Boris johnson

Friday

Melanie McDonagh

Would Captain Tom want his own statue?

Captain Sir Tom Moore was a lovely man and an inspiration to centenarians everywhere. Actually, forget centenarians; if the rest of us could be so chipper and nicely turned out at half his age, we’d be doing well. I was oddly moved to hear of his death, though not, I fear, to the point of turning out at my window to applaud. But then I gave the communal pot banging a miss for the NHS during lockdown too, so that’s nothing new. I’m not convinced Boris Johnson is right, though, when he says Captain Tom deserves a statue. After all, he was a modest man, Sir Tom; I’m not sure he

Thursday

James Forsyth

Lockdown easing is a tricky balancing act for Boris

The progress of the vaccine programme — and the falling death toll — will reopen the debate in the Tory party about how quickly restrictions should be eased, as I say in the magazine this week. This will be tricky for Boris Johnson. He is inclined to go slowly to ensure that this is the last lockdown; just look at how he is now talking about a national tier system, not a local one, to avoid once more over-promising and under-delivering. But Tory MPs see the fast pace of vaccination as meaning that it will soon be safe to open up again. One long-time ally of the Prime Minister admits that

Toby Young Toby Young

What more do I have to do to get a peerage?

Watching Lord Hannan of Kingsclere being introduced in the House of Lords on Monday was a bittersweet moment. On the one hand, I’m delighted for Dan. He is one of the heroes of Brexit, and his impromptu speech about Margaret Thatcher in the pub following her memorial service brought a tear to my eye (you can find his speech on YouTube). But on the other, I can’t help thinking: where’s my bloody peerage? I’ve edited this and that, co-founded four free schools, served on the boards of numerous charities and set up the Free Speech Union. I was the chief exec of a high-profile charity, for Christ’s sake, and my

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Vaccine success is a boost for Boris – and the Union

Imagine for a minute what British politics would be like without a Covid vaccine. The cabinet would be deeply, and possibly irrevocably, split between those who favoured another year of lockdown on public health grounds and those who thought that the country had no alternative in the circumstances but to ease restrictions and learn to live with the virus. The 100,000 death toll would have been reached with no hope in sight and a public sense that, almost inevitably, things were going to get worse. The vaccine has changed so much. It has given people hope. There is a belief in the general public that this will be the last

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Could lockdown lift sooner?

Wednesday’s very upbeat Downing Street coronavirus briefing underlined the optimism that Boris Johnson feels about the way the Covid crisis could work out for him. The Prime Minister was celebrating the UK passing the ten million mark for the number of people who have received their first dose of the vaccine, and thanked the NHS for the programme, which he described as ‘the most colossal in the history of our National Health Service’. He also very pointedly thanked the Vaccine Taskforce, which the Prime Minister sees as another vindication of his approach to the pandemic. For Johnson, the first part of the coronavirus crisis was bruising and the government made

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

The pointlessness of PMQs

It’s a different game at PMQs. With fewer than 40 members present, the debates feel more like a committee meeting than a full-throated parliamentary session. It’s bad for democracy if the highlight of the parliamentary week looks so static and uninspiring. When the weather cheers up they should move to a secure location outdoors, (like the gardens of Buckingham Palace), where more members could attend and the sessions would be livelier. Meanwhile, MPs are chafing under the restrictions. They’ve started to mess about like schoolkids in detention. They play games. They needle each other. They stretch the rules, and they dare the Speaker to shut them up or tick them

Steerpike Steerpike

Boris and Keir’s Commons argy bargy

At PMQs today, Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer clashed over the latter’s support in the past for the European Medicines Agency – which as Mr S pointed out, appeared to involve Keir Starmer potentially misleading the House of Commons. It now sounds though like the pair’s argument continued outside the Chamber. The Sun reports that Sir Keir Starmer and Boris Johnson ended up having a dust up in the ‘aye’ lobby at the end of the session. It appears that Starmer confronted the PM about the medicines row, which led to a ‘heated exchange’. According to one account, a Labour MP had to pull Starmer away from the row –

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Boris Johnson had an easy ride at PMQs

Boris Johnson had a pretty easy ride at Prime Minister’s Questions today, despite Keir Starmer raising two policy problems that the government is really struggling to stay on top of. The Labour leader asked his first three questions on the quarantine policy, pushing Johnson for much tougher rules, and then turned to the cladding scandal. As we have repeatedly covered on Coffee House, the latter is a huge consumer crisis that is leaving thousands of people trapped in homes they cannot sell or with bills for remedial works to remove dangerous cladding reaching into the tens of thousands of pounds. Starmer channelled Jeremy Corbyn and quoted some of those affected.

Tuesday

Nick Tyrone

Starmer needs to be more like Blair to beat Boris

If Keir Starmer has a strategy, it’s this: to paint his party as more competent than the Tories while keeping his head down on almost everything else. The aim of this is to ensure Labour can crawl across the line come the next election, winning a majority with a bit of help from the SNP. There’s a big problem with this approach though: it’s the same one that failed to work for Ed Miliband. To beat it, Boris Johnson need do little more than recycle the Tories’ 2015 campaign, which depicted Miliband in Salmond’s pocket, substituting Sturgeon in his place. The other problem with the ‘do as little as possible’ strategy is that it will almost certainly result

Friday

Nick Tyrone

The EU vaccine debacle poses a dilemma for Remainers like me

There is no question about it, at least if you want to evaluate things objectively: the UK has handled Covid vaccine rollout well (at least so far) and the EU has dealt with it badly. For a Remainer like me, this raises a difficult question: does this prove that Brexit was a good idea after all? Compared to the EU27, the UK has been able to act nimbly in vaccine negotiations. While Brussels has been held up by various delays and supply issues, these have not affected the UK. This is thanks in large part to the fact that its contract with AstraZeneca was signed three months before the EU

Thursday

Alex Massie

Boris Johnson’s Scotland trip is a gift to the SNP

Boris Johnson is in Scotland today and once again this counts as news. This is intolerable to everyone. Intolerable to Unionists because a prime ministerial appearance in Scotland should be as routine as a prime ministerial appearance in the Cotswolds. It should not count as a newsworthy moment. And it is intolerable to Scottish nationalists because, well, because everything is intolerable to Scottish nationalists. The Prime Minister’s visit can hardly be deemed ‘essential travel’ in the current circumstances even if it is also essential that Scotland never becomes a no-go area for Johnson or, indeed, other cabinet ministers. Making it seem such, chipping away at Johnson’s legitimacy, is one small

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Britain will prove more Biden-friendly than the EU

This is a crucial year for the UK’s two most important relationships. The Anglo-American alliance, our strongest diplomatic and security partnership, now needs to adjust to a new president in the White House. Meanwhile we are also starting our new relationship with the EU. The question is: can the two sides move on from the wrangling of the Brexit negotiation? To great relief in British diplomatic circles, the new US administration and the UK have got off to a good start. Joe Biden has shown that he is keen to move on from the Donald Trump era. Small as it may seem, the fact that Boris Johnson received the new

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Boris Johnson’s risky timeline for schools reopening

If there’s one lesson you’d think Boris Johnson might have learned from his handling of the pandemic so far, it would surely be that it is too risky to set a date by which things will start returning to normal. And yet this evening the Prime Minister found himself talking about a date for schools returning, despite the timetable repeatedly slipping. Of course – as Johnson himself made clear at the Downing Street coronavirus briefing – 8 March is the earliest by which schools might start to return, rather than his deadline for anything happening. Johnson was asked whether he was once again being too optimistic by talking about this

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Boris confirms schools will not reopen before March

England’s national lockdown is set to run on until at least March. Speaking in the Commons chamber this afternoon, Boris Johnson confirmed that the return of pupils to the classroom would be the first thing to be eased – and this would not happen in February as he had previously hoped. Addressing the House, Johnson said ‘it will not be possible’ to reopen schools in England after the half-term break next month. However, he remained hopeful that so long as the UK’s vaccination programme remained on track, the return of pupils to the classroom would be able to begin from Monday 8 March. Given that No. 10 have no plans to

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

PMQs: Starmer’s opposition is strangely muted

Boris Johnson had a very difficult backdrop to today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, having marked 100,000 deaths in the coronavirus pandemic last night. But, strangely, he didn’t have a particularly difficult session in the Commons. Sir Keir Starmer did, as you might expect, lead on the death toll, asking the Prime Minister repeatedly why he thought the UK had such a high death rate, and why he wouldn’t learn the lessons from the pandemic now so that the government didn’t repeat its mistakes. Johnson was able to deal with this reasonably easily, arguing that while he did think there would be a time to learn the lessons of what happened, that

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Did Boris Johnson do ‘everything he could’ to limit Covid deaths?

Boris Johnson, Chris Whitty and Simon Stevens held a very sombre press conference in Downing Street this evening to mark the awful milestone of more than 100,000 UK deaths in this pandemic. The Prime Minister offered his ‘deepest condolences to everyone who has lost a loved one’, and promised that ‘when we have come through this crisis, we will come together as a nation to remember everyone we lost, and to honour the selfless heroism of all those on the front line who gave their lives to save others’. He also pledged that ‘we will make sure that we learn the lessons and reflect and prepare’. This was the closest

Nick Tyrone Nick Tyrone

The sad state of Scottish Labour is bad news for Boris

Nicola Sturgeon has laid down the gauntlet to Boris Johnson over Scottish independence: if the SNP wins, as it inevitably will, in May’s Scottish parliamentary elections, a ‘legal referendum’ should be held. How should the PM respond to the First Minister? The uncomfortable truth for Boris and the Tories is that there may be no good way out of this situation. Douglas Ross, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, has so far offered his riposte: the Scottish Tories will boycott the whole thing. As counterattacks go, it’s not without its strategic merits. However, one thing looks set to completely undermine this plan: the weakness of Scottish Labour and the other opposition parties

Steerpike Steerpike

Captain Hindsight strikes again

A third stint in self-isolation and some extra time alone doesn’t seem to have given Keir Starmer time to reflect on his opposition strategy. Last night Labour called on the government to prioritise the reopening of schools when the time comes to lift lockdown restrictions.  Clearly a good idea — so good in fact that it’s already government policy. Boris Johnson has spent the best part of a year making clear that he will prioritise face-to-face education above almost all other social activity, telling the Commons three weeks ago that schools would be the first thing to reopen.  Starmer can hardly complain when the PM mockingly calls him ‘Captain Hindsight’ —

Tom Wilkinson

Are we heading for a golden era in British-Indian relations?

Britain’s departure from the EU presents an exciting opportunity to build on old alliances around the world. Nowhere is this more true than in the UK’s relationship with our old Indian friends.  India was preparing to roll out the red carpet for Boris Johnson this week. Being India’s annual guest of honour at their Republic Day celebrations is equivalent to the Buckingham Palace treatment or the Bastille Day invitation. Soldiers on double-humped camels, anti-satellite weapon systems on display and giant papier-mâché tableaux tributes to Mahatma Gandhi parade down New Delhi’s ceremonial boulevard that was once lined by statues of Britain’s kings and viceroys. Boris is only the second UK Prime Minister since

Monday

Katy Balls

Will Boris Johnson’s Scotland trip backfire?

The pandemic may still be in full swing but that hasn’t stopped the SNP opting to push the case for an independence referendum sooner rather than later. Nicola Sturgeon claimed over the weekend that should the SNP win a majority (as expected) in the Scottish parliament elections, she will hold an advisory referendum on independence, whether or not Boris Johnson consents to the move.  Not everyone in government is convinced the First Minister would go ahead with this should push come to shove. But the fact it’s even on the table points to the problem Johnson has on Scottish independence – his insistence that now is not the time for a second