PM ‘no longer trusted’ on Covid, says Labour

Labour’s shadow culture secretary Lucy Powell has claimed the prime minister’s leadership is floundering, ahead of this evening’s vote on Plan B restrictions, in which around 70 Conservative MPs are expected to rebel.

“The prime minister has just become somebody unable to persuade his own party, unable to persuade the country, because people have sort of lost trust in his judgment,” the MP for Manchester Central argued.

She went on: “Because they don’t feel that he’s putting himself through the same hardship, and to the same rules, that the rest of us are. And that’s been an incredibly unfortunate last few weeks for all of us, really. That the prime minister of the country is no longer trusted on some of these key issues.

Ms Powell said she didn’t see this [today’s vote] in party political terms at all. We take our responsibilities as opposition incredibly seriously, and what we will always do is put public health ,we will put the scientific advice, and we will put the national interest first. So we’re not looking at party political calculations”

When quizzed over the implications of vaccine passports for civil liberties, she explained: “This doesn’t come naturally to any of us. These are not measures that any of us came into politics and into parliament to bring in. But what I would say is, I mean, firstly, these are Covid passes, so they’re not vaccine passports. You can take a lateral flow test before going to a large event instead.”

“But we have to think about the civil liberties of everybody, not just a small few who don’t want to use a vaccine or Covid pass,” she argued, going on: “And all of our civil liberties are potentially at risk if we don’t all behave in a way that can suppress this variant and suppress this virus at this point in time. Because it might affect all of our civil liberties going into into the new year.”