Originally Posted by
the other bob wilson
Taken from today's Times;-
"Two calls summed up one of Boris Johnson’s most difficult weeks as prime minister. Early last week a senior member of Downing Street staff phoned a friend and said: “The worry is that [Chris] Whitty and [Sir Patrick] Vallance could resign.” The chief medical officer and the chief scientific adviser — often seen flanking the prime minister at the coronavirus press conferences — had not made a threat to walk, but they were, to use a whips’ phrase, “on resignation watch”. “Their posture is much more aggressive,” a senior Tory confided.
Johnson’s team would have been more concerned still if they had known the details of a recent conversation between a senior member of the Sage advisory group of scientists and a representative of one of Britain’s leading business groups. “We have had enough of being treated as human shields by the prime minister,” the scientist complained.
The shields were picking up swords of their own in response to a growing drumbeat that Johnson wants to cut the social distancing rules in half from two metres to one metre to open up the economy.
The “Band of Brothers” mood at the top, when politicians and experts worked together to tackle the health crisis, has fractured, now that Johnson has competing concerns about economic meltdown.
Members of Sage say they were happy to go along with “phase two” of the government’s road map, the gradual loosening that will see non-essential shops reopen tomorrow. But on Wednesday, Vallance made clear that any reduction in the two-metre guidance would be for politicians to decide. There would be no explicit support for further loosening.
The danger for the prime minister is that the Sage committee puts down its objections in black and white. “It is getting to the stage where they are threatening to minute their opposition to moving from two metres,” a source said. “Those minutes get formally released.”
A week ago Johnson struck a deal with his chancellor, Rishi Sunak, that he would push to prioritise the economy. But sources say that within hours of that meeting there was another with aides, involving heated exchanges, in which Johnson was persuaded to move more cautiously.
Add to that a screeching U-turn on the opening of schools on Tuesday and the growing culture war over Black Lives Matter, where Downing Street struggled to balance respect for the wounded feelings of black Britons with trumpeting law and order to please their base, and you have a perfect storm for Downing Street that has left ministers enraged and Conservative MPs jittery at the “lack of grip” in No 10.
In an ominous development, three senior Tories — a cabinet minister, a former No 10 aide and a former cabinet minister — all compared Johnson to Theresa May, unprompted.
“Back in the day, people said Theresa was paralysed and couldn’t make a decision — it’s like that with Boris,” the former aide said. “This flip-flopping and malaise comes from the very top. The likes of Rishi and Matt [Hancock, the health secretary] are pulling their hair out.”
These concerns are shared by quite senior people in No 10. Even one close Johnson ally said: “He seems to have gone back and forth a lot this week. He just can’t make his mind up.”
Ministers were furious that the schools U-turn and Johnson’s announcement on Wednesday that one-person households could “bubble” with another household was not even discussed in cabinet. One cabinet minister said: “What the f*** is going on, why has no one got a grip on this?”
Another cabinet source said more preparations were needed to salvage schools: “There is zero chance of social distancing in schools. You either accept that or you go and find alternate locations, just as we did with the Nightingale hospitals. There seem to be zero plans for that.
“We have a majority of 80, you can hire whoever you want. You can spend any amount of money. You can hire management consultants, specialists, pay Amazon to come in and deliver tests. There are no excuses.”
Boris Johnson’s aide Dominic Cummings remains a brake on easing lockdown too quickly
Boris Johnson’s aide Dominic Cummings remains a brake on easing lockdown too quickly
TOMMY LONDON
The bubble announcement was proof of the continuing influence of Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s senior adviser, whose powers, some had claimed, were waning. The policy came about when a single parent called Ella contacted Cummings and his wife Mary Wakefield to explain her own “exhaustion”, “worries” and sense of isolation after it emerged that they had gone to Durham during the lockdown.
To her surprise, Wakefield emailed back from “Mary and Dom” saying work was being done on bubbles, adding: “I wonder if it might make sense if single parents were allowed to do that asap?”
On Monday, Cummings got a No 10 policy adviser to call the mother, and by Wednesday the announcement was made. “Any suggestion that the Barnard Castle thing has clipped Dom’s wings is just not true,” a Tory adviser said.
Even the bubble plan was seen by some as proof that Johnson’s team was more comfortable dealing with the lifestyle issues raised by Covid-19 than the economic ones. “When they focus on opening up, they focus on the social side of things: when you can see your mum, rather than when you can get to work,” a Tory adviser said.
Allies point out that Cummings has been sceptical about Treasury predictions of doom for years. “Economic warnings and scare stories are the thing that that group pushes against the most,” one said. “Dom didn’t believe warnings about economic catastrophe if we failed to join the euro, or if we left the EU, or if we had a no-deal Brexit.”
Even last week vote leavers in No 10 are said to have mocked Treasury officials for privately predicting that GDP would fall by 30% in April. The final figure was 20.4%, the worst on record. Taking March and April together the economy shrunk by 25%, unimaginable numbers in a normal recession.
The figures horrify MPs and ministers. “If we come out of this with the worst death rate and the worst economic crash, that’s a pretty terrible double header,” a senior Conservative said.
Cummings remains a brake on moves to open up lockdown too quickly. He has been studying the way infection rates are picking up in American states where lockdown is lifting. “Do you really think Boris could survive opening and then shutting again in a month?” one ally asked. “His reputation would be in tatters.”
A cabinet source added: “The worst nightmare is a second wave timed to coincide with winter and a seasonal flu outbreak.” References to another “winter of discontent” have been banned in Whitehall. In the event of a second spike, Johnson’s team fear even the current social-distancing rules would be found wanting. “It is easy to socially distance when you are outside in a sunny park and people don’t mind queuing up in the street outside shops,” an aide said. “But if you have to stand outside Tesco in the pissing rain for 40 minutes in the dark in December, that’s a very different matter.”
Chancellor Rishi Sunak is among those who want the two-metre rule relaxed
Chancellor Rishi Sunak is among those who want the two-metre rule relaxed
MING YEUNG
In No 10, where Johnson’s inner circle obsess over the latest polling, there is evidence the public does not want the two-metre rule to be relaxed. But a former cabinet minister said: “Leadership is about leading public opinion — that’s what Boris needs to do.”
Sunak made clear in three separate Zoom chats with Tory backbenchers last week that he wanted to get things moving. The chancellor stated that 24 other countries have cut their social distancing limit to under two metres. ”He was signalling not very subtly where he was in this argument,” one MP said.
The chancellor told MPs to encourage their constituents to shop: “Confidence has taken an enormous knock. We’re trying to convey to the nation that its businesses are making shops Covid-secure and safe,” a message he reinforced in an interview last night. Johnson will pay a visit to a high street this week to make the same point.
Nonetheless, Sunak’s approach has caused friction with Cummings allies. “Rishi can keep saying that there is no evidence of a second wave anywhere in the world, but it isn’t true,” one said.
In an attempt to persuade the public it is safe, and circumvent Sage’s caution, Sir Mark Sedwill, the cabinet secretary, and Alex Chisholm, Johnson’s link man with business, have been told to gather evidence to support a cut in the guidelines.
Figures supplied to Sedwill by business groups show that a cut to one metre would double the number of office staff who could go in to work from 40% to 80%. Production lines could go from 20% staffed to normal full capacity. Warehouses would go from 70% to 100% too.
The key difference is in hospitality, where capacity might increase from 10% to 70%, the difference between extinction and the slim hope of viability for many restaurants. The largest lecture theatre in London, which seats 600, could fit 250 students rather than 50.
Johnson’s aides are also said to be contacting academics to get a broad range of scientific views. A complicating factor is that the scientists are themselves split between epidemiologists, who want the two-metre rule maintained, and behavioural scientists, who think that ship has sailed. “The behavioural scientists are saying the rules are breaking down,” a Whitehall source said. “Do you want to admit where the public really are, or keep rules that are being ignored? They think it builds confidence to move with the tide a bit.”
Johnson remains on the horns of a dilemma created by his own previous decisions. As a government source put it last week: “We locked down too late and too hard.” Johnson now confronts a triple whammy of an economy on life support, a public content with inactivity and a still too high infection rate which means drastic moves could be disastrous.
Senior figures signalled this weekend that Johnson will attempt to say more about the two-metre guidance this week, perhaps offering a post-dated announcement that the distance will be cut if the infection rate keeps coming down.
That approach has the backing of Theresa May’s former deputy Damian Green, one of the MPs who quizzed Sunak on the MPs’ Zoom call last week.
He said: “I’m not saying they should do this tomorrow, but I think it would be a huge help to business in a realistic timescale if the government said from a date in July we will reduce from two metres to one metre, as long as the incidence hasn’t gone up. I think that would give people a lot of hope and allow them to plan.”
Ministers and aides talk openly of the government needing a “relaunch” — another banned word. Johnson’s team, instead, describe his plan for a big speech at the start of July, coupled with an economic statement from Sunak, as “a reset”. Some ministers wonder if Johnson will complete the set with a cabinet reshuffle as well — though a date for that nearer the end of July is more likely.
Heads on the chopping block include that of Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, who is accused by some close to Johnson of allowing the return of schools before his plans were ready, and of bowing to pressure from the teaching unions to then abandon the move. One colleague said: “There comes a moment when you realise he has the looks and mannerisms of Frank Spencer, and once you realise that, you can never unsee it.”
Liz Truss, Thérèse Coffey and Ben Wallace remain unloved by Cummings — though they all survived February’s reshuffle — and Robert Buckland, the justice secretary, has shown that doing a good job (in his case controlling Covid-19 in prisons) can change views.
MPs, though, say the prime minister needs to think about them as well as his top team. Moderates complain that Downing Street has “declared war” on them. Eurosceptics complain about rumours that Nigel Farage is planning to start yet another new party which will erode their support from the right. Many others feel abandoned.
A senior backbencher said: “There is a deafening lack of communication from No 10. For Boris to succeed he’s got a hell of a lot of legislation to get through. A majority of 80 is a barrier to Keir Starmer, but it’s not a barrier to internal rebellion, which is much more dangerous for Boris. He needs to do some active parliamentary management. There is a lot of tinder that could be set alight by the next failure.”
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