Gus Carter

Back in 2005, Boris Johnson wrote that among geopolitical gloomsters, China was becoming the ‘fashionable new dread’. They were obsessed with the idea that this ‘incubator of strange diseases’ was angling to become 'the next world superpower’ — ‘China will not dominate the globe’ he concluded. The China question is now the most fashionable new dread in Boris Johnson’s Tory party. Within the space of a few short years, the country has gone from a mid-level concern, via Cameron and Osborne's 'golden era’ to becoming an existential rival. And where once the country was of interest only to a few dusty old Sinologists, now it is the cause célèbre for ambitious backbenchers hoping to make a name for themselves.

The House of Commons was due to vote on the so-called 'genocide amendment' to the Trade Bill later today. The proposal gives British courts the right to decide if a country is committing genocide and was on course to trigger a major Tory rebellion — with China hawks ready to take a stand. However, that plan has been made much harder. The government intervened last night in a bid to avoid a possible defeat.  With the UK now free to forge its own trade deals, new legislation is passing through the Commons on the framework for future dealmaking. There is growing support across the House for a principled approach — with a focus on China top of the list.

Boris Johnson has announced sweeping new Covid restrictions, imposing a curfew on pubs and restaurants and telling office workers to return to home working if they can. In a statement to the House of Commons, the Prime Minister said the UK is at a 'perilous turning point' and promised that more measures would be introduced if the rate of infection was not reversed. From Thursday, a 10 p.m. curfew on pubs, bars and restaurants will be introduced under the new restrictions which he said could last up to six months. Meanwhile, planned relaxations for sporting events have been halted while retail staff will now be required to wear face masks.

Last night's second reading of the Internal Market Bill passed with a comfortable 77 votes for the government. In truth, this was always going to happen. A second reading vote confirms merely the principle of a bill so the real question was over the size of any potential rebellion rather than the future of the legislation itself. The problem comes next Tuesday when Bob Neill's amendment is laid before the House. This would give MPs a vote on whether the UK chooses to break the Withdrawal Agreement when it comes to customs checks in the Irish Sea or state aid interventions for NI businesses.  In the meantime, abstentions on the Bill do prove instructive when it comes to working out who might cause potential problems for the whips.

Following widespread speculation that the UK government intends to renege on the Withdrawal Agreement, Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis was summoned to the chamber to answer an urgent question on the issue. Despite government attempts to suggest that intended changes to the Withdrawal Agreement through the new Internal Market Bill were simply to tie up loose ends, Lewis did admit that the moves would break international law. He said, however, this would be in 'a very specific and limited way'.

For many Lib Dems, this leadership election felt like an existential choice. The party is now on its fourth leader in almost as many years, while Brexit has left the party a polarising – and increasingly irrelevant – force in British politics. Sir Ed Davey made clear that he knows his party is facing serious problems during his livestreamed acceptance speech. The MP for Surbiton explained: ‘Our party has lost touch with too many voters.’ Davey has been acting leader since Jo Swinson lost her seat at the 2019 general election – and he was widely seen as the favourite during the contest. In the event, he won twice as many votes as the more radical Layla Moran.

The report into Russian interference in British politics was finally published on Tuesday morning following a nine-month delay. Here are the five most interesting takeaways from the report:  1. The government 'actively avoided' investigating Russian interference  During this morning's press conference, intelligence and security committee member Stuart Hosie made the extraordinary claim that 'no one in government knew if Russia interfered in or sought to influence the referendum because they did not want to know'. He explained that the British authorities 'actively avoided looking for evidence that Russia interfered' in UK elections.

Dominic Cummings may have committed a minor breach of lockdown restrictions during a trip to Barnard Castle, an investigation by Durham police has concluded. The force has said that the journey 'might have been a minor breach of the regulations that would have warranted police intervention'.  The statement released earlier today says that while his trip up from London to self-isolate in Durham was in line with the regulations, the journey on 12 April might have constituted a breach. The police have also said that if Cummings and his family had been stopped by officers, they would have been asked to return to his father's farm.

Every evening, at around 5 o'clock, a minister walks through the large panelled doors to Downing Street's state dining room and delivers the daily coronavirus briefing. The conference always begins in the same way – 'I'd like to update you on the latest daily figures'. The minister in question then proceeds to tell us just how many tests have been carried out over the last 24 hours and the number of positive cases discovered. We are left to conclude that the remaining tests must have come back as negative, that no infection was detected. However, there is a third category of result: void tests. These are tests that proved inconclusive, either because the sample wasn't taken correctly or because of some other issue involving the lab. Essentially, the test failed.

One of the great Cameron legacies has been an era of very low unemployment. In his biography, the former PM cited two defining moments of his teenage years; the first was getting caught smoking weed at Eton and the second was reading the 1982 IEA pamphlet ‘What cost unemployment?’. While Cameron avoided many of the radical policies that emanated from the free market think tank, he did adopt one of the central tenets of the paper: that those in work should be better off than the unemployed. By the time he left office in the wake of the 2016 referendum, UK unemployment sat at just 5 per cent. When Boris Johnson took over in July last year, the number of people out of work was half what it was at the height of the financial crisis.