Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Monday

Steerpike

Watch: Zahawi announces vaccine passports for large events

And so after months of debate and disagreement, at last the government has today revealed vaccine passports will be introduced in nightclubs and large events from the end of September. This afternoon vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi told the House of Commons that a negative Covid test will not be sufficient; instead, only two vaccinations will do.  https://twitter.com/JasonGroves1/status/1417158734825074689?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Proof of a jab will not be needed to enter pubs and restaurants but individual landlords do have the power to insist on them. Today's decision follows a review by Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove earlier this month into the possible use of Covid certification.

Julie Burchill

There’s no such thing as ‘woke coke’

Have you heard about ‘Woke Coke’ – ‘Wokaine’, if you will? Apparently drug dealers are now targeting the WaWs (Woke And Wealthy) with gear at £200 a gram (when I quit six years ago, £70 was the going price) and a promise that your particular little bindel of joy is 'environmentally friendly' and 'ethically sourced’ from ‘well-paid farmers.’  Reading about it this week, I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or call the police and report myself for historical crimes against humanity. I don’t regret much in my long, louche life. But if I could go back in time and undo one thing, I’d return to 1985 when I started taking cocaine and thereafter took it pretty much every day for thirty years.

James Forsyth

Why the government’s biggest fear is mass isolation

There is growing nervousness in Whitehall about what the number of people having to self-isolate might mean for various key industries. This, rather than hospitals being overwhelmed, is fast becoming the biggest worry among policymakers. This concern is leading to talks about what can be done to prevent key workers from having to isolate. I understand that one option under discussion is extending the exemption on NHS staff and allowing other critical workers to test rather than self-isolate earlier than 16 August, from which double-jabbed people will not have to self-isolate if in contact with someone with Covid. But the problem is defining who is, and isn’t, a critical worker.

Katy Balls

Does it feel like Freedom Day?

13 min listen

Yesterday in what was the quickest public turnaround in government history. The prime minister and the chancellor are now in isolation after getting pinged for being too close to the Covid ridden health secretary Sajid Javid. There is something a little ironic about the leaders of the country being locked up on what was initially billed as 'Freedom Day', but it is a keen reminder we are just one ping away from losing our new found liberation. Katy Balls speaks to James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman.

Katy Balls

Green and Global Britain

59 min listen

Britain is already making moves on the global stage to back a green agenda, including calls to slash tariffs on ‘green goods’ and to hold countries responsible for heavily polluting practices. But as Britain reopens after Covid-19 and plans for ‘Global Britain’ take off, will the green agenda become a dominant feature of our trade negotiations, or a side-line strategy? What does Britain have to offer its trading partners when it comes to negative emissions and boosting global recovery? Can Britain lead the way in the export of green technologies such as carbon capture and hydrogen? In what areas can international cooperation on climate change be enhanced through trade?

Robert Peston

How ‘freedom day’ became ‘chaos day’

Welcome to ‘freedom day’, or more properly ‘chaos day’ – with businesses warning they can’t operate because too many employees are being ‘pinged’ and told to isolate, and the clinically extremely vulnerable terrified to leave their homes for fear no one will be wearing a mask. The funny thing is that all this madness was foreseeable. Because, as the PM himself said only a week ago, the surge in infections is almost exactly what his epidemiological advisers on Sage have been forecasting. But the government is behaving as though all this mess is just an accident, one of those things. It wasn’t. It was the choice of Boris Johnson and his cabinet.

Steerpike

Sixty highlights from sixty years of PMQs

It was 60 years this week since the first Prime Ministers’ Questions took place. What began as a sedate affair under Harold Macmillan has now become the centrepiece of the weekly parliamentary calendar, beginning at 12 p.m. every Wednesday afternoon. Over the years there have been numerous zingers, gaffes, probing questions and shameless defences, contributing to the public's perception and understanding of its leaders in the cockpit of British democracy. Here, Steerpike brings you 60 of the best moments from PMQs first 60 years.  Naturally there is a bias towards more recent years, with PMQs taking some time to be established as the place to make a mark.

Sunday

Kate Andrews

The freedom divide: Why are politicians able to side-step their own rules?

Poor Robert Jenrick. This morning we learnt that, like the rest of the public, the housing secretary (and his department) is not signed up to the exclusive pilot scheme that was set to allow Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak to skip quarantine. If Jenrick gets pinged, the rules will apply to him, just as they did to more than 500,000 people who were told by NHS Test and Trace to self-isolate in the first week of July. Yet Jenrick still had to defend Johnson and Sunak on BBC One’s Andrew Marr show this morning, about an hour before Downing Street U-turned and announced they would self-isolate after all. It was a tough gig.

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Jenrick defends Boris and Rishi

Perhaps 'freedom day' eve was never destined to run smoothly. Nevertheless, the breaking news this morning that both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor had been contacted by NHS Test and Trace falls in the realm of absurdities that one just couldn’t make up. It had initially been announced that Johnson and Sunak would be taking advantage of a pilot scheme that would have allowed them to avoid self-isolating, under the proviso that they took daily lateral flow tests and kept their work to essential duties only.

Isabel Hardman

Ministers are compounding the Covid confusion

After several hours of rage that Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak were going to be able to avoid self-isolation — despite being contacted by NHS Test and Trace — the pair have performed a screeching U-turn. They’ve now said they will ignore the pilot that they were a part of and stay at home like everyone else has to. Sunak was first out of the blocks, tweeting: https://twitter.com/RishiSunak/status/1416693412674297857?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Minutes later, Johnson followed suit, with a Downing Street spokesman saying:  The Prime Minister has been contacted by NHS Test and Trace to say he is a contact of someone with Covid. He was at Chequers when contacted by Test and Trace and will remain there to isolate. He will not be taking part in the testing pilot.

Patrick O’Flynn

The arrogance of Boris and Rishi’s failed isolation dodge

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

Katy Balls

Why No. 10 U-turned on Boris and Rishi’s self-isolation

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

Steerpike

Boris and Rishi skip self-isolation

Following yesterday's news that health secretary Sajid Javid had tested positive for Covid, it seemed only a matter of time before other cabinet ministers were similarly forced to self-isolate. Javid had a 'lengthy' meeting with Boris Johnson on Friday afternoon, just hours before his symptoms developed. So, surely the Prime Minister will be expected to self-isolate? Think again...This morning, No. 10 has released the following statement: The Prime Minister and Chancellor have been contacted by NHS Test and Trace as contacts of someone who has tested positive for Covid. They will be participating in the daily contact testing pilot to allow them to continue to work from Downing Street. They will be conducting only essential government business during this period.

John Ferry

Sturgeon’s economic council is a fig-leaf for independence

This month's announcement of a new economic advisory council formed by the Scottish government came with the usual flow of superlatives. The 17-member group will publish a strategy paper later this year to help deliver the ‘transformational change Scotland needs’, according to economy secretary Kate Forbes. We are promised ‘bold ideas’ that will bring ‘new, good and green jobs’. We have been here before. This group replaces a previous Council of Economic Advisers set up by Alex Salmond in 2007. It too had a remit to galvanise the Scottish economy. It provided 14 years of strategic advice (seven of those under Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership) to the SNP administration with no obvious corresponding uptick in Scotland’s economic performance.

Saturday

Steerpike

Double-vaxxed Saj tests positive: who’s getting pinged?

As the government prepares to lift nearly all legal Covid restrictions on Monday, ministers are at pains to emphasise that the pandemic is not over. A helpful reminder can be found in the news that Sajid Javid has today tested positive. In a video posted on Twitter, the Health Secretary — who is double jabbed — said he took a lateral flow test after feeling a ‘bit groggy’ on Friday evening, but his symptoms are ‘very mild’. https://twitter.com/sajidjavid/status/1416375392374513668?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Given around a million Brits were told to self-isolate in the first week of July alone, perhaps it’s a taste of things to come. But as Javid now faces a period of self-isolation, who will be getting pinged and told to join him?

Olivia Potts

Olivia Potts, Rory Sutherland and Tanya Gold

14 min listen

On this week's episode, Olivia Potts says angry chefs could soon get their comeuppance. (00:56) Then, Rory Sutherland says over-qualification is leading to collective idiocy. (06:28) And finally, Tanya Gold wonders why people eat lobsters.

Steerpike

Three horse race to join the 1922 executive

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

Patrick O’Flynn

Keir Starmer’s fundamental problem

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

Nicholas Farrell

The Italians are deluding themselves about the English

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

Andrew Tettenborn

The EU will regret its legal onslaught against Poland

When European governments openly disobey courts, ears prick up. When two courts simultaneously contradict each other on the same day and descend into an unseemly shouting-match, all bets are off. Welcome to the mad world of Poland’s legal relations with the EU. The ruling Law and Justice Party in Poland, PiS, is cordially detested in Brussels. Its policies, which are quite popular locally, are anathema to the liberal and cosmopolitan Euro-nomenklatura. Back in 2017, PiS introduced technical changes to the terms of appointment of the Polish higher judiciary, including a disciplinary chamber with political connections armed with powers in certain cases to sanction judges.  The measures were aimed at halting corruption.