Brexit news – live: Boris Johnson must listen to Biden, says Labour as PM awaits call from president-elect

Government’s vaccines tsar expected to leave post

The government’s under-fire vaccines tsar Kate Bingham is expected to leave her post at the end of the year. Whitehall insiders have suggested that her contract only ran until the end of the year, and she had always intended to leave at that point.

The wife of Tory minister Jesse Norman has come under pressure over a reported £670,000 contract for extra PR support, and has been forced to deny claims she shared commercially-sensitive information with investors.

Labour leader Keir Starmer told LBC Radio earlier the £670,000 bill for spin doctors “can’t be justified”. Asked at lunchtime whether the PM still had full confidence in Bingham to carry on, Boris Johnson’s spokesman said: “Yes.”

John Redwood writes to Joe Biden

Tory MP John Redwood has penned an open letter to president-elect Joe Biden on his website.

Amid concerns about the impact of the Internal Market Bill on the Good Friday Agreement (GFA), Redwood told Biden that any fear and confusion over the Irish border was simply all the EU’s fault.  

“It is the EU which seems to be planning new border controls on their side of the border which you may like to take up with them,” he wrote.

“I must stress that the UK does uphold the GFA in Northern Ireland. As we leave the EU we have no plans to impose a hard border between the UK and the Republic of Ireland, contrary to false EU rumours.”

PM has ‘lost interest’ in devolution of power

Boris Johnson is retreating from promises to hand down political power to English regions, according to the former Conservative deputy PM and champion of devolution Lord Heseltine.

“The story I get is No 10 has lost interest in devolution, that they are more concerned with a battle with the mayor of Greater Manchester and the whole thing has soured,” he told The Independent’s economics editor Ben Chu.

“Well, I tell you if you’re going to go into the post-Covid, Brexit reality, and you’re not going to make use of the strengths of those mayors, then we are facing an even bleaker prospect than I had anticipated.”

PM will ‘consider’ peers’ changes to Brexit bill

Boris Johnson will consider any amendments made by Lords to his Internal Market Bill today, his spokesman has said – but stressed that the PM still believes it protects the Northern Ireland Protocol as well as the flow of goods. “Our position remains that the clauses are a vital safety net,” Johnson’s spokesman told reporters.

The Internal Market Bill contains clauses that government has admitted would break international law in a “specific and limited” way. The House of Lords will start debating at 2.30pm, and vote around 7pm on whether to strip those clauses from the bill.

Incidentally, Boris Johnson will hold a Downing Street press conference on coronavirus at 5pm – so he may be asked more then.

Government has ordered 40 million doses of vaccine, says No 10

The big news today is that the coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech may be more than 90 per cent effective.

The government has procured 40 million doses of the potential – and expects to have 10 million doses by the end of the year, Boris Johnson’s spokesman said on Monday.

Joe Biden yet to call Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson is “not concerned” if Joe Biden makes him wait for their first conversation, No 10 has insisted – as the PM confirmed the pair have still yet to speak.

Downing Street was unable to say when the ice would be broken. Biden is set to make a point of speaking to Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel before he speaks with Johnson, according to Politico.

Asked if it mattered if the PM was at the back of the queue, his spokesman replied: “No, that’s not something that we are concerned about.”

Separately, a government source said: “Look, we’re probably not top of the list for the first phone call. Are some people in government fretting about that? Yes, but you can read too much into it.

“If we find ourselves being called after Papua New Guinea then we should probably start to worry.”

Minister hints at fisheries compromise

Environment secretary George Eustice said earlier the UK was open to a “sensible” compromise on fishing and that there was goodwill on both sides to get a trade deal.

So what exactly did he say? “We’ve always been open to doing a sensible approach looking particularly at agreements that might span a couple, three years for instance,” the minister said.

“The issue will become what are the sharing arrangements, how much mutual access do we allow in one another’s waters and that’s obviously a discussion that will happen annually, but there may also be a partnership agreement that sets out the ground rules as to how we will work on that.”

David Frost has previously insisted that new negotiations over access to waters must happen annually using a system known as “zonal attachment” – but also suggested a framework for fishing quotas could be agreed separately.  

Team Biden considers PM’s remarks on Obama ‘racist’

More views on the kind of alliance Joe Biden and Boris Johnson are likely to forge. “I don’t think you will see a particularly warm relationship between the two sides, but you will still see a functioning one,” said The Atlantic’s Helen Lewis.

The commentator told BBC Politics that people in Biden’s team have not forgotten Johnson’s remarks about “part Kenyan” Barack Obama having an “ancestral grudge” about the British Empire. Lewis said people around Biden consider the PM’s words “racist”.

Yet Conservative MP Laura Farris said: “I don’t think a few throwaway remarks said four or five years ago are going to have any bearing at all.”

Starmer to raise coronavirus support issues with chancellor

Sir Keir Starmer has said he will raise issues with the government’s coronavirus support with the chancellor, Rishi Sunak.

The Labour leader made the pledge while taking questions from the public during an appearance on LBC.

Former PMs sent Johnson letter about testing problems

Four former prime ministers – David Cameron, Tony Blair, John Major and Gordon Brown – joined forces to tell Boris Johnson to get a grip on testing, according to George Osborne.

The former chancellor has told Times Radio that they penned a letter to the PM privately in July about problems with the system.