Quite extraordinarily, @johnredwood has contacted me and published this blog both saying I wrongfully accused him of voting for the protocol in @HouseofCommons this week.

He claims he abstained on the protocol on the 30th December 2020.

Well, I have news for John. 1/6 We didn’t vote on the protocol on 30th December 2020. We voted on the future relationship bill…which *didn’t* contain the protocol.

However, on 20th December 2020 we voted on the Withdrawal Bill which *did* contain the protocol.

2/6

We didn’t land in this mess by accident, we were led here. Every trend that’s just been presented to MPs was evident at the time @BorisJohnson was making jokes in #PMQs about ‘steeling Christmas’.

He chose not to act and you’re paying the price.

“As prime minister it’s my job to take tough decisions”

Make no mistake: we’re in this mess because he hasn’t, can’t or won’t, until it’s too late. The foundations for today’s announcement don’t lie in a new variant, but over the summer when told us to ‘show some guts’ by crowding beaches and parks, then he bribed the public to mix indoors over a meal.

Gutting when a paper you love stitches you up and gets it wrong!

As Hansard shows, on 7th Dec I was near the bottom of the call list for the EU deal UQ but it over ran, finishing at 4.49pm.

I withdrew and ran to an SI committee for a 4.30pm start, not to the Commons shop! I went to the shop after I finished on committee en route to my office.

I know this sounds petty, but to see in writing that I care more about Christmas shopping than speaking in the Commons makes me want to scream!

I care about this issue and desperately wanted to speak.

Remember this?

It’s the chart that @MichelBarnier presented to EU leaders exactly three years ago this week.

It spelled out the EU response to any potential British red line.

The fundamentals of today’s crisis have been known and ignored by British PMs & negotiators for years. Irresponsible catchphrases like ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ / ‘cakes are there for eating’ / ‘they need us more than we need them’ / ‘German car makers will force Berlin to make a deal’ all described the world as Brexiteers wanted it to be, not as it was.

Let's deal with this right now.

I and many others voted for a SM, CU and 'Norway' Brexit.

In fact, we worked and voted for various forms of soft Brexit when Boris Johnson and the ERG opposed *all* forms of Brexit at the time.

They opposed soft Brexit *and* May's hard Brexit.

https://twitter.com/BBCSimonJack/status/1336055796912754692

From the moment of the 2016 referendum there was a clear majority in the Commons and country for a soft Brexit.

But Theresa May prioritised Tory unity above the British economy. She whipped against a soft-Brexit, then said 'but there's no majority for an alternative'.

My blood is boiling at #PMQs

@BorisJohnson says care homes went into lockdown before the general population. WRONG.

Family visits stopped, but hospital discharges of *positive* residents CONTINUED.

Staff working between care homes CONTINUED.

This was not ‘lockdown’ Seven weeks ago today...SEVEN WEEKS...@BorisJohnson told me at #PMQs that care homes would get ‘all the PPE they need’ by the end of that week.

It never happened.

Still today many care homes struggle to source PPE.

I’m really, really pleased we’re massively upscaling testing. We’re at about 100k but crucially capacity still looks to be increasing.

As a politician something really fascinates me about how this happened:

What tool did @MattHancock rely on to get here? A ‘target’.

Read on 👇 Hancock said yesterday: “Setting stretching goals has a galvanising effect on everybody involved — it is a mission”

He’s right, but he hasn’t always thought this...

24 hours after @MattHancock said every symptomatic care home resident is being tested, this 👇

A local home where someone just died, 5 others symptomatic and unwell, staff self isolating...PHE refuse *any* more tests because their systems ‘are not yet established’ Over a month ago I told @BorisJohnson this was happening, he promised action.

Back then tests were rationed to 5 per home. Now, a month on, it’s less than that.

Promises were made but were simply not implemented and people are dying needlessly as a result.

For those of us who’ve tried to constructively engage with government for months on #COVID19, that @MattHancock interview was deeply concerning, for these reasons: First, he says in the first conversation he had with CMO he asked about the elderly.

Then why no action on the most obvious way to stop the disease entering homes: stopping care workers working in multiple homes & testing them?

Why no action at all on this? Nothing

My letter to @BorisJohnson.

There‘s only one way to keep care home residents safe: test workers and ensure #COVID19 never enters a home in the first place.

Right now some homes are petri-dishes for contagion within and between homes.

Staff are angels and heroes, but need help Care homes are being rationed to five tests per home. This is woeful and dangerous, but a symptom of the UK having too few tests available and a failure to upscale testing facilities fast enough.

If pubs and theatres are unsafe then government should close them. Customers should not be expected to make the hard decisions Number 10 seem incapable of right now. bbc.co.uk/news/uk-519175… I have been supportive of most government action during this crisis, but today’s announcements and statements have been ambiguous about testing strategy, pubs and entertainment.

I’m really concerned by talk of shutting down parliament over Covid-19.

Throughout history parliament has been *recalled* at times of crisis, not the opposite.

But there are sensible mitigation actions we could take, such as 👇 - Stop visitors, MP’s limited to one staff member onsite, limit contact between Lords and Commons and possibly even suspend the Lords due to the higher number of people at risk.

- Stop MPs official travel

It’s an important discussion to have but I resoectfully disagree with @SKinnock on this for two reasons.

1. We got Brexit seriously wrong before ‘People’s Vote’ was started

2. *The* biggest mistake came later

Let me explain 👇

https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1206555692401860608

We got Brexit wrong from day one, literally. Jeremy’s instinct was to get A50 submitted right away.

We should have launched a cross-party programme to understand what Leave voters expected from Brexit and why Remain voters were anxious, then settled on a unifying way forward

We lost badly to a thoroughly beatable Tory party.

Was it Brexit that did for us? 👇 Outriders in the media today act like Brexit is a natural disaster and Labour helpless bystanders caught in its path.

No!

Brexit is a political crisis that required a clear, strategic political response. Labour’s leadership and frontbench failed to provide it...

Been thinking a lot about the Lib Dem / SNP election bill.

Makes me really sad that after so much cross-party effort the first we hear of it was in the Sunday papers.

If they had consulted this is what I’d have said 👇 Brexit started with a referendum which needs a majority vote to win.

A general election could result in Remain / PV parties getting over 50% combined but unable to implement the policy.

Yet Johnson could win on 35% and use it as a mandate for his bad deal or no deal at all

I want to say something about living with acute dyslexia because Twitter can be a pretty unforgiving place for people with unseen challenges.

Every day I get picked up on something I write. Mostly it’s kindly or humorous which is appreciated.

Sometimes it’s sneering or brutal What’s it like? Imagine a car where the gearbox (my eyes) isn’t connected properly to the engine (brain).

Sometimes words are just shapes. However much I try to engage my brain, the connection just isn’t there. I can see the shape but it simply has no meaning.

Frustrating, huh

A confirmatory referendum would resolve Brexit.

A general election would be poisoned by Brexit.

It’s not a date, it’s a principle. All those parties weedling their way to an election have shown their true colours - party first, Brexit second, our country a very distant third.