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14 Jun, 4 tweets, 2 min read
.@CMO_England was explicit that the end of lockdown is explicable wholly by the attached chart - which shows the exponential growth in the Delta variant, which was imported from India, and the way it has displaced the less infectious Alpha or Kent variant. And the PM…
was clear himself that the return of our liberties has been delayed by the growth of the Delta variant. So why did no one ask @BorisJohnson and @CMO_England and @uksciencechief the question I put to Johnson on Saturday, which is surely they made a terrible error in…
not putting India on the full quarantine red list weeks earlier than 23 April, because the spread of the virus in India was already alarming in early April. Johnson refused even to say he regretted the late move of India to red list status. Very odd. But there needs to be…
a full investigation of why India went on the list later than Pakistan and Bangladesh

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Robert Peston Profile picture
14 Jun
The logical implication of the PM’s statement today about why the full end of lockdown is being delayed by at least four weeks is that no major holiday or business destinations abroad will go on the green list any time soon. Dreams of foreign travel? Forget them. How so? Well…
there are three reasons. 1) The PM, CMO and CSA all said that it won’t be prudent to allow us to mix with lots of others indoors until at least two thirds of adults are double-dose vaccinated. And there are very few other big countries close to that level of vaccination. So…
on the PM’s logic, those other countries are potential sources of new infections. 2) He said that the only serious risk to yet another delay to ending all lockdown restrictions on 19 July is the arrival here of an even more infectious and more lethal new variant. So is he…
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Robert Peston Profile picture
14 Jun
The Committee on Standards in Public Life has raised concerns, following representations by the Commissioner for Public Appointments, that the system of appointing to public bodies may be tilting too far in the direction of ministerial patronage and away from "merit". This...
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Robert Peston Profile picture
12 Jun
I am struggling to make sense of the prime minister’s answer to my question whether he is a practising Roman Catholic - which I asked in good faith and with good reason because he was recently married in Westminster Cathedral. His answer was: “I don’t discuss these…
“deep issues. Certainly not with you”. He is aware that - for better or worse (worse for a long time) - this has been a pertinent question for chief and prime ministers since Henry Vlll. More broadly, the professed faith or none of a leader matters to many voters. But it…
was the “certainly not with you” that took me aback. There is nothing in my 35 years as a journalist to suggest that I would trivialise or denigrate religion, or any issue of conscience. If someone had made that remark in that context when I started in…
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Robert Peston Profile picture
8 Jun
The prime minister’s road map rules would logically dictate not moving to stage four of lockdown easing on 21 June but delaying by two or four weeks. Because the increase in the R transmission rate to more than one is driven in part by...
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Robert Peston Profile picture
2 Jun
Former education minister, now vaccines minister @nadhimzahawi, says teachers' unions are to blame for Sir Kevan Collins' not getting his education recovery plan because they "resisted extending the school day in the first place". I asked @MaryBoustedNEU, head of...
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Robert Peston Profile picture
29 May
The other thing that surprises me about Geidt is he dismisses a very basic fact of human relations, which is that if I or - let’s say, the PM - borrows from someone or from an institution, the balance of power between the person borrowing and the lender changes and...
significantly. This is not complicated stuff. Being in debt to someone or to an entity automatically creates an obligation to the lender by the borrower. The borrower becomes weaker relative to the lender. And in the case of a PM that must matter. The fact that...
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