Politics explained

It takes a small but unpleasant leap of imagination to envisage life in Britain in January 2021 – a mere 10 weeks or so away. The country may well be faced with the twin challenges of Covid-19 and Brexit hitting lives and businesses almost simultaneously. The second wave of cases and accompanying lockdowns could easily peak at around the same time that the Brexit transition period is due to end, on 31 December. Don’t forget that that date is enshrined in law, and still backed by a considerable body of opinion in the Conservative party. Not that the coronavirus knows or cares either way; it will just carry on going about its lethal business.  Even if the Covid-19 crisis isn’t as severe as it was in the first wave in the spring, and even if some sort of Brexit free trade deal is cobbled together, there would be a severe hit to the economy, about the size of what we might have used to think of as an unusually sharp recession, with some long-term loss of investment and national income.If, however, there is a no-deal Brexit, with added chaos, and the NHS and testing systems cannot cope with the coming surge in cases and hospitalisations, the effect on the economy – jobs and investment – could be more dramatic still in the short term, and longer lasting.   More

With the invaluable assistance of the government’s own scientific advisers, Keir Starmer has set his first political trap for Boris Johnson, and the prime minister lumbered straight into it. Despite some spirited attempts at Prime Minister’s Questions to scramble out of the trap set for him by the Labour leader, Johnson remains truly, madly, deeply in an embarrassing hole.  The trap is a thing of rare beauty. The prime minister has ignored the scientific advice he said he would always be entirely governed by, and refused to organise a short “circuit-breaker” national lockdown, among other measures. Starmer said he would back such a move, based on the unimpeachable expert advice. Handily it happens to be backed by the public too, and particularly among older voters, a weak spot for Labour in the recent past. Starmer knows he cannot lose politically.If, as seems likely, Johnson does have to go for such a short sharp lockdown in the coming weeks, Starmer will be vindicated, and the prime minister shown to be both wrong and irresolute, executing another U-turn quite against the wishes of his restive backbenchers.   More

Not so long ago, the United Kingdom was one of the most centralised of the mature democracies, with only France having more power concentrated at the centre. Now, however, thanks to successive waves of devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the establishment of powerful elected mayors across many of its major cities, the task of governing Britain is becoming an increasingly complex and transactional one. An unlikely alliance of Brexit and Covid-19 is exacerbating and exaggerating differences in a way that would have been impossible before Tony Blair’s government began this process of far-reaching constitutional reform almost a quarter century ago – one that was given added impetus under David Cameron’s administration, with its grand talk of the “northern powerhouse” and granting local government more freedom to spend money as it thinks fit. To the casual observer, or at least an unkind one, it looks like the Balkanisation of Britain.  Even a government with a working majority of 87, in the middle of a public health pandemic, is unable to easily impose its will on, say, Middlesbrough, Manchester or Liverpool. Northern mayors, with Andy Burnham in Manchester proving the most powerful voice in the bully pulpit, have used the authority of their popular mandates to question government policy. They ask, rightly, for the scientific basis of the government’s new measures. The mayors, equally understandably, also demand financial support commensurate with the economic sacrifices their conurbations and regions are being asked to make. Above all, they have complained loudly about not being consulted about what is being done to their cities, and hearing the news from the newspapers. With far fewer formal powers than Nicola Sturgeon in Scotland, Mark Drakeford in Wales and Arlene Foster in Northern Ireland, the likes of Burnham, Joe Anderson and Dan Jarvis are punching above their weight in Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield respectively. Sturgeon, meanwhile, has made the most of differences between Edinburgh and London on Brexit as well as public health. She looks forward to a landslide of her own in next year’s Scottish parliament elections, and a renewed bid for independence. Even with Covid-19, Scotland wants to develop its own “tiering” framework, just as it has gone its own way on the app, mandatory face coverings, and other measures. Critics say the SNP tweaks UK arrangements for the sake of it, to the detriment of a clear UK-wide public message.Read more More

Coronavirus has had an unexpected effect in strengthening politicians representing parts of the UK against the whole. Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, has become a power in the land, speaking as leader of a group of fellow mayors for much of the north of England. His insistence that new measures to control the virus in his fiefdom must come with financial support helped to force the chancellor to announce the new mini-furlough scheme on Friday. And Burnham’s demand to be consulted about the three-tier system of measures created such turbulence in Westminster that the prime minister is coming to parliament today to make the announcement. Like Nicola Sturgeon in Scotland, Mark Drakeford in Wales and Arlene Foster in Northern Ireland, Burnham’s profile has been boosted by the differing public health regimes developed in different parts of the UK.  More

Brexit is back on the agenda this coming week, with a major summit coming up in Brussels on Thursday and Friday. There’s talk of time running out. But just how long do negotiators have left?If you’ve been following Britain’s exit from the EU at all, you’ll know that a new agreement has to be in place by 31 December in order to prevent a no deal from happening as the UK leaves the single market. The trade agreement is supposed to replace some of what the EU currently does and hopefully prevent some (though not all) of the chaos that’s expected at ports.But both sides are agreed that things need to be wrapped up long before 31 December. That’s because any agreement needs to go through the motions: ratification by parliaments on both sides, translation into legal text and different languages. More

Local politicians in the north of England are furious that details of a second lockdown in the region leaked to the media before they had been consulted.The pattern has repeated itself throughout the coronavirus pandemic. Council leaders and metro mayors complain that they have to pick up the pieces after restrictions such as the closure of pubs and restaurants are announced overnight, sometimes with immediate effect.Mayors in the north offered Matt Hancock, the health secretary, a united front when they spoke earlier this week. They promised to support the next round of restrictions if they were consulted over the detail, and the government provided enough financial support for businesses affected in order to preserve jobs. More

Like the late Frankie “Titter ye not” Howerd, Al “Pub Landlord” Murray and Roy “Chubby” Brown, Boris “Prime Minister” Johnson is a turn that really only thrives with a live audience. The prime minister of mirth, as he admitted during his virtual speech to the Conservative Party conference, feels at his best when he has an audience to play off. In such a setting, the prime minister can get his timing right, judge his mock fluffs and the length of a pause, and deliver such carefully crafted laugh lines as “Captain Hindsight and his regiment of pot-shot, snipeshot fusiliers”.  It was once remarked that Michael Heseltine, a party favourite of a previous age, was the only man who knew how to find the G-spot of the Conservative Party conference; Johnson is one very few to be able to tickle its funny bone. Yet success in either endeavour requires the recipient of such attentions to be present. Alas, a word the prime minister has turned into a bit of a catchphrase, he must play to an empty house.Watch more More

It is possible to imagine a kinder, gentler Donald Trump emerging from the Walter Reed Medical Centre, though it requires some imagination. After all, when Boris Johnson, himself a bit of a political rascal, survived his bout of Covid in the spring, many detected some change in his demeanour. The intimation of his own mortality seemed to move him to tears during a subsequent interview with The Sun. President Trump’s initially much-reduced Twitter output was less aggressive and abusive and even now his renewed sloganising is unobjectionable, if oddly all now in capitals. Trump’s surprise appearance to thank his “patriot” supporters was reckless, but at least he has taken to wearing a mask. He even called the coronavirus by its correct name rather than “the China virus”.  Radical long-term personality change, however, is not a recognised consequence of Covid, and Trump has never suffered from an overabundance of humility. Indeed, it has apparently been something of a Trump family tradition to view physical illness as merely a sign of personal weakness. In that context, Trump would brandish his survival, at his age and weight, as proof of his superhuman constitution. Not even “the China virus” can defeat Donald Trump will be the message.  Read more More