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Like football managers, political leaders are often harshly judged, their critics narrowly focused on the short run, and all too ready to discount past glories: you’re only as good as your last match, you might say.So it is with Boris Johnson. As the evidence builds that the prime minister’s unique approach to decision-making in the Covid crisis has cost lives, his MPs are getting nervous. Postponed elections from last year added to the usual May crop means that virtually the whole of Britain will going to the polls in the spring, assuming they’re not cancelled. The Scottish parliamentary vote will be particularly poor for the Conservatives and will be taken as a mandate for a second independence referendum. Votes, political careers and the union itself are at stake. Two unnamed members of the 2019 intake have reportedly formally stated that they have no confidence in Johnson’s leadership. They have submitted letters to that effect to the chair of the backbench 1922 Committee, the first steps towards a leadership election. A WhatsApp group of Tory MPs, nicknamed “Lockdown Loons” has also become a focus for discontent, particularly about the stop-go Covid restrictions. The group includes Iain Duncan Smith, Esther McVey and John Redwood. The deputy chair of the 1922 Committee, Charles Walker, among others has openly criticised the government’s habit of bypassing parliament over Covid restrictions. Some MPs have made stinging criticisms, albeit anonymously, one saying before Christmas: “He keeps making mistakes and doesn’t learn from them. We knew he’d have to U-turn on A-levels and free school meals over the summer. Now he forces us to vote to starve children over Christmas. You can be sure he’ll U-turn on that too. I’ve never seen such ineptitude”. Another said more recently: “I’m completely fed up. He just can’t lead and thus can’t go on.” More

By rights, the joint session, or convention, of both houses of Congress mandated by the constitution to ratify the election of a president and vice president should be a routine if not jolly affair, like a school speech day. Usually it has been; but this time round a so-called “sedition caucus” comprised of Republican Trumpite members of the House of Representatives and Senate is dedicated to overturning the result, or, in their terms, defending democracy from a rigged election. Senator Ted Cruz (Texas) is probably the most high-profile figure in the group, along with Senator Josh Hawkey (Missouri). Both may have an eye on gaining support from the Trumpite “base” to be contenders in the 2024 contest.The joint session promises, therefore, to be acrimonious, but talk of a coup seems overcooked.  The joint session will presided over by the president of the Senate, ex-officio Vice President Mike Pence. He will open the various state submissions, lawfully certified. There will then be unusually vigorous challenges and objections to some of the state results, such as those of Georgia and Wisconsin, and of the election as a whole. The claims about voting machines, postal ballots and interference will be familiar.   More

Welcoming in the new year, the education secretary Gavin Williamson declined to break with the tradition of eleventh-hour U-turns that seemingly characterised the government’s approach to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.With just days remaining until primary schools are due to reopen their doors after the Christmas break and rapidly rising transmissions of Covid-19, the Department for Education opted to override a schools’ policy announced just three days ago.Under the initial plan, secondary schools and colleges were set to be closed for two weeks at the start of term while some primary schools in London were still being asked to reopen their doors on 4 January. More

What will politics be like in 2021? Not quite same old, same old. Brexit will fade, at long last. It’s in the interests of most of the parties to “draw a line under it”, as the cliche goes, given the trouble it’s (mostly) caused the politicians, and the fact the public is heartily bored by it. It will now be Labour’s turn to be divided, as we saw in the recent Commons vote on the free trade deal. At every level Labour voters, members and MPs who were Remainers, or at least some of them, will morph into Rejoiners, and demand a commitment to go back into the EU. Keir Starmer will hope to unite the party under a vague commitment to build on the “base” of the current deal to build a “closer” partnership with the EU, but no more. Even if Brexit turns disastrous – and there will inevitably be some chaos, closures and job losses, it’s unlikely to stimulate any great appetite among the voters for another great national debate on Europe.  As a political virus, Brexit will, though, mutate in unpredictable ways. It will, for example, start to figure even more prominently in the argument about Scottish independence, or “Scexit” as it may yet come to be known. After all, most of the arguments about sovereignty and taking back control deployed by the SNP have quite a Brexity feel to them, just as the case against trade barriers and being better together have an echo of the Remain campaign. In any case, Nicola Sturgeon seems set to win a landslide victory and one explicitly seeking a mandate for a second independence referendum. If London just says “no”, there will indeed be a bitterly divisive constitutional crisis, and one that probably can’t be resolved by the Supreme Court. As in Ireland a century ago, there will be many in Scotland who will question the legitimacy of the Westminster government, and will seek ways to resist, though through peaceful political protest, resistance and disobedience. Most of the English, it has to be said, would have no objection to Scotland going its own way; the dispute would be with the militantly Unionist government that refuses to even talk to Sturgeon.   More