The prime minister said the government would provide target dates for sectors to reopen ‘if we possibly can’ when he reveals his plan for easing lockdown next week. Speaking to broadcasters in Kent, Johnson said: ‘The dates that we will be setting out will be the dates by which we hope we can do something at the earliest’
Continue reading...Category Archives: Boris Johnson
Ministers flatly reject Tory demands to end Covid controls by May
Backbenchers’ calls dismissed but clamour for a more fixed schedule seems set to increase
Downing Street is pushing back against pressure from Conservative MPs to set a swift timetable to end the lockdown in England after meeting its first major vaccination target, saying any hastiness in reopening could risk undoing the progress made in combating the coronavirus pandemic.
In a sign of the likely battle ahead in the coming weeks, ministers and officials flatly ruled out a demand from Tory backbenchers for all Covid restrictions to be over by the start of May, saying any plan needed to be both more cautious and decided step by step.
Continue reading...‘We’ve made huge progress’ says Johnson on UK vaccine rollout – video
During a visit to the Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies plant in Billingham, Teesside, where the new Novavax vaccine will be manufactured, the prime minister hailed the coronavirus vaccine rollout, but said the infection rate was still high.
Johnson said he would announce an outline for the 'roadmap forward' on 22 February, with priority being given to schools
Continue reading...Boris Johnson ‘optimistic’ about easing some England lockdown measures
Prime minister says priority is to reopen schools on 8 March once 15m in priority groups vaccinated
Boris Johnson has said he is optimistic about announcing the easing of some lockdown measures soon as the government nears its target of offering vaccines to 15 million people in priority groups.
Speaking on Saturday at a visit to the Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies plant in Billingham, Teesside, where the new Novavax vaccine will be manufactured, the prime minister said his first priority remained opening schools in England from 8 March, to be followed by other sectors.
Continue reading...UK Covid live: No 10 says MPs won’t vote on 10-year sentences for travel ban cheats because law already in place
Latest updates: PM says people will have to ‘get used to the idea of vaccinating, and then re-vaccinating in the autumn’
- Too soon to book holiday in UK or abroad, says Grant Shapps
- Covid border rules not in ‘top bracket’ of nations, says Starmer
- Threat of jail term for UK travellers who hide journeys ‘disproportionate’
- UK government announces £3.5bn fund to fix cladding on high-rises
- Global coronavirus updates – live
The latest edition of the Guardian’s Politics Weekly podcast is out. Jessica Elgot and John Crace look at why the latest coronavirus travel restrictions might not work the way the government expects, as well as Robert Jenrick’s latest announcement on cladding funds. Plus, Helen Davidson and Jon Henley on how the world sees the UK’s Covid response.
Related: Hotel quarantine – too little too late? Politics Weekly podcast
As HuffPost’s Paul Waugh reports, at the lobby briefing the prime minister’s spokesman had difficulty justifying some of the work done by the three taxpayer-funded photographers now working from Downing Street.
Asked why the taxpayer should fund ‘vanity’ photographers who took these pix of the PM’s dog playing in the snow, No.10 spokesperson suggests Dilyn works for govt: “These photographers document the work of the government, as well as the work inside Number 10.” pic.twitter.com/UgdDF2Tdrp
Continue reading...Calls for sweeping border curbs to protect UK against new Covid variants
Boris Johnson to announce new restrictions on UK arrivals to protect vaccine rollout
Scientists and senior MPs have renewed calls for sweeping border curbs to protect the UK’s vaccination programme against new variants as Boris Johnson prepared to introduce tougher measures and Britain saw internal infections fall.
The government is to announce new restrictions on arrivals into the UK this week, including mass testing of all arrivals. All passengers arriving in the UK will be tested for coronavirus on day two and day eight of their isolation – regardless of the country they have come from and whether they are at home or in hotel quarantine. The UK already requires all arrivals to have a negative Covid test from within the past 72 hours, taken while still abroad.
Continue reading...Yorkshire lobster exporter says Brexit costs have forced it to close
Government has not been straight with fishing industry, says Sam Baron of Baron Shellfish in Bridlington
A lobster exporter who is winding up his 60-year-old family business has blamed the government for failing to be honest about Brexit red tape and hidden costs.
Sam Baron, who worked alongside his father to set up Baron Shellfish in Bridlington, east Yorkshire, said the government had failed to be straight with the fishing industry.
Continue reading...UK Covid live: Boris Johnson to hold news briefing as Britain exceeds 10m vaccinations
Latest updates: PM press conference comes after milestone is passed; 1,322 further deaths reported in the UK today
- UK passes 10m Covid vaccination milestone
- Dozens of Covid patients moved daily in search for ICU beds
- Scientists warn against bringing forward school reopening
- MPs urge test and trace chief to prove system curbs Covid spread
- Global coronavirus updates – live
Boris Johnson is about to hold a press conference at No 10. He will be with Prof Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser.
Today’s coronavirus figures for Scotland are here. There have been 88 further deaths (down from 92 a week ago today) and 978 further cases (down from 1,330 a week ago today).
Of all the new tests carried out, only 5.1% were positive. This is the lowest positivity rate since late December, and very close to the 5% target often mentioned by Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister, as the benchmark set by the WHO for countries that have got Covid under control.
Continue reading...Rishi Sunak is paying Covid bills off the backs of the poor. It shames our country | Gordon Brown
A savage reversal of aid is happening at the very moment people need our help most. MPs must join together to stop it
Nothing shames our country more than Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, paying the bills for Covid off the backs of the poor – at home and abroad.
He has recently been pushed off his plan to cut £20 a week from the already low universal credit paid to 6 million of Britain’s poorest families.
Continue reading...‘Half-friends is not a concept’: UK should decide who its allies are, says Macron
‘History and geography don’t change – I don’t think British destiny is different to ours,’ says French president
Emmanuel Macron has warned that Boris Johnson’s government has to decide who its allies are, insisting that “half-friends is not a concept”.
“What politics does Great Britain wish to choose? It cannot be the best ally of the US, the best ally of the EU and the new Singapore … It has to choose a model,” the French president said, in an interview with the Guardian and a small group of other media.
Continue reading...Boris Johnson ‘hopeful’ schools will reopen on 8 March – video
Boris Johnson has said that 8 March is the earliest schools could reopen, but warned the date depended on ‘lots of things going right’. A firm decision will be taken in the week of 22 February after reviewing infection and vaccination data, the prime minister said
Continue reading...Sturgeon questions whether Johnson’s trip to Scotland ‘essential’
First minister also says UK government’s hotel quarantine plans ‘do not go far enough’
Nicola Sturgeon has questioned whether Boris Johnson’s planned trip from London to Scotland on Thursday is “genuinely essential”, suggesting his visit makes it harder to convince the public to stick to travel restrictions.
At her daily briefing, when she also warned that the UK government’s hotel quarantine plan for travellers “does not go far enough”, Scotland’s first minister said that while she was sure the prime minister and his advisers would take care to make sure no laws were broken, “we all have to make judgments on what we genuinely think is essential”.
Continue reading...‘We’ll learn lessons,’ Johnson promised, far too late in the day for many | John Crace
It was asking too much for the PM to show genuine humility and remorse, but even he could not shrug this off
You’ve got to hand it to Priti Patel.
Either she is completely shameless or totally clueless. Though one shouldn’t rule out the possibility that she’s both. Most of us distinctly remember the home secretary causing problems for Boris Johnson a few weeks ago by saying she had been calling for stricter border controls last March to control the coronavirus pandemic.
Continue reading...Johnson ‘deeply sorry’ as UK Covid death toll passes 100,000 – video
Boris Johnson said it was ‘difficult to compute the sorrow’ for every life lost to Covid as the official UK death toll passed 100,000. The prime minister said he took ‘full responsibility’ for the government's response to the crisis, and insisted the government 'did everything we could' to limit deaths
- ONS figures show UK passed 100,000 Covid deaths by 7 January
- UK Covid live
- Coronavirus UK: Covid cases, deaths and vaccinations today
Summer holidays cancelled? UK faces big decision on border
Stricter controls appear likely, with government’s approach in stark contrast to that during first Covid wave
Slumped on the sofa after another day of home schooling, many families will have longingly eyed adverts for getaways: sun, sandy beaches and glittering pools, a much-needed reward after a year in the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic.
But ministers are becoming increasingly concerned they may have to ask the British public to sacrifice their hopes of a break abroad this summer. On Thursday, Priti Patel became the latest cabinet minister to say it was too soon to book an overseas break; Matt Hancock has already announced he is going to Cornwall.
Continue reading...UK Covid variant could be more deadly, says Boris Johnson – video
Boris Johnson said there was ‘some evidence’ that the new variant of the coronavirus first discovered in the south-east of England could be more lethal than the original. Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, said the data was ‘not yet strong,’ but that the variant could be up to 30% more deadly than other strains.
Continue reading...Johnson raises fears of lockdown in England continuing into summertime
No 10 wary of talking about easing restrictions as infection rate remains high
Boris Johnson raised fears that tough Covid restrictions could continue well into the spring and beyond on Thursday as ministers refused to be drawn on plans for any potential easing of lockdown.
While the vast majority of Tory MPs have toed the line since the new variant of the virus sent cases soaring, Downing Street’s reticence is already causing anxiety among a few backbenchers, who are urging an easing of the restrictions if vaccination rates stay on target.
Continue reading...Theresa May accuses Boris Johnson of ‘abandoning global leadership’
The former prime minister also criticised outgoing US president Donald Trump
Theresa May has accused Boris Johnson of abandoning Britain’s “position of global moral leadership”, in her most unrestrained attack on her successor yet.
Writing in the Daily Mail ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, the former prime minister had stern words about both the outgoing US president, Donald Trump, and her successor.
Continue reading...Joan Bakewell: ‘The world is full of such interesting people’
Joan Bakewell had been a broadcasting pioneer for more than half a century. And she’s still as forthright as ever. Here, she talks to Sophie Heawood about the empowerment of women, her newly streamlined life and why Boris has got it all wrong about the virus
Joan Bakewell writes in her memoir, The Centre of the Bed, about the moment she became an adult. It was 1949 and she was 17, a hard- working grammar schoolgirl from the industrial north, when her frustrated, depressive mother found a photograph of Joan kissing a boy and set fire to it in front of her eyes. Joan felt deep shame, but the shame began to transmogrify.
“Suddenly I was savagely and tremblingly angry,” she writes. “I was being forged in some bitter fire of my mother’s will, and I must survive the moment and emerge as myself. That was the end of innocence, not the loss of virginity or any fumbling that fell short of it. It was when I crossed into adulthood, knew my own mind and was sure of who I was.” Soon afterwards she left for university, where she joyfully discovered the world of ideas, as well as the one of sex, even though, as a student of the Cambridge women’s college Newnham, such things were banned.
Continue reading...Carbon capture is vital to meeting climate goals, scientists tell green critics
Supporters insist that storage technology is not a costly mistake but the best way for UK to cut emissions from heavy industry
Engineers and geologists have strongly criticised green groups who last week claimed that carbon capture and storage schemes – for reducing fossil fuel emissions – are costly mistakes.
The scientists insisted that such schemes are vital weapons in the battle against global heating and warn that failure to set up ways to trap carbon dioxide and store it underground would make it almost impossible to hold net emissions to below zero by 2050.
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