Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Will Hancock hit back?

11 min listen

After the hanger full of Dom bombs that were dropped in yesterday's epic seven hour hearing, health secretary Matt Hancock got a sizeable chunk of Cummings wrath. Isabel Hardman talks to Katy Balls and James Forsyth about how Hancock has been handling himself since the allegations were levelled at him. James points out on the podcast that Hancock was never going to have a particularly hard time in the Commons, quoting Jack Straw, saying:’The safest place for a minister in a crisis is at despatch box in the House of Commons.

Andy Cowper

Questions about Matt Hancock’s credibility aren’t going away

It was always likely that the evidence given by Dominic Cummings to the health and science joint select committee inquiry yesterday would have quite an impact. Cummings certainly has a flair for communication and a revolutionary zeal. On top of that, he has scores to settle when it comes to the Prime Minister’s conduct and his treatment of his former chief advisor. Interestingly though, one of the main targets of Cummings’s ire yesterday was Health Secretary Matt Hancock.

Brendan O’Neill

Batley Grammar and the triumph of the mob

Here’s the depressing truth about the Batley Grammar controversy: the mob has won. Angry protesters who gathered at the school gates to demand teachers be forbidden from displaying images of Muhammad have pretty much got their way. Following an external inquiry into what happened at Batley Grammar, the trust which runs the school has said such images should never be used again. This affair kicked off in March, when a teacher was suspended for showing his pupils a cartoon of Muhammad during a Religious Studies discussion about blasphemy. In an attempt to resolve this surreal situation, in which a teacher in a supposedly modern secular democracy was effectively being punished for blasphemy, the Batley Multi Academy Trust commissioned an inquiry.

Steerpike

The curious incident of Dilyn the dog in the Times

In one of the more surreal moments of Dominic Cummings’s testimony to MPs yesterday, the former No. 10 advisor suggested that Carrie Symonds and Dilyn the dog might be to blame for the UK’s sluggish coronavirus response. Cummings told MPs that on a key day in mid-March, as the government began to consider locking down, No. 10 were first of all derailed by a Donald Trump plan to carpet-bomb the Middle East, and were then sent into a tailspin by a story in the Times about Dilyn the dog – Boris and Carrie’s resident pooch. According to Cummings: ‘It sounds so surreal it couldn’t possibly be true – that day the Times had run a huge story about the Prime Minister and his girlfriend and their dog.

Steerpike

New poll reveals public anger at China over Covid

This week's Spectator cover article examines China's role in the origins of the Covid virus. With many of the early decisions about the pandemic now being re-examined one year on, Mr S thought it best to ask what the British public made of this subject and the extent of Beijing's culpability. A new poll by Redfield and Wilton — with a sample size of 1,500 – found that more than three in four Brits believe China is to blame for the coronavirus crisis, with 42 per cent saying the country's regime is 'significantly to blame' and a further 34 per cent agreeing it is 'somewhat to blame.' This compares to just 15 per cent who 'don't know' and less than one in ten or 9 per cent who believe China is 'not at all to blame.'  https://twitter.

Isabel Hardman

Hancock survived MPs but questions remain unanswered

Matt Hancock's first attempt to defend himself against the bombardment of allegations from Dominic Cummings went well. The health secretary appeared in the Commons to answer an urgent question from Labour's Jon Ashworth on the matter, and he managed to get through the session without appearing beleaguered. This was partly as a result of a coterie of loyal (to the point of sounding entirely bizarre) Conservative backbenchers who stood up to congratulate the government on not having Cummings in it any more and to thank the health secretary for visiting their local hospital. There had clearly been an energetic effort on the part of Hancock's PPS and the Conservative whips to get a good number of colleagues to turn up and ask such questions.

Katy Balls

Where Cummings’s attacks leave the cabinet

Today's papers are filled with the numerous allegations levelled against Boris Johnson by Dominic Cummings during his seven hour appearance in front of MPs. The Prime Minister's former top aide didn't hold back in his critique, suggesting voters had been offered a poor choice at the 2019 election between Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn. Cummings said he believed Johnson was unfit to lead and had been too distracted by his personal life in the early stages of the pandemic when he should have been taking the virus more seriously. He concluded that government mistakes meant tens of thousands of people died 'who didn’t need to die'.  Unsurprisingly, Cummings is persona non grata in No.

Andrew Tettenborn

The EHRC is right to ditch Stonewall

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has unceremoniously dumped Stonewall – and who can blame it? Its excuse for ceasing to pay at least £2,500 a year for the privilege of being part of Stonewall’s 'diversity champions' programme was that it did not offer 'value for money'. For all the anodyne corporate-speak, it seems clear the increasing toxicity of the Stonewall brand played a big part in the decision. There was another factor in play here too. Interestingly enough, while Stonewall’s stock goes ever downwards, the outlook of the EHRC seems to be changing for the better. Getting shot of Stonewall, despite widespread acceptance of this organisation by public bodies up and down the country, is only one instance.

Annabel Denham

What’s wrong with electric scooters?

Less than a year into e-scooter trials, ministers are coming under pressure to ban the new transport technology, with concerned critics claiming they need to be made safe and the public educated on the law. Matthew Scott, Kent’s police and crime commissioner (PCC), has written to the Transport Secretary calling for a clampdown on electric scooter usage. Given the government’s fondness for the precautionary principle, it wouldn’t come as a huge shock if it capitulated to the quibbles of a tiny minority, however weak their opposition may be. There’s actually little to dislike about e-scooters. For a start, they’re no more dangerous than many other forms of transport.

Robert Peston

Johnson’s strategy for dealing with Cummings

The government is not challenging Dominic Cummings's evidence in any kind of detailed way — despite the many highly damaging charges against the Prime Minister, the Health Secretary, and the entire Whitehall system. On my show last night, the Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick repudiated nothing of substance that Cummings had alleged, including the most damaging assertion of all, that the PM’s refusal to lock down in September had led to tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. The calculation appears to be that by the time Johnson’s public inquiry into the crisis starts next spring, we’ll have moved on and have forgotten and forgiven in our gratitude for the vaccines.

Professor Gordon Wishart

Is the daily drip of Covid statistics still helpful?

It is hard to remember a time when the daily drip of Covid statistics was not part of our lives. Since March 2020, we have been greeted every afternoon with a stream of government released data filling us in on the number of infections, hospitalisations and deaths. But how necessary is it today? With a current seven-day average of only seven Covid deaths a day, the lowest level since 15 March 2020, what do we stand to gain by continuing with this current approach? It is becoming increasingly apparent that the Indian variant is not going to swamp hospitals – and that concerns about fully unlocking on 21 June are over-egged. Even if this particular variant does prove to be more transmissible, the effectiveness of the vaccines prevents it from being of much concern.

The Spectator

Has No. 10 really solved the problem of Covid groupthink?

It is hard to deny the importance of the issues raised this week by Dominic Cummings. His decision to identify the many mistakes made at the start of the pandemic is not about seeking vengeance; it is a vital process to ensure that errors are identified and not repeated. A vaccine-evading variant or a new virus could come along at any time. Should this happen, ministers must be ready. Some of the world’s finest minds worked on pandemic planning, in Britain and throughout the western world. The UK was once ranked as more prepared for a new virus than any country in Europe. But the failure to provide adequate PPE equipment was the most visible sign of implosion.

Steerpike

Watch: the BBC’s bizarre Laura Kuenssberg cut-away

The BBC clearly enjoyed Dominic Cummings's testimony yesterday, running his seven-hour appearance uninterrupted in full on its channels and writing multiple stories with headlines such as 'The most explosive claims' and 'Claims cannot easily be dismissed'. Among the many targets who suffered Cummings's wrath were members of the media who he declares were driven 'mad' after he 'essentially stopped talking to almost all journalists almost all the time' in 2020. So Mr S is sure that it was just a coincidence that the BBC chose to mute Cummings and do a voiceover just as the former aide explained the one exception to this rule was the Corporation's own political editor.

Steven Barrett

Burnham’s misjudged attack on the judiciary

The Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andrew Burnham, has publicly criticised a judge, calling his decision to end a criminal trial on legal grounds a ‘disgrace’. The judge is Mr Justice William Davis, a highly respected ‘red judge’ — that is the top level of judge we have who do trials. They are the best we have. There are 105 in our country. https://twitter.com/AndyBurnhamGM/status/1397494524054810629?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw This is an attack on the judiciary and the independence of judges. But what you think of people who do such things reveals much about your politics. The charitable argument is that Mr Burnham is confused. That is no insult, the legal system is confusing — I am not an expert on crime, for example.

James Forsyth

How much damage to the government has Dom’s bomb done?

The more anticipated a parliamentary appearance, the less it tends to live up to its billing. But Dominic Cummings’s testimony before MPs on Wednesday was one of the more remarkable parliamentary moments of this century. His attacks on his former boss were jaw--dropping. He said that it wouldn’t have helped if Boris Johnson had chaired Cobra meetings at the start of the crisis since the Prime Minister didn’t take Covid seriously and that it was ‘completely crazy’ that the country had to choose between Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn at the last election (this remark was particularly astonishing given Cummings’s influence on the Conservative campaign). But his criticisms of the entire way that the British state works were just as significant.

Manfred Manera

‘I was treated like a traitor’: An interview with WHO whistleblower Francesco Zambon

Francesco Zambon is calling the World Health Organisation (WHO) to account. Zambon, who was based at the WHO’s Venice bureau, claims that the WHO suppressed critical information about the pandemic to serve the political interests of member countries. There are conflicts of interest at the highest levels of the institution, he says. As a result, according to Zambon, the world lost valuable time in mounting effective defences against the pandemic. Back in May 2020, Zambon and his team wrote a report for the WHO called: 'An unprecedented challenge: Italy’s first response to Covid-19'. The report, drafted in a time of emergency, was meant to help other nations still untouched by the virus, and it could have saved lives, says Zambon.

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Will Cummings’s accusations damage Boris Johnson?

One of Dominic Cummings’s strengths as a campaigner was his genius for a clear message – think ‘Take Back Control’ or ‘Get Brexit Done’. But the case that he was trying to make today was more complicated. He was trying to persuade people both that the Prime Minister was not up to the job and that the system has failed. Cummings’s testimony today made Geoffrey Howe’s resignation speech look like a paean of praise The problem for him is that these two arguments cut against each other. If, as he himself acknowledged, even a Bill Gates-style figure would have struggled to deal with the problems of the Whitehall machine then Johnson’s failings seem less important.

Kate Andrews

Dominic Cummings’s explosive claim about the Bank of England

Amidst all the explosive claims made by Dominic Cummings during today’s select committee hearing, one towards the beginning of the seven-hour session seemed rather unintentional. When asked by Rebecca Long-Bailey MP about what economic assessments were made when considering the first lockdown, Cummings responded that there was no straight-forward ‘document floating around’ which laid out the ‘economic costs’.

Katy Balls

What we learnt from the Cummings evidence

17 min listen

From accusing Matt Hancock of criminal incompetence, to lifting the lid on the true nature of his relationship with Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings's evidence was nothing short of explosive. Katy Balls talks to Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth about the highlights and what we learnt. There were few who escaped Cummings's censure. But in some ways, the sheer scale of alleged incompetence means that no one accusation will stick in the way that they might have done had they been made individually.

Isabel Hardman

Matt Hancock may get his revenge tomorrow

Today we heard more than seven hours of testimony from Dominic Cummings, much of it taking aim at Matt Hancock. Tomorrow it looks as though Hancock will give us several hours of his own take on the way the government – and Cummings – handled the pandemic. This evening, a spokesman for the minister said: ‘At all times throughout this pandemic the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and everyone in DHSC has worked incredibly hard in unprecedented circumstances to protect the NHS and save lives. We absolutely reject Mr Cummings’s claims about the Health Secretary.