the story is so perplexing. During the course of the pandemic, the Covid laws have changed regularly. Yet one thing has stayed largely consistent: the rules have always treated people and places differently. Despite what some might claim, there's nothing sinister in this. And it's for this reason that the 'cheese and wine' gathering – which the PM has said did not take place – probably isn't a matter for the police.

Alex Massie

Boris Johnson is eating reality

It is neither fair nor correct to say it was obvious from the moment Boris Johnson became Prime Minister that he was not fit for the job for this was a truth obvious long before Johnson entered Downing Street. Nothing in his career suggested a man capable of making a success of one of the country’s most demanding jobs. What was foreseeable was in fact foreseen. Voters may be excused for accepting Johnson’s promise to ‘Get Brexit Done’ and for preferring him to the grisly prospect of Prime Minister Corbyn — but those Tory MPs who put that choice in front of them have no such excuse. They knew the calibre and character of the man they chose and they cannot claim to be surprised by what has happened since.

Kate Andrews

Will the public take Plan B seriously?

After holding strong for two weeks, fears over the Omicron variant look set to change the government’s course on Covid restrictions. Reports this morning suggest that Plan B could be implemented as early as tomorrow, including advice to work from home and — more controversially — the introduction of vaccine passports. The timing is interesting: rumours about the possible decision landed hours after a video clip — showing the Prime Minister’s former press secretary joking about last year’s alleged Downing Street Christmas party with No. 10 aides — was leaked. Downing Street still adamantly denies the party took place.

Isabel Hardman

Boris throws his staff under the bus

What possible lines of defence could the Prime Minister come up with after the leaking of footage showing his Downing Street aides joking about a party he has spent the past week insisting didn’t happen? From the moment ITV broadcast the clip, the No. 10 Christmas party was a dead cert as the sole topic at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions. Almost as much of a certainty was that Boris Johnson would respond by getting other people to take responsibility for him. This is precisely what he did, using a question prior to his exchanges with Sir Keir Starmer to try to get out in front of the matter.

Sam Leith

Kevin Birmingham: The Sinner and The Saint

39 min listen

My guest in this week's Book Club podcast is Kevin Birmingham, whose new book The Sinner and The Saint: Dostoevsky, A Crime and its Punishment, tells the extraordinary story of how Dostoevsky came to write Crime and Punishment – and the underexplored story of the real-life murderer whose case inspired it. Physical agony, Siberian exile, vicious state censorship, old-school nihilists – and the astonishing personal resilience of one of Russia's greatest writers... it's all here.

The Spectator

The decay at the heart of the civil service

That Britain no longer has the capability to maintain peace in Afghanistan other than as an appendage of the United States has been clear for decades. When President Biden made his decision to hurriedly withdraw from the country, then, Britain never had an option to do anything other than to join a messy evacuation. But at the very least we owed it to those Afghans who helped us during two decades of occupation to save as many as we could from the murderous clutches of the advancing Taliban. The testimony of a 25-year-old former junior officer in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) shows just how far short we failed.

Freddy Gray

The phoney war on Allegra Stratton

There’s something telling about the alacrity with which the SW1 hive mind has seized on the leaked clip of Allegra Stratton. For our slightly depraved opinion-forming class, the sight of the Prime Minister’s press spokesperson sniggering about a party that apparently happened in No. 10 at a time when the government had ordered us all not socialise was just too delicious. Journalists, who tend to regard themselves as extraordinary people, decided en masse that here at last was a story that ordinary people — the commoners — can be excited by and angry about. The blue-checks of Twitter quickly pronounced that this bit of news had ‘cut through’ — that awful phrase which media people use to mean that non-media people might care.

Patrick O’Flynn

‘Partygate’ is Boris’s biggest crisis yet

In politics some rows gain potency from blowing up at a bad time. Some because of their symbolic power. Some because of a single memorable televised gaffe that can be constantly replayed. And some because they involve very serious lapses. It is rare for a single story to encompass all of these damaging dimensions but that is the case with the furore over the Christmas Party at Downing Street last year. Veteran Tory Sir Roger Gale was probably not trying to be helpful when he told the BBC this morning that the matter had the 'potential to become another Barnard Castle'. Yet if that is all it becomes then people around the Prime Minister will surely breathe a huge sigh of relief. Because Barnard Castle, or 'Domgate', involved one official bending the rules to protect his family.

Steerpike

Watch: Rod Liddle speaks his truth on Durham

Much has written about the Rod-gate Durham drama since Friday night. Whether it's 'literally shaking' students compiling Twitter threads about their shock or breathless write-ups in our paper of record, it appears that a five minute speech from The Spectator's Rod Liddle is all that's necessary to trigger a full-blown free speech row. Angry undergraduates are set to hold a campus protest at Durham later today, with others now demanding content warnings for all after-dinner speakers.  But now, after maintaining a (relative) silence these past five days, the man at the centre of the controversy has decided – in the immortal words of Oprah Winfrey – to speak his truth.

Steerpike

Animal Sentience Bill gets mauled (again)

It hasn’t been a great 24 hours for Downing Street. Under fire for its lockdown-busting Christmas party, facing fury over the Afghanistan debacle, surely solace could be found from the fray in the rarefied atmosphere of the House of Lords? Sadly not, for yesterday their noble lordships turned their aristocratic fire on the government’s Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill. The flagship legislation, which Mr S has covered extensively, is designed to protect helpless creatures and recognise they can feel pain by creating a new super-committee to judge the effects of government policies. Lobsters and octopi are to now be included; ministers forced to do morning media rounds are sadly not.

Steerpike

Lord Frost’s free-market foray

Away from the shenanigans of Downing Street's Christmas parties, another festive bash was being held last night just down the road in Westminster. Mr S was among those at One Birdcage Walk enjoying the hospitality of the Adam Smith Institute's annual shindig, where Lord Frost enlivened the evening with a stalwart defence of free-market principles against the tide of interventionism. Britain's Brexit supremo raised some eyebrows in No. 10 last week with his comments at the Thatcher Conference on the need to diverge quicker from the 'European social model' adding 'I agree with the Chancellor – our goal must be to lower taxes.