Closing time: the Tory brawl over Covid rules

‘The mood of the parliamentary party has noticeably worsened in the past five days,’ one senior Conservative backbencher says. He’s not talking about Brexit — these days, the majority of Tory MPs continue to back Boris Johnson’s hardball approach — but about Covid.

No. 10 favours a pre-emption strategy when it comes to the pandemic. They want to clamp down on the virus long before it has a chance to get out of control. ‘Go tight, go early,’ as one Johnson ally puts it. But that approach is triggering considerable resistance among Tory MPs. Broadly, they believe that the government should stick to its previous policy of trying to keep the virus within the capacity of the health service to deal with it. Such an approach wouldn’t have resulted in more restrictions being introduced now. One of Johnson’s most ardent defenders on the backbenches tells me: ‘This is the only policy with legitimacy in the eyes of the Conservative parliamentary party.’ The fights between Johnson and his own MPs will only intensify in the autumn and the winter; some in government think that February will be the most difficult month of all.

Johnson has announced tighter restrictions for two weeks in a row. Last week, it was the rule of six. This week, it was 10 p.m. closing time for pubs and restaurants and the instruction to work from home if possible. Only 13 per cent of the public think these new rules go too far, and Johnson has made it clear that stricter restrictions will follow if the measures do not bring infection rates down.

At the end of last week, Johnson was tempted to impose such a strict new set of rules that some of his parliamentary allies worried it could bring on a wholesale confrontation with his own MPs.