Isabel Hardman

In the past few minutes Boris Johnson's Red Wall has started to crumble in a more dramatic way than he thought possible. Christian Wakeford, the Conservative MP for Bury South, is defecting to the Labour party, having previously submitted a vote a letter calling for a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister. Wakeford has been conspicuously unhappy with the leadership of his party for some time: he famously called Owen Paterson a c*** in the voting lobbies during the attempts to help him evade the standards regime that started the turmoil around Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Jack Dromey, who has died today aged 73, was a Labour MP, a trade unionist and a campaigner. He was extremely well-liked across the House of Commons: something that those who didn't know him will have noticed immediately in the shocked tributes that have been pouring in from Westminster figures. He was a good MP, one with a clear set of political beliefs but who never let them stop him from working with those he disagreed with. He formed firm friendships with many MPs on the other side of the house, which is not something every member manages.

Boris Johnson latest Covid press conference was slightly confusing. The Prime Minister spent nearly an hour saying nothing particularly new. He warned that there was ‘considerable pressure’ on the NHS at the moment and unveiled daily priority lateral flow testing for 100,000 essential workers so that key services, including healthcare, don’t seize up due to staff absences. But while he accepted that hospitals were feeling the heat, he also insisted that there was no data suggesting that a lockdown was necessary or helpful. Indeed, he argued:  ‘We have a chance to ride out this Omicron wave without shutting down our country once again. We can keep our schools and our businesses open, and we can find a way to live with this virus.

Boris Johnson is hoping that his MPs have calmed down over the Christmas break and that this term will be slightly less turbulent than the autumn. There is not, though, much evidence that this will be the case. Worries about the cost of living, ongoing Covid problems and the unwinding of various Tory party rows will mean that Johnson needs to be on top form to tackle this spring. There is not yet much evidence of that, either. Johnson is not the kind of man who makes new year’s resolutions to transform his character There is a consensus among Tory MPs that the Downing Street operation needs to change. There seems to be little love lost for his chief of staff Dan Rosenfield, who backbenchers complain doesn’t understand the party – or indeed how ministerial egos work.

The one crumb of comfort the Tories are trying to take from the North Shropshire result is that Labour didn't win the seat. Keir Starmer's party came third with just under 10 per cent of the vote, a fall of 12 per cent from the 2019 result. Tory party chairman Oliver Dowden has been touring the broadcast studios today saying 'there is no love lost for the Labour party — they should have been surging ahead and in fact they were sinking'. Is this really true? The fear in progressive circles was that voters switching from the Tories would end up being split between Labour and the Liberal Democrats, thus meaning Boris Johnson's party could have held the seat.

What was the point of tonight's Covid press conference? Boris Johnson didn't have anything big to announce, other than a very dubious-looking new lectern telling people to 'Get Boosted N0w', with the 0 in the 'now' looking a lot like a Hula Hoop. His purported focus was on the doubling rate of Omicron, and to announce today's record high number of positive tests (78,000). A cynic might argue that calling a press conference on the vaccination programme is distracting from the self-inflicted political mess Boris is currently wallowing through. Given people are already queuing round the block for their booster jabs, it doesn't seem as though the message about Getting Boosted Now really needs a, well, boost.

Boris Johnson has just suffered a large majority-busting revolt in the House of Commons over vaccine passports, with 100 Conservatives rebelling against the government. The measure passed with Labour support, and 369 voted in favour with 126 against. Before the debate, some 86 Tories had said they would vote against. There had been concerted attempts by the whips to drive down those numbers. Johnson himself had been on the phone to individuals identified as possibly wavering. This was quite obviously not a rebellion just from the usual suspects That this many Conservative MPs voted against the government not long after a personal address by Boris Johnson to an emergency meeting of the 1922 Committee shows how deep the feeling runs in the party on this.