You’re reading The Waugh Zone, our daily politics briefing. Sign up now to get it by email in the evening.
A few weeks back, Boris Johnson used PMQs to attack Labour’s Kate Green for suggesting her party should not “let a good crisis go to waste”. But given all the talk about a “reset” of his government following the departure of Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain, Johnson himself is trying to use the self-inflicted No.10 meltdown as a chance to re-position his administration.
That reset (or rebrand or even relaunch) was signalled in an unusual Downing Street press release overnight that was headlined ‘Government Sets Out Commitments For Coming Weeks’. Unusual, in that most releases are about a specific announcement, not a broad brush reassurance that the PM will be, er, being very active being prime minister.
The press release breathlessly told us that the PM would “chair key Covid meetings” (no, really) and would meet the Northern Research Group of backbench MPs to ensure they “understand” his “personal ambition for levelling up the country” (ie a repeat of his vaguest mantra of all).
It further added that Johnson would: publish his Ten Point Plan on climate change (though without a speech to flesh it out); make clear on Brexit that he is “confident that we will prosper” if no deal is agreed with Brussels; and (my favourite this) that he and Rishi Sunak would “be making major decisions in the days ahead” on spending review plans.
But in yet another of those delicious ironies that seem to dog this government, this blizzard of (apparent) action was somewhat derailed by the news that Johnson had been told by NHS Test and Trace to self-isolate because of his contact with covid-positive MP Lee Anderson. The newly-minted Covid Action Man’s performative politics will have to be performed via jerky Zoom calls from his No.10 office.
Although Matt Hancock was keen to say Johnson was indeed following the rules on self-isolation, the more important question is whether the PM is in this predicament because he’d failed to follow the rules on social distancing. The rules he sets for the rest of us, remember, and the rules the scientists have drafted with good reason.
Coming into close contact with someone with Covid may be said to be just bad luck, of course. But the rules, particularly in lockdown and particularly for a prime minister who is meant to be leading the effort against the virus, are designed to prevent such bad luck. Keeping two metres from others even in the workplace is advised, but there is concrete evidence the PM failed to do just that in Anderson’s case.
No.10 insists it is a “Covid secure workplace” but that seems to mean it has hand sanitiser stations, a one-way system and a few signs around the place. What really makes a workplace safe is if its workers stick to the rules, and that Lee Anderson photo plainly shows two of them not doing that. There was a heroic attempt by the PM’s spokesman today to suggest that because the photo showed them “side by side rather than face to face”, the pic wasn’t so bad.
But the “ping” (an email to the PM rather than an app notification) from the test and trace service told its own story, as did the fact that two political aides and several other MPs were told to self-isolate as a result of the meeting last Thursday. Clearly the meeting featured “close contact” as defined by spending more than 15 minutes less than 2m apart from someone.
Just as the PM blithely talked about continuing to handshake staff in a hospital at the start of the pandemic (I was in that press conference and distinctly recall one of Chris Whitty’s eyebrows shaping itself into an exasperated question mark), it seems his “hail fellow well met” style of politics once again seems to run against his medics’ advice. Just as he ignored Sage’s advice to implement a circuit-breaker lockdown earlier, it seems he’s taken a casual approach on his own conduct.
Anyway, Johnson is now set to have his next two PMQs reduced to Zoom-only experiences, which will make the whips-organised cheers sound even less authentic. I note that when Keir Starmer was forced to self-isolate, he was advised he couldn’t take part in PMQs because Jacob Rees-Mogg had insisted that frontbenchers should be there in person. Funnily enough, the rules may be changed in time for this Wednesday.
More importantly, the PM’s 14-day quarantine (in case you were wondering, he’s allowed to use his No.10 office by going in and out via the Rose Garden from his No.11 flat) ends at midnight next Thursday. That will be after the government sets out its post-lockdown plans next week, and after the crunch vote by MPs on whether to renew, amend or extend the lockdown due to end on December 2.
Why’s that a problem? Because an in-person Johnson was likely to have led from the front, with a passionate plea to his backbenchers (and to the country) to back his alternative arrangements. Which brings us to his biggest challenge of all: just what kind of tiered system will England get after December 2? Today, test and trace medic Susan Hopkins talked of “strengthening” the current tiers, adding Tier 1 (represented by many lockdown-sceptic Tories) has “very little effect” on the virus. Will the PM do that?
Yet another irony is that the government is still working out whether the 14 day self-isolation period is too long. The Guardian last week had a fantastic story that Chris Whitty was ready to accept a 10 day period, but Dominic Cummings (ace epidemiologist that he is) wanted it to be slashed to seven days, and then zero days as long as they took a rapid test and proved negative.
Today, Downing Street could not answer when asked if the PM is going to have either a rapid or slower test, possibly because they know if he’s released from quarantine early that would leave a nasty taste for the public forced to suck up a fortnight at home.
There’s an even bigger danger lurking though, and one that Hopkins touched on inadvertently at the No.10 briefing. She said that if the lockdown is working “we will start to see cases decline over the next week”. There are some tentative signs of success in Liverpool, but nationally the figures are not encouraging. On Matt Hancock’s figures today, cases are still going up, not flattening or going down. Hancock repeated his line that it was “too early” to tell, but he’s running out of time.
No.10 today insisted the lockdown regulations would expire on December 2, come what may: “We’ve talked about it as a regionalised approach and that’s what it’s going to be.” Yet note exactly what Hopkins had said: “As long as we start seeing cases decline, then we can start making a judgment about what are the right decisions that we make and the opening up decisions that happen on December 2.”
That suggests if cases don’t decline, the opening up may not be possible, at least on scientific advice. And Johnson, from his self-isolation, will have to work out whether to socially distance himself from his scientists once more.