Who speaks for business? Government advice in a crisis September 25, 2020 It has been another week of regulations and restrictions, another round of measures to try to beat the Covid-19 spread which has started to creep up again as we move into autumn. On Monday, the government sent its top boffins, Professor Chris Whitty and Professor Sir Patrick Vallance, to face the press unchaperoned. This, surely, [...]
Brexit: Prime Minister urges Tory MPs to back him over bill September 12, 2020 Boris Johnson pleaded for Conservative MPs to support his plans to override part of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement in a Zoom call late on Friday. The Prime Minister told around 250 Tory MPs on the video call that the party must not return to “miserable squabbling” over Europe. He is hoping to pass an Internal [...]
Boris Johnson faces Tory revolt over new lockdown restrictions September 11, 2020 A number of Tory backbenchers have declared their opposition to the reintroduction of lockdown measures. Earlier this week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that social gatherings would again have to be limited to six people from Monday following a spike in positive coronavirus cases. But the reintroduction of this restriction has reportedly divided current ministers [...]
Johnson says he’s more optimistic than Barnier on post-Brexit trade deal July 3, 2020 Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he is more optimistic than European officials about the prospect of Britain securing a post-Brexit trade agreement, but said the UK could still leave the bloc without a deal if needed. Johnson said he was a bit more optimistic than chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier, who said this week that [...]
No-deal Brexit can’t be ruled out but not in UK’s interest, says French minister June 19, 2020 A senior French official said that she could not rule out the UK’s post-Brexit trade talks with the EU ending without a deal, but said it would be in Britain’s interest to reach an agreement. “I am not ruling out anything,” junior european affairs minister Amelie de Montchalin said, when asked if she could rule [...]
Coronavirus: Boris Johnson ‘plans to return to work on Monday’ April 24, 2020 Boris Johnson is intent on returning to work as soon as Monday to continue tackling the coronavirus crisis, it is reported. Earlier this month, the Prime Minister was discharged from St Thomas’ Hospital following his own battle with coronavirus. He has since been recovering at Chequers, his countryside residence. But Johnson – who spent three [...]
It’s time to self-isolate from social media’s armchair experts March 19, 2020 You can tell whether a news story is really, properly serious by the degree to which people develop instant expertise. Back in 2008, all sorts of people who didn’t know an asset from a debt suddenly started holding forth confidently about balance sheet liabilities and CDO-Squareds. A few years later, in the wake of the [...]
Level up: Boosting the regions might mean levelling down London March 12, 2020 Except for updates on the coronavirus, no ministerial appearance these days is complete without mention of the government’s professed intention to “level up”. This seems to mean a desire to do something — usually something to do with infrastructure spending — for the so-called “left-behind” places that voted Leave in 2016, and especially those “red [...]
Human ingenuity and working together will pull us through the coronavirus crisis March 9, 2020 Last week, Bank of England governor Mark Carney gave his economic view of the possible consequences of coronavirus: he expects it to cause “disruption” and not “destruction”. In saying this, he follows the measured words of the health secretary, Matt Hancock, who made the point that preparing for the worst is the job at hand. [...]
New-look cabinet to meet later after Sajid Javid’s shock exit February 14, 2020 Boris Johnson’s newly reshuffled cabinet will meet for the first time later today after the shock departure of chancellor Sajid Javid. His deputy, Rishi Sunak, is the new Treasury boss after Javid refused to sack his special advisers in order to keep his job. He said “no self-respecting minister” could agree to Prime Minister Boris [...]