Boris Johnson’s roadmap for emerging from the pandemic shows us quite how bad his sense of direction has been at times over the past few months. The Prime Minister and his colleagues in government have repeatedly insisted that they won’t be introducing vaccine passports — but today’s document confirms that ministers are in fact establishing a programme of work on ‘Covid status certification’, which is a rose by another name. Johnson has also had to deal with a conflict between his advisers (and within his own mind) over whether or not it is — as he has repeatedly suggested — possible to vaccinate one’s way out of this lockdown.
Either way, the roadmap is here, and it sets out a far more cautious approach than many Conservative MPs on the sceptical wing of the party will be comfortable with. The good signs of the effects of the vaccines on transmission will, as James says here, lead to more pressure from the party to speed up the timetable.
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