Inside Politics – Coronavirus special: Boris Johnson lets single people form ‘support bubbles’

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Adam Forrest
Thursday 11 June 2020 07:58 BST
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Coronavirus: PM announces two households can form 'social bubble'

A revolutionary revision of the past is going on right now. Statues, place names, Disney rides, old movies and TV shows are all being scrapped or pushed to undergo change. Boris Johnson has shown no appetite to use the present moment to apologise for his past use of the phrases “watermelon smiles” and “piccaninnies”. And he isn’t ready to admit to any past mistakes in his handling of the coronavirus crisis. “It’s too early to judge ourselves”, the PM said. Johnson is focused instead on the immediate future – offering single people the chance to form support bubbles. I’m Adam Forrest, and welcome to The Independent’s daily Inside Politics briefing during the pandemic.

Inside the bubble

Our political correspondent Ashley Cowburn on what to look out for today:

Labour have tabled an urgent question asking communities secretary Robert Jenrick to make a statement in the Commons about his recent intervention in a planning decision. It follows a donation by Richard Desmond to the Conservative party two weeks after Jenrick overruled one local authority to approve an apartment complex in east London proposed by Desmond’s company.

Daily briefing

LOVELY BUBBLY: Boris Johnson revealed a further change to lockdown rules allowing single people in England – such as a grandparent living on their own or two single people living on their own – to form a “support bubble” with another household from Saturday. It’s characterised in many this morning’s papers as the end of the “sex ban” since no social distancing is necessary when a bubble is formed. However, people who are shielding cannot form a bubble and anyone developing symptoms of the coronavirus means everyone in a bubble will have to self-isolate for 14 days. Johnson also announced a “catch-up” programme for pupils in England following the failure to get primary schools back before September. Keir Starmer accused the PM of “flailing around” and creating an avoidable “mess” on the issue when they clashed in the Commons.

THE LIFTING FOG: The former government advisor Professor Neil Ferguson has caused another stir by telling MPs that introducing lockdown measures a week earlier “would have reduced the final death toll by at least a half” – suggesting around 25,000 lives could have been saved. England’s chief medical officer Chris Whitty was also in reflective mood at the latest Downing Street briefing. He said the failure to have mass testing in place early in the crisis was the largest of “a long list” of regrets. He said it left the nation “trying to see our way through the fog”. Johnson said all workers coming into close contact with the public would now get tests. Elsewhere, Matt Hancock said he did not know when the NHS test and trace app would be ready. He claimed contact-tracing “better done” by humans than apps.

NOT-SO-RESPECTFUL DISTANCE: Tory MPs who have been politely urging the government to cut the two-metre social distancing rule to one metre are losing patience. Iain Duncan Smith said the hospitality sector “simply can’t make a living at two metres”, while Damian Green told Newsnight ditching the two-metre guidance would be the “single biggest change” ministers could make. Is there a change coming? The chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance said the distance was “not a scientific rule”, while The Telegraph reports that the PM wants to scrap it “by September”. Meanwhile, the government’s popularity continues to slide. A YouGov poll shows fewer than a third of voters now approve of the government’s performance, after its ratings fell for a fifth week in succession.

HISTORY OF VIOLENCE: Donald Trump said he would “not even consider” changing the names of military bases named after Confederate generals. The US president tweeted about the bases – named for slave-holding southern states’ military heroes – being part of a “Great American heritage, a history of Winning, Victory and Freedom”. Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for monuments to the Confederacy in the US Capitol building to be pulled down. “Their statues pay homage to hate, not heritage. They should be removed.” Meanwhile, Johns Hopkins University figures showed the number of coronavirus cases in the US has surpassed the two million mark.

STREET ILLEGAL: Australian officials have warned Black Lives Matter supporters they could be fined or arrested if they breach coronavirus restrictions to take to the streets. Victoria state officials confirmed one of eight new cases of Covid-19 was a man who attended a weekend rally in Melbourne. Officials said he was unlikely to have contracted the disease there, but was potentially infectious. Prime minister Scott Morrison claimed demonstrations – which have refocused attention on the mistreatment of indigenous Australians – have delayed plans to ease social distancing restrictions. More unauthorised protests are planned for Friday.

MAGIC OF BOLLYWOOD: Amitabh Bachchan, one of the biggest stars in Bollywood, has arranged for flights for 700 migrant workers stuck in Mumbai during India’s lockdown. According to the PTI news agency, Bachchan arranged for four special charter flights. The fate of migrant workers has been a huge issue since the crisis began. Hundreds of thousands are believed to have walked hundreds of miles from one Indian city to another to get back home. Meanwhile the country has reported a record of nearly 10,000 new coronavirus cases, with health services in the worst-hit cities of Mumbai, New Delhi and Chennai swamped by the rising infections.

On the record

“The backlash against Black Lives Matter demonstrators and black MPs who’ve come out in support of direct action is another reminder of why these protests had to happen in the first place.”

Labour’s Bell Ribeiro-Addy on the abuse black female MPs have received.

From the Twitterati

“Prof Neil Ferguson saying tens of thousands have died of Covid 19 because govt did not lock down earlier (when Italy was already in crisis) should not come as a surprise given Sir David King … and others have been saying it for weeks.”

Channel 4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy on the failures of March…

“Just imagine how many lives might have been saved if the Tories has elected someone serious such as Rory Stewart instead of Boris Johnson.”

…and columnist Ian Birrell on the failures of last year.

Essential reading

Tom Peck, The Independent: It’s not ‘too early’ for Johnson to admit he’s wrong – he’s just too much of a coward

Jess Phillips, The Independent: We need action on the UK’s shameful failing of domestic abuse victims

Stephen Bush, New Statesman: What Sadiq Khan gets right, and wrong, about statues

Ezra Klein, Vox: America is moving left, and so is the media

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