Boris johnson

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

Exactly 40 years ago tomorrow, four Labour party grandees issued the Limehouse Declaration, signalling ‘the re-emergence of social democracy in Great Britain’. The declaration, made on a windswept bridge near the east London home of Dr David Owen, marked the formation of a Council for Social Democracy, that soon became a fully-fledged political party, the SDP. The ‘gang of four’ very nearly succeeded in breaking the mould of British politics, as their moderation hit the spot with millions of voters who opposed Thatcherism but also recoiled from Labour’s radical socialist agenda of the time. But they were thwarted, first by Britain’s first past the post electoral system that made gaining

Boris Johnson used today’s press conference to issue sobering news: warning that the new Covid strain may be more deadly. The better news? The vaccines that have been approved are likely to be as effective against the new strain as the original. There were also figures to suggest things are slowly improving: the R number has fallen to a rate of between 0.8 and 1. And 5.4 million people, around one in ten of the adult population, have now received their first dose of the vaccine. Yet despite the good news on the vaccine rollout, there is little in the way of optimism in 10 Downing Street this week. Instead, advisers and

This evening’s Downing Street coronavirus press briefing showed that ministers are still focused on enforcement of existing restrictions, rather than introducing even tighter curbs. Home Secretary Priti Patel announced £800 fines for people attending house parties, which will double for each repeat offence, up to a maximum of £6,400. Patel said the police would target the ‘small minority that refuse to do the right thing’, and warned that the police were increasingly enforcing the rules.  Speaking alongside her, NHS England regional medical director for London Dir Vin Diwakar issued a moral warning to members of the public who think it is acceptable to flout the rules. He said:  ‘Breaking the

The government’s border policy has become an increasing cause of bemusement among MPs and the country at large. The UK did not close its borders during the first lockdown when countries such as New Zealand did. When they did eventually bring in tighter border restrictions, it was just at the point Conservative MPs thought they ought to be opening up.  This time around, things are stricter, yet there were still delays. A new requirement to have a negative Covid test 72 hours before travelling to the UK has been brought in but even that had little sense of urgency with confusion over whether it would come into effect last Friday or

Does Boris Johnson take an afternoon nap? Yes, according to a Downing Street insider who told the Times today that a post-lunch slumber was not unusual. Boris’s press secretary took a different view: ‘The Prime Minister does not have a nap. Those reports are untrue’, she said. Well, he should. For one, Boris would be delighted with the inevitable comparison with Churchill that springs to mind. Winston slept deeply every afternoon during the war. ‘Take off your clothes and get into bed,’ he advised in a letter to his nephew. ‘Don’t think you will be doing less work because you sleep during the day. That’s a foolish notion held by people who

Now that Britain has left the EU, we are no longer bound by the European Court of Justice. Some may view that as something to celebrate. Yet there may also be downsides. The ECJ is the final court of the EU. It hears lots of cases about EU member states who break EU law. It then reaches conclusions which form case law. All 27 members of the EU are bound by this, but Britain, outside the EU, is not. But here’s the catch: some of those decisions might actually be good ones. The solution is that we should borrow these good ones for ourselves. English law is a magpie. We

Of all the arguments put out against Brexit during the bitter referendum debate, one of the least convincing was that it would give a UK government the opportunity to repeal employment law, thereby impoverishing Britain and its people. Jeremy Corbyn once asserted that a Conservative government would turn the country into a ‘low-wage tax haven’. That is an interesting concept, which like the chemical element Seaborgium might theoretically exist but which has yet to be discovered in the real world – most tax havens seem to be pretty wealthy, at least compared with similar countries which haven’t set the fiscal and regulatory conditions to attract businesses and wealthy individuals. There wouldn’t

As government ministers avoid putting a date on an easing of restrictions, let alone an end to them, scientific advisers have stepped in to fill the silence. Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van-Tam has suggested the lockdown could remain in place well into spring while Professor Neil Ferguson – who briefly stood down from his role last year for breaking lockdown rules – has suggested measures could be in place until the autumn. This, however, is not going down well with the Tory MPs who make up the lockdown-sceptic Covid Recovery Group. As the Sun reports, Steve Baker has issued a rallying call to his fellow members over the situation. He suggests that opposition