|
| Friday June 4 2021 |
|
|
|
By Patrick Maguire
|
|
Good morning,
|
Just a reminder, after last night's Portugal fiasco, that you do need to quarantine for ten days in an airport Marriott after reading this. It's not called Red Box for nothing.
Trivia question: Winston Churchill gave his famous We shall fight on the beaches... speech in the Commons on this day in 1940. But when was the first audio recording of him giving said speech made? Answer at the bottom of today's email.
|
|
|
|
The briefing
|
- Britons are scrambling to cancel trips to Portugal after it was removed from the travel green list in a sign that holidays abroad will be unlikely for many this summer.
- Defending the decision in the studios this morning, Robert Jenrick, the housing secretary, told the BBC: “We have taken a cautious approach by taking Portugal off the green list, putting it back onto the amber list, and I think that’s the right thing to do to protect the public.”
- JUNE 21 LATEST: Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London told the Today programme this morning that "the data is pointing this week in a more negative direction than it was last week, so it points towards the direction of being cautious".
- Moving too quickly to reopen society later this month risks losing the gains made so far, other experts warned yesterday, urging caution about the easing of restrictions.=
- The world’s largest economies are close to finalising a deal to reform global taxation ahead of next week's G7 summit, Rishi Sunak said yesterday, which would force internet giants such as Amazon and Google to pay more tax in the UK.
- In the House: MPs return on Monday.
|
|
Five things you need to know this morning
|
|
|
1. Sixteen points ahead
|
When YouGov's latest poll of voting intentions for The Times landed in Red Box's inbox last night, I momentarily wondered whether we might get away with copying and pasting our last write-up from a fortnight ago, given so little has changed since.
At 16 points, the Conservative lead is – despite creeping fears over a delay to the June 21 reopening – the joint highest recorded since last spring, with the Tories up three points since last week to 46 per cent.
Labour, meanwhile, are up one to 30 per cent; the Liberal Democrats down two on 6 per cent; and the Greens – up one to 9 per cent – record their best result since 2019.
Red Box can guess what you're thinking: surely Keir Starmer's appearance on Piers Morgan's Life Stories ought to have reversed this sort of lead? Or, for that matter, that Dominic Cummings testimony we all immediately forgot about?
Alas, these numbers can no longer really be written off as an outlier or blip. Here, for now at least, is the new normal.
|
|
2. O no
|
One thing that might make a dent in that seemingly unassailable lead? Any decline in the public's faith of Boris Johnson's handling of the pandemic, restored by vaccines and the hitherto smooth process of reopening. Might that be about to change?
This morning more scientists urge caution about the easing of restrictions later this month – and warn that doing so too quickly risks losing the painfully acquired gains Britain has made so far.
Professor Robin Shattock, of Imperial College London, warned a Royal Society of Medicine webinar yesterday that there remained too many unvaccinated people – particularly in areas worst-hit by the Indian variant – and said: "If we are talking about a delay, we’re talking about a delay of weeks, not months any more. That could be very significant. I’m not so sure why everybody is absolutely obsessed by fixing it to a date and not fixing it to the data.”
Meanwhile Peter Openshaw, professor of experimental medicine at Imperial and a member of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag) put the same assessment more vividly: “If you have a burning frying pan in the kitchen, you’re not going to carry on sitting down till after dinner to go and put out the fire.”
Adding to that unease is Public Health England data on the virus released yesterday, which reveals the now dominant Indian strain to be more transmissible and likelier to cause severe illness.
And while the rise in cases has not yet been accompanied by a rise in hospitalisations and deaths, PHE cautions that the infected vulnerable have not yet had time to get severely ill and die.
With the cabinet's Covid-O committee due to meet to consider the next phase of reopening on Tuesday, there will be plenty of ministerial soul-searching over the weekend. Or, as one Whitehall source put it yesterday: "Most ministers will have their submissions ready to brief the Sunday papers with."
|
Read the full story
|
| |
|
3. Please police me
|
|
|
|
Rats in a sack stuff in Labour land last night. Both left and right are kicking off over a Times and BBC Newsnight investigation which has ended up with Margaret Hodge, the veteran Blairite MP, reporting the Unite trade union to the police.
Leaked emails from within Unite – still, despite its all too well-publicised disputes with Sir Keir Starmer, Labour's biggest donor – show activists badgering Howard Beckett, a key Len McCluskey lieutenant who is now running to succeed him, for payment in exchange for organising to oust opponents of Jeremy Corbyn including his former deputy, Tom Watson.
One Unite activist suggested Beckett, an avowed Starmer opponent who says he will cut Unite's donations to Labour if victorious in August, would pay him via Thompsons, a union law firm – an arrangement which could have breached the legal requirement for Unite to declare all of its political spending.
Both Unite and Thompsons deny any payments were made but Hodge – who was herself nearly deselected in 2019 – has reported the union to the police. Unite accuse her of wasting police time.
With mere weeks to go before ballots drop in a general secretary election that could yet determine how easy a life the Labour leadership can expect over the next few years, things can only get bitter.
|
|
Read the full story
|
| |
|
4. Nice work if you can get it
|
|
|
|
Some frustration in Labour circles, meanwhile, that the Blairites and Corbynites were drawn into a row about cash and donations just as the Electoral Commission revealed that Lord Cruddas, the controversial Tory peer, gave the party £500,000 just three days after Boris Johnson elevated him to the Lords against the advice of its appointments commission.
His cash gift was the biggest the Tories received in the first three months of the year. How very nice of you, m'lud. Some consolation for Labour, too, who attracted their first significant private donors in a long while. Given the state of relations with Unite, they might soon need them.
|
|
Read the full story
|
| |
|
5. Shameless corner
|
|
|
|
Bold stuff from Robert Jenrick yesterday: speaking on a trip to Wales, the housing secretary became the second cabinet minister to call on the disgraced sex pest Rob Roberts to quit his seat and trigger a by-election.
If that doesn't convince Roberts, nothing will. Anyone whose conduct is controversial enough for Robert Jenrick to recognise that resignation just might be necessary is clearly beyond redemption.
|
| |
|
The cartoon
|
|
|
Today's cartoon in The Times is by Peter Brookes
|
|
Worth your time
|
- James Forsyth explains why ministers want to end the university boom years – and how more funding is likely to be switched into technical education.
- Should we worry about a fall in the global population? Emma Duncan argues that a less crowded world is likely to mean more equality, less conflict and resurgent nature.
|
|
|
I'm shocked to report that 74 per cent of you backed Sir Kevan Collins over Boris Johnson in yesterday's poll on the impact of Covid on schools.
|
|
Today's trivia answer
|
Trivia question: Winston Churchill gave his famous We shall fight on the beaches... speech in the Commons on this day in 1940. But when was the first audio recording of him giving said speech made?
Answer: 1949. Proceedings of the Commons were not broadcast at the time and, while Churchill did repeat some of his orations for radio listeners during the war, the BBC only broadcast extracts read by a newsreader.
Send your trivia to redbox@thetimes.co.uk
|
| |
|
This email is from a member of the News UK group. News Corp UK & Ireland Limited, with its registered office at 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF, United Kingdom is the holding company for the News UK Group and is registered in England No. 81701. VAT number GB 243 8054 69.
To see our privacy policy, click
here.
|
|
|
@patrickkmaguire
