Robert Peston is Political Editor of ITV News and host of the weekly political discussion show Peston. His articles originally appeared on his ITV News blog.
There is no question more important for all of us than whether Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings and Matt Hancock are right that there is no alternative to letting coronavirus run its course in the UK, and to control the peak of the epidemic so that it falls in summer when the NHS may have the
The key phrase we all need to understand is ‘herd immunity’ – which is what happens to a group of people or animals when they develop sufficient antibodies to be resistant to a disease. The strategy of the British government in minimising the impact of Covid-19 is to allow the virus to pass through the
We are likely to see a significant fiscal and monetary stimulus across the UK, eurozone and US in the coming days — lots more spending (e.g. tomorrow’s UK budget), and probably significant easing by the Bank of England, ECB and Fed (presumably measures to increase the flow of cheap credit to cash-strapped businesses and individuals,
The heart of Wednesday’s budget will be a pledge to increase infrastructure spending in the five years of this Parliament by just under £100bn to around half a trillion pounds. The aim, according to government sources, is to boost UK public spending on roads, rail, broadband, flood defences and so on, so we spend more
I’ve just been talking to a Government official about ‘how the market is being sounded out’ about the cost and availability of ‘mobile morgues’. It is obvious this sort of contingency planning – emergency procurement of industrial refrigeration, in essence – is sensible and necessary, given reasonable worst case scenario estimates that additional deaths stemming
Global system breakdown has defined all our lives for 13 years. From the banking system’s boom and bust to the rise of a new anti-globalisation, the populist generation of politician and political leader, to the mounting cost of global warming, to the exponentially charged proliferation of a jumping-the-species virus. There is definitely no sleep till
UK and Scottish government modelling shows that the economic and fiscal costs of a Covid-19 epidemic could be on a par with the costs of the 2008 banking crisis. According to a senior government source: ‘that is what our modelling shows’. If millions were unable to work and significant numbers of businesses unable to trade
The fundamental issue revealed by the resignation of the Home Office’s Permanent Secretary Sir Philip Rutnam is the yawning gap between what Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings want post-Brexit UK to be on January 1, 2021, and what senior civil servants think is deliverable. The PM and his chief aide want to have a fully
There are a handful of big things to watch out for following Sir Philip Rutnam’s resignation as Home Office Permanent Secretary: Whether in laying out his case for constructive dismissal, evidence emerges that makes it impossible for Priti Patel to remain as home secretary. Whether other permanent secretaries and senior civil servants show solidarity with
There is a recurring and important phrase in the 36-page document published this morning setting out “the UK’s approach to negotiations with the European Union”. It is: “these provisions should not be subject to the Agreement’s dispute resolution mechanism outlined in Chapter 32”. What this represents is an unambiguous and seemingly non-negotiable rejection by Boris
As you know, I misspent much of the past 20 years trying to understand and report on the excesses of the City of London that led to the banking crisis and everything that followed. There were two hedge fund managers who made a bundle out of the rise and fall: Chris Hohn and Patrick Degorce.
Why has Sajid Javid quit as Chancellor? Because he wanted his political advisers to be his own courtiers and servants, as is the tradition, and not those of Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s chief aide. To the contrary, Johnson agreed with Cummings that Javid’s current special advisers should be dismissed and replaced with new advisers
The politics of HS2 are difficult for Boris Johnson, especially since so many Tory MPs hate the £100 billion-plus cost, the destruction of ancient pasture and woodland and the perceived harm to their rural constituents. But the bigger political consideration for Boris ‘another-blue-brick-in-the-red-wall’ Johnson is the perception of whether today’s modified version of HS2 is
If you thought Boris Johnson’s and Dominic Cummings’s culture war against the so-called London elite had ended with his decisive election victory, that it was simply a useful campaigning trope, you may have to rethink. Because Johnson’s chief aide Cummings reinforced the government’s excoriation of media and lawyers when addressing Downing Street officials this morning,
Downing Street briefings that the EU is ‘moving the goalposts’ for a free trade agreement and is belatedly demanding that the UK should not be compelled to maintain standards on state aid, competition, workers rights and environment seem either flaky or deliberately designed to once again cast Brussels as a duplicitous enemy. If you look
Is Boris Johnson the Blairite who may not speak his name? All the PM’s talk of levelling up rather than levelling down? That is pure, plagiarised Blairism. Fixing public services – like chaotic Northern Rail – with a focus on what works, rather than an ideological attachment to private sector or public sector ownership? That
There is a contradiction at the heart of today’s government decision to allow UK telecoms companies to purchase kit from China’s Huawei for their 5G and full-fibre broadband networks. It is that Huawei has been officially designated as a ‘high-risk vendor’ – because it is seen by ministers as subject to direction by an anti-democratic
Brandon Lewis, the security minister, is something of a genius at winsomely saying next to nothing. Even so I emerged from my interview with him on my show last night persuaded that the National Security Council and the Prime Minister would next week give the go ahead to the controversial use of Huawei kit in
In case you were in any doubt, the Prime Minister and his chief aide, Dominic Cummings, more than give a damn about who runs the BBC and intend to have a significant influence over the appointment of a new director-general. The current chairman of the BBC board, David Clementi, showed acute political sensitivity in persuading
Given that Labour has just faced its worst electoral defeat, arguably since 1935, it always looked odd – and dangerous for the Opposition – that the final run-off might have been between two candidates, Sir Keir Starmer and Rebecca Long-Bailey, whose hands were well and truly in the blood of that disaster, as part of
