Steerpike

This morning the new vaccine deployment minister, Nadhim Zahawi, appeared to change his tune when it comes to the use of ‘immunity passports’ for the British public. After telling the BBC last week that UK residents might need some proof of their Covid vaccination status to dine out at a restaurant or attend a sporting event, Zahawi rolled back his comments on Spectator TV. In a Q&A following his keynote speech at The Spectator's Health Summit (held in partnership with MSD), Zahawi told broadcaster Alastair Stewart that so-called 'immunity passports' were not actually on the cards: 'There will not be an immunity passport. I may have misspoken or it was conflated in the interview I gave. I was talking about the brilliant use of the app...

Running London, you might have thought, should probably involve some knowledge of London. Living in the city would be a good start — or at least living in the same time zone. But Sadiq Khan's top aide clearly disagrees.  Jack Stenner, the Mayor of London's director of political and public affairs, upped sticks and moved to sunny San Francisco earlier this year, according to an investigation by the Sun.  The £120,000-a-year political lifer moved 5,000 miles away back in October, instead shacking up with his girlfriend in an 'ocean-facing apartment', the paper reports. Nice work if you can get it — who knows, perhaps Mr S might start applying for some cushy mayoral jobs...

Vanity photographers are a relatively recent addition to Westminster life, one that Mr S doesn't wholly welcome. The growth of the in-house snapper has meant that politicians are able to control their image in a way that previous generations of ministers would have found impossible. David Cameron famously had his advisers cover any nearby exit signs to stop pesky snappers from taking unflattering photos (sadly for Ed Balls, his advisers were unable to stop this unfortunate pic). Rishi Sunak's photographer seems to have taken such lessons a step further during a photo-op at Hamleys toy shop. Not content with steering his boss away from adverse signage, he has apparently embraced the 'dishy Rishi' narrative by snapping the Chancellor in front of a sign reading 'scrumpalicious!

What would the Labour party look like if Jeremy Corbyn was still in charge? On the long list of things that would be likely be different to Labour now under Keir Starmer are Brexit, the response to the EHRC inquiry and even whether Corbyn was still classed as a Labour MP. Now there's a new item to add to the list: coronavirus. This evening Corbyn has voted against the government's proposed restrictions and new tier system. Explaining his decision, the former Labour leader took to social media to question both the measures and the financial support packages.

In a 2,000-word essay published over the weekend, Michael Gove sought to win round Tory rebels by arguing that ‘lockdown was the only way to stop the NHS being broken’. In the article, the cabinet minister paints a picture of an NHS all set to be flattened until lockdown 2 was introduced: 'Infections were doubling fast’ at the time of lockdown — and only lockdown saved the day. Gove uses this to make his new argument: the only strategy for stopping the NHS from being overwhelmed now is the government's new tougher three-tier system. While the article won some applause online it has also irritated several of Gove's colleagues. Colleagues who the government hopes will vote for the new tier system come Tuesday.

Nicola Sturgeon had some choice words to say about Brexit last month. Speaking at one of Scotland’s daily coronavirus briefings, the First Minister said she was ‘deeply frustrated and depressed’ about the prospect of no deal in the new year, and suggested that to talk about Brexit in the middle of a pandemic was not only dangerous, but deeply irresponsible. The country doesn’t need ‘another big thing to be dealing with’ when the focus should be on coronavirus, the First Minister lamented. So you can imagine Mr Steerpike’s surprise when Sturgeon appeared to embark on her own political pet project yesterday.

Mr Steerpike was not exactly impressed when the government launched a new website feature this morning to tell people which tier they were going to be in – and which promptly crashed, leaving people in limbo. But if you were left disappointed by the tech blunder, that was nothing compared to the Speaker of the House’s reaction, when he found out in Parliament the government had put the new tiers list online. After being told by Labour’s Valerie Vaz that the government had dropped the information online, before alerting the House, a furious Lindsay Hoyle lambasted the government for treating the Commons with disrespect.

The Tory MP and former 1922 committee chair Charles Walker appears to have become involved in a lockdown protest outside Parliament today. The MP was outside the House of Commons when he witnessed an elderly woman being arrested by police. In response, Walker told the officers that their arrest was an ‘outrage’ and was not necessary: https://twitter.com/Tridg98/status/1331236485748678657?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Walker then appeared in the House of Commons to make a point of order. He said that the woman had been taking part in a peaceful protest outside Parliament before she was carried ‘spread-eagle’ to a police van.