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| Tuesday June 15 2021 |
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By Patrick Maguire
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Good morning,
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Red Box is off for its first jab this morning. They really are just giving them out now.
Trivia question: The Tory MP Sir John Redwood turns 70 today. How many votes (out of a turnout of 329) did he receive when he challenged John Major for the leadership in 1995? Answer at the bottom of today's email.
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The briefing
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- Boris Johnson has said that Britain must learn to live with the coronavirus as he delayed the end of Covid restrictions by four weeks and insisted that July 19 would be the new “terminus date”.
- Asked whether restrictions would ever end on Times Radio this morning, Michael Gove said: "Yes." Reassuring.
- Elsewhere, senior figures at the European Union have clashed over its response to the dispute with the UK over Brexit and Northern Ireland.
- JUST IN FROM THE OFFICE OF NATIONAL STATISTICS: The number of employees on payrolls rose by 197,000 last month – albeit to a level still 553,000 lower than before the pandemic.
- In the House: Foreign Office questions at 11.30am, followed by a statement on the report of the Daniel Morgan independent panel from Priti Patel. Labour then have two opposition day debates: on funding for Covid catch-up schemes in schools and a potentially tricky one on border restrictions.
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Five things you need to know this morning
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1. The final countdown
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It's one way to answer the question ministers will be hearing daily for the next four weeks. Will we ever be entirely free of restrictions? Asked that on Times Radio this morning, Michael Gove was as unambiguous as you would hope: "Yes."
Well, obviously. But when? Last night the PM was similarly firm on that question – July 19, he said, is a "terminus date", after which we must "learn to live with Covid". That's no consolation if you were hoping to go to a wedding before then – but is there at least reason to be optimistic?
In short, yes. As the PM rose in No 10 last night, Public Health England delivered the evening's best news – that vaccines are about as effective at preventing people needing hospital care when they catch the Indian variant of the coronavirus as they were for the Kent strain, even after one dose.
That, as both Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance said at last night's presser, gives us reason to believe that once those remaining jabs are in arms, restrictions can lift. Yet cabinet ministers and Conservative MPs are not so sure.
They fear that the rapid spread of the Indian variant could force the government to delay the easing of restrictions for more than a month if cases and hospital admissions continue to rise over the next four weeks.
In that scenario, the likes of Charles Walker, the 1922 Committee vice-chairman, believe that ministers will chose "some form of lockdown” for the rest of the year. But, as Gove said this morning and the PM said last night, no matter when restrictions end, some level of infection is inevitable.
The only question that remains is the maximum ministers can live with.
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Read the full story
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2. Hoyle to pay
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Last week Sir Lindsay Hoyle spared the government's blushes when his conservative interpretation of parliamentary convention – a departure from the free jazz style favoured by John Bercow – stopped a rebellion on international aid in its tracks. But ministers shouldn't count on another favour from the Speaker any time soon.
Yesterday afternoon an irate Hoyle accused the government of misleading him over their intentions to delay ending restrictions on June 21 – a delay that was, of course, announced in a press conference and not in the House. No 10 is said to have told the Speaker that no decision had been made, only for MPs to complain that lobby journalists had already received the details of that very much existent decision under embargo (sorry).
For Downing Street to be "riding roughshod" over MPs, Hoyle spluttered, was "totally unacceptable". To call it the highlight of an otherwise sleepy day in the Commons proves his point. It wasn't the first time Hoyle has complained of ministerial disregard for parliament but to such a public accusation of dishonesty takes hostilities to a new level.
By the time he had shamed Matt Hancock into coming to the dispatch box, past 8pm, his tone was even harsher: "Prime minister, you are on my watch. "Given the Conservative majority, there is little that the Speaker can do but sound off – for now.'
Yet his rants were a mark of just how quickly, if not irrecoverably, his relationship with ministers has deteriorated. It's beginning to look a lot like Bercow.
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3. Poll position
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Mark Harper, Charles Walker, Piers Corbyn, Jonathan Sumption, Van Morrison ... your boys took one hell of a beating.
Despite the threats of parliamentary rebellion and grainy cable news monologues that, despite the orator's best efforts, are more Barbara Cartland in their style than Winston Churchill, new YouGov polling reveals every section of the English public is overwhelmingly behind the delay.
Easy though it is to sneer at often-principled opponents of restrictions – delete the others from our list as applicable – there's an interesting dynamic at play. The younger one is, the more likely one is to be opposed to another extension, while the older and vaccinated are much happier to take it on the chin.
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4. Where's the beef?
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A better headline for No 10 this morning: Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison, the Australian prime minister, sealed Britain's first bespoke post-Brexit trade deal over dinner last night.
The questions unlikely to be answered as ministers begin their victory lap today: has the PM sold out his own backbenchers and the farming lobby? And is that backlash worth it for a boost to GDP that's little more than a rounding error?
We know the government was willing to offer Australia tariff and quota-free access for its beef and lamb after a 15-year transition period to allow farmers to adjust to increased competition from imports (that Welsh lamb was on the menu at No 10 last night mightn't go down all that well), and we know that Morrison was willing to wear no longer than five years.
How have they squared that circle? And if it hasn't been squared to the satisfaction of MPs, what can they do about it? Parliament's mechanisms for scrutinising trade deals haven't had a proper outing yet, and this deal will be their first test. Worth remembering, though, that the Commons has no veto.
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Read the full story
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5. Good touch for a big man
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Parliament's independent complaints system for bullying and harassment has heard no shortage of lamentable excuses in its short life.
But Red Box will leave it to you to judge whether Daniel Kawczynski, who at 6ft 9in is the UK's tallest MP, deserved to be cleared of bullying parliamentary staff who were trying to fix his IT problems on the grounds that his constituents were abusing him because of his height.
That appeal, in case you were wondering, was rejected.
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The cartoon
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Today's cartoon in The Times is by Morten Morland
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Worth your time
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- William Hague argues that it's time for Boris Johnson to clarify what levelling up really means. Alas, in the immediate term: lots of columns asking the same question.
- And an interesting read from Daniel Trilling in The Guardian on the 20th anniversary of the Oldham, Burnley and Bradford race riots.
- On Times Radio with Matt Chorley from 10am: On Times Radio with Matt Chorley from 10am: Finkelvitch (Daniel Finkelstein and David Aaronovitch) on (10.30am); The Big Thing: How to vaccinate the world with Unicef's vaccine lead Lily Caprani and the WHO’s Mary Stephen (11am); coffee break with Mariella Frostrup (11.35am); Lib Dems and the blue wall (11.40am); Midday Update - your indispensable half hour bulletin; If I had A Day Off: Conservative MP Aaron Bell (12.35pm); Quiz: Can You Get To Number 10? (12.50pm)
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84 per cent of you said the PM was right to suspend the final stage of lockdown easing in yesterday's poll. That settles that one, then.
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Today's trivia answer
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Trivia question: Tory MP Sir John Redwood turns 70 today. How many votes (out of a turnout of 329) did he receive when he challenged John Major for the leadership in 1995?
Answer: 89.
Send your trivia to redbox@thetimes.co.uk
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