THREE GIANT STEPS BACK TO NORMAL LIFE

• JUNE 21: Social distancing one-metre rule to be scrapped • THIS WEEK: Foreign holiday list is revealed • MAY 17: Limit of 30 people at funerals will be abolished

BORIS JOHNSON today tries to mount a political fightback following weeks of turmoil by appealing directly to voters with a package of ‘real issue’ policies on lifting the lockdown and tackling crime.

The Prime Minister – who has been battered by criticism over his Downing Street flat renovations – promises to remove the limit on mourners at funerals from May 17, scrap the ‘metre plus’ social distancing rule from June 21, and, within days, issue the first list of ‘green’ countries that holidaymakers can visit without quarantine.

In addition, he uses an article for today’s Mail on Sunday to promise a crackdown on crime, including tougher measures to deal with drug gangs and street violence, and a new task force to counter a surge in dognapping. Mr Johnson also writes that given the ‘freedoms’ made possible by the vaccine rollout, ‘I have absolutely no doubt that our economy will bounce back strongly’.

He adds: ‘What I do know is that safety and security on our streets is absolutely critical

for sustained investment and economic growth. That is why we must continue to use this moment to drive home our advantage – take out the gangsters and the misery they cause – and make our streets safe from Covid, and safe from crime.’

His comments come after weeks of rows over ‘Flatgate’, stories about lobbying sleaze and claims – which he denies – t hat he made i ns e ns i t i ve remarks about the Covid death toll. Tory strategists hope that the headlines will be dismissed by voters in this week’s local elections as ‘Westminster bubble’ issues that do not affect their daily lives.

One of the most welcome moves in Mr Johnson’s fightback package will be scrapping the legal limit of 30 mourners at funerals from May 17.

Venues will instead be able to set their own capacity limits consistent with the ‘metre plus’ social distancing rule. It will apply to both indoor and outdoor services. The distancing rule will itself be dropped from June 21, heralding the advent of a near-normal summer.

A source said: ‘We will be able to go pretty far on abolishing social distancing.’ However, businesses will be encouraged to keep in place some measures, such as glass screens.

It has not yet been decided whether masks will be retained in certain settings, while some restrictions might be kept ‘in reserve’ in case there is a serious third wave of infections next winter, despite the success of the vaccination programme.

The list of ‘green’ countries which British citizens can fly to and from after May 17 is expected to be announced as early as Friday, and will be reviewed every three weeks.

According to one source, Portugal is ‘ on the cusp’ of being included. A new Government slogan will tell potential holidaymakers: ‘Travel safely, plan ahead.’

Meanwhile, Lord Chancellor Robert Buckland will set up the pet theft task force to tackle the surge in the number of dogs being stolen since last year’s lockdown.

Mr Johnson is also launching a drive to stem what he describes as the ‘contagion’ of drug gangs using so- called county lines networks to spread ‘misery’.

The Prime Minister is trying to regain the political initiative after three separate investigations were launched into the No 10 refurbishments by the Electoral Commission, Cabinet Secretary Simon Case and Lord Geidt, the new adviser on ministerial interests.

Last night, the Prime Minister faced fresh questions over his financial affairs after The Mail on Sunday was told that Tory donors had been asked if they would help the Prime Minister to cover the cost of his childcare. A senior Conservative source told this newspaper that one donor had reacted by saying: ‘Why should I have to pay for his baby’s a*** to be wiped?’

There were similar claims that Tory bankrollers were asked to cover the cost of a personal trainer for Mr Johnson. No 10 did not deny yesterday that donors had been approached, but insisted the Prime Minister had ‘personally paid’ for both members of staff.

When asked about claims that a friend of Mr Johnson’s fiancee Carrie Symonds had covered the costs, before being repaid by the Prime Minister, the spokesman said: ‘I’m not getting in to that.’

Meanwhile, Tory MPs mounted a rearguard action against the Electoral Commission, criticising its ‘lamentable record’ and urging the Prime Minister to axe the body investigating him. One MP, Peter Bone, said the watchdog ‘was not fit to investigate a drinks party in a brewery… It should be abolished.’

No 10 officials were also buoyed by more good news on the retreat of Covid: just seven

Strategists hope voters will ignore sleaze tales

Watchdog probing PM ‘should be abolished’

deaths were recorded yesterday, the lowest comparable figure since September 4 and a fall of a third in the past week.

The number of positive tests, at 1,907, was down 11 per cent. Meanwhile, a further 129,657 first vaccine doses and 405,456 second doses were administered yesterday, taking the proportion of UK adults with a first dose to 65.2 per cent. A total of 28.4 per cent have had both doses.

It means that the number of adults receiving their second jab is certain to pass the 15 million mark today.

In his MoS article, Mr Johnson turned his focus to law and order, saying: ‘We need to bring the hammer down hard on the gangs – at every stage.’

Portraying Labour as ‘soft on crime’, he writes: ‘We are backing the police in the fight, with new powers to tackle street violence (consistently opposed by Labour) and we are supporting their efforts with tougher sentences for serious sexual and violent offenders.’

And on dognapping, he says: ‘This crime is far too often dismissed as relatively trivial… I don’t agree. If you are cynical and nasty enough to steal a dog, in an organised gang, then you will almost certainly be party to other types of crime as well.’

THE real divide in modern Britain is not between Tory and Labour. It is between the metropolitan elite and normal men and women. One side is snobbish, largely state-employed, liberal in manners and views. The other side live in the real world, relying on hard work and long hours to put food on the table and a roof over their children’s heads.

One side is scornful of Brexit and nostalgic for the cloudy bureaucracy of the European Union. The other is tired of remote government by distant and insulated elites. It is quietly patriotic and full of common sense. It sees Brexit – rightly – as a chance to bring the country closer to the ground, and government closer to the people.

One side gets its views and its idea of the world from the BBC and Twitter. The other derives its opinions from experience.

They are as different from each other as a pub in Derby is from the Groucho Club in Soho, and the gulf between them has been growing mightily in the past few years.

Old Labour, a party of trade unionism and old- fashioned working- class socialism, has little to do with the new, slick, hair-gelled world of Sir Keir Starmer and his revived Blairism, and even less to do with the burned-out, bigoted Trotskyism of Jeremy Corbyn. But this is the unwelcome choice between equally unappealing menus which New Labour has offered to its voters in recent years.

The Brexit referendum liberated such voters from their old allegiances, and it looks as if millions of them will never come back.

The old landmarks have gone. The old loyalties are broken, because the Left’s leaders were not loyal to their rank and file. The old slogans do not work.

The voters will no longer troop out obediently to vote according to obsolete class divisions which belong in a dead age of clogs, coal miners and cotton mills. Britain just is not like that any more, and those who believe that it is, or act as if it is, are much like the Japanese soldier Hiroo Onoda, lost in the Philippine jungle, who refused to surrender until 1974, 29 years after the war had ended.

That is not to say that there is not a new war going on, for there is. The country is emerging from its long series of lockdowns. We are starting to take our pleasures again as free people should. Education, in schools and universities, is likewise getting ready to restart properly. Our hospitals and care homes are feeling their way cautiously back to normal. Trains and buses are starting to fill up again, and the prospect of holidays abroad seems real at last.

Life, as we used to know it, is beginning again and the economy must be revived to pay for what we have done and for what we need to do. The Union must be held together. Almost everyone in this country has better things to worry about than the Prime Minister’s wallpaper.

It is in fact very odd that t he spokesmen of t he new metropolitan elite, who loathe Dominic Cummings for his creditable role i n bringing Brexit about, are prepared to take the same Dominic Cummings’s side in his silly vendetta against Boris Johnson, his former boss.

The very people who derided him for his wild lockdown ride to Barnard Castle now delight in the non-event of Wallpapergate, and the portrayal of the Premier’s fiancee as Carrie Antoinette, a heedless plutocrat mocking the poor with the richness of her soft furnishings.

How foolish this all is. Prime Ministers work 24-hour days, never knowing when officials will burst in on them with urgent demands for decisions. Living above the shop is a burden, not a convenience. There is no proper boundary between work and life. It really is not unreasonable for heads of government to make their private space as pleasant as possible, and all civilised nations recognise this. Seldom has there been so much fuss about a non-issue.

Sir Keir fell well below the dignity of the Opposition Leader’s high office, making a leaden attempt at humour by going on a well-publicised expedition to the wallpaper department of John Lewis.

We might ask: ‘Has he nothing better to do, or anything more to say?’ But the answer might well be that he has not.

He has so far failed to develop any convincing idea of an alternative government, and clearly yearns deep inside for a return to the EU which is politically impossible. He showed this with his absurd defence of the EU’s medical bureaucracy, which would have prevented Britain’s vaccine success if we had still been under its thumb.

He has also waded into the other empty controversy – about what the Prime Minister did or did not say about a renewed lockdown in a private meeting with close aides.

The Mail on Sunday was aware a week ago of these claims, and reported them responsibly, as an allegation being peddled by enemies of Mr Johnson, rather than as a fact.

We should not forget that the Prime Minister flatly, personally and publicly denies them on the record (by contrast to the anonymous whispers f rom the shadows which are used to spread such charges).

Mr Starmer, who aspires to high office, should have more sense than to paddle in these murky waters. He knows perfectly well that unrestrained, uninhibited debate is essential to reach wise conclusions on policy. Despite his dapper and unruffled exterior, he must also have lost his own temper in private, and said things which he would not wish repeated in public. For who has not?

By pursuing this issue, and making veiled threats about it

The old landmarks have gone, the old loyalties are broken

Johnson got Brexit done and brought us through the pandemic

in Parliament, he is laying a trap for himself. What if his own aides start to leak his secret thoughts about – say – his Shadow Cabinet colleagues?

Professional life could simply not survive if confidential private discussions cannot be held with some hope of secrecy.

This is even more the case in Government, where matters of national i mportance are involved. In any case, does anyone think it a good idea to have a Prime Minister who likes l ockdowns? Boris’s obvious loathing of the whole idea is a great reassurance that he will not use methods such as this unless they are truly needed.

Boris Johnson has shown in his time in office that he is skilled in using the levers of power. He has turned the Tory Party from a fractious mob into a united Government.

By force of personality he liberated the country from the succession of Groundhog Days which were Theresa May’s premiership. He got Brexit done. He reached out to the decent Labour voters whose party has abandoned them. And now he has brought us safely through the pandemic.

He deserves, and s hould receive, the continuing support of the British people.