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Can the rebels trust Boris’s word?

Carl Court/Getty Images

There’s white smoke blowing over the House of Commons today as Sajid Javid declares ‘Peace in our Time.’ The Health Secretary – Daladier to Johnson’s Chamberlain – has emerged with an olive branch to the dozens of Tory MPs opposed to Covid passes. In a bid to placate potential rebels like Danny Kruger, Javid and Johnson are offering a compromise: they won’t proceed with mandatory jabs and vaccine passports will always carry the option of showing a lateral flow test (LFT). Many MPs remain unconvinced, with many citing the government’s failure to produce evidence that vaccine passports actually work. 

Still, the concession by Johnson shows even he recognises the limits of coercion. Yet Mr S would have more faith in the word of the Prime Minister had he and his ministers not repeatedly broken it before. When assessing the credibility of the PM’s pledges to always allow an LFT and rule out compulsory credibility, it’s worth looking at the similar assurances he and his colleagues gave on the issue of vaccine passports.

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