Dozens of Tory MPs will oppose vaccine passports
Johnson faces large-scale Commons rebellion by Conservatives fearing an ‘assault on liberty’
‘God knows why they are forcing loyal Boris supporters like me to vote for something we don’t believe in’
TWO moderate former senior ministers are considering joining more than 60 Conservative MPs in voting against Boris Johnson’s new coronavirus restrictions this week.
Robert Buckland, the former justice secretary, and Tobias Ellwood, a former defence minister, have voiced concern about Covid certification measures that come into force on Wednesday.
The hesitancy of both MPs over the proposals comes after scores of backbenchers pledged not to back the most controversial aspect of the new rules.
All nightclubs and indoor venues with a capacity of at least 500 people will require a Covid pass under the Plan B measures. Proof of either two doses of a vaccine or a recent negative test will be required for entry.
Mr Buckland told the BBC’s Newscast podcast that he supported “the thrust” of the proposed restrictions, but added: “I think there’s a problem with us merrily going down the road of compulsion and a uniform approach where there isn’t the clearest evidence base.”
Asked by The Sunday Telegraph about his view on vaccine passports, Mr Ellwood said: “You have a very weary nation that wants to get through Covid but is questioning the tactics and if the science isn’t there to back this up then you will lose the support of the very people you are trying to lead. At the moment I am not supporting it.”
Other restrictions introduced as part of Plan B are a return to working from home where possible as of tomorrow and compulsory face coverings in most public indoor venues, although hospitality settings will be exempt.
Paul Holmes, the MP for Eastleigh and Priti Patel’s parliamentary private secretary (PPS), has suggested to constituents that he could defy the party line over the proposals. Asked on social media how he planned to vote, Mr Holmes said: “I’m assessing what ministers have to say and haven’t yet decided. I’m not going to be rushed into making a statement until I’ve read the evidence and taken time to speak to ministers.”
Another PPS, who asked The Sunday Telegraph for anonymity, said: “I just can’t vote for the second [regulation] because I’m on record saying multiple times how much I oppose vaccine passports. There are too many parliamentary private secretaries that can’t vote for these statutory instruments.
“I feel this is the first step towards another lockdown. God knows why they are forcing loyal Boris supporters like me to vote for something we fundamentally don’t believe in.”
A second PPS added: “I won’t rebel because I think it is the right thing to do, but the number of my colleagues who don’t agree is very high indeed.
“I think people are going to say to their whips and to No10, ‘We’ll support you here because we think these measures are quite modest – but no further’.”
A total of 65 Conservative MPs have indicated they will either not support the vaccine passport scheme or will oppose it outright in what will be the party’s biggest rebellion since July 2019.
They include former leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith and Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee.
Writing in The Telegraph today, Sir Graham asked how the Government had “presided over such a disastrous assault on liberty”, adding: “It’s no surprise that Labour wants permanent lockdown, it’s all their big-state dreams come true, but it’s plain wrong for the party of liberty and choice to do this.”
Asked if vaccinations would become mandatory at a press conference on Tuesday, Mr Johnson insisted he did not want a society or a culture where people were forced to get vaccinated.
But he added that lockdowns and other restrictions could not continue “indefinitely”.
♦ Last night an Opinium poll put Labour nine points ahead of the Conservatives, with 41 per cent – the biggest lead recorded by the pollster for the opposition since 2014.
Two shots of AstraZeneca, followed by a booster of Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine three days ago, should have left me pretty well protected against even the omicron variant of Covid-19.
Yet among other things, this will also be an interesting test case in some of the more outré conspiracy theories about vaccines. You see, if, between now and Tuesday, I change my mind and vote for the government’s latest authoritarian nonsense, then it’s official: my once-independent mind will have been overrun by nanobots, or perhaps a microchip sent by Bill Gates as part of some sinister plan for world domination. So far, however, I’m feeling no dubiously illiberal inclinations.
When I first became involved in politics in the 1980s, the differences between Conservatives and Labour were stark. We believed in trusting people to make their own choices;
Labour stood for the closed shop and secondary picketing. We supported enterprise; they favoured strikes and penal taxes on business.
While Margaret Thatcher, alongside Ronald Reagan, was busy winning the Cold War, the Lefties were grungily bleating on about unilateral nuclear disarmament. We supported families and freedom; our opponents were willing to back just about any cause that would hold people back and make them poorer. Back then, if I’d wanted to live in a country that would ban me from leaving, I’d have defected to Soviet Russia.
So how is it that a Conservative government has presided over such a disastrous assault on liberty? Months when people were banned by law from seeing their children or grandchildren. Businesses forced to close; the state not just telling people not to go to work but paying them not to. And yes, nearly half a year in which we went full Eastern Bloc and no one was allowed out.
The Government’s behavioural scientists began by thinking that Britons would never, ever slavishly follow the kind of diktat issued in Communist China. Instead, they soon found that, as long as they spread enough fear, people would kowtow to the state.
A senior NHS neurologist writes to me that he sees the ever-changing rules and restrictions reducing people’s confidence and making them feel uncertain. The inability to make plans or live a normal life is “breeding health anxiety, I am seeing a lot of this in my clinical practice. Neurology is one of those areas in which health anxiety manifests as clinical symptoms – currently off the scale”.
So, government communications (paid for by us) are spreading fear and anxiety to an extent that is making people ill.
Not to worry, though, because from July we have been on an “irreversible” path back to normal life. We thought it was just paranoia when some people said, “don’t believe them, there’ll be another new variant discovered just before Christmas!” We are quickly relearning the old dictum that just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.
So we had masks in shops and buses last week and an absurd measure introducing mandatory isolation for anyone “suspected” of being a contact of someone with omicron. We were told these measures might be lifted before Santa took to his sleigh, and certainly before half the country was pinged into the gulag.
Just a week later, but still with little evidence of a serious problem, MPs are being asked to vote for even more restrictions: face masks in the bath (possibly a small exaggeration), segregation of people who foolishly believed it was for them to decide whether to have the vaccines, and forced jabs for those of our NHS heroes who won’t comply (oh no, wait, that was last year!)
There seems no let up to this kind of self-defeating, dystopian logic. One reason why the health service might struggle to cope with omicron is that 30,000 care workers were sacked under the new vaccine mandates, leading to NHS beds being blocked by people who would otherwise have been moved to care homes. Imagine how much more easily we can ensure that the NHS is “overwhelmed” if the government’s estimate of 73,000 NHS workers quitting in the cause of bodily autonomy proves accurate.
It should come as no surprise that Labour appears to be agitating for a state of permanent lockdown: it’s all their big-government dreams come true. But it’s plain wrong for the party of liberty and choice to be behaving like this. Of course (for now) we are free to debate whether one intervention or another might slow the spread of omicron, but we should also ask a different and rather more philosophical question.
This train will go on until someone has the presence of mind to pull the communication cord. So, as well as debating Plan B measures, we should be asking ourselves whether we want to restore the dignity of controlling our own lives or not. It’s time for this to end.