Inside Politics: Matt Hancock scraps app, but promises reboot

The sequel to Avatar has resumed filming this week, while several other CGI-driven adventures – including Jurassic Park 6, Mission: Impossible 7 and The Little Mermaid – are close to restarting. How Matt Hancock must wish CGI technology could come along and save his messy adventures in contact-tracing mobile applications. Our desperate-sounding health secretary has been forced to admit the test and trace app “won’t work”, but has promised the franchise will get a reboot. Are there any special effects which could give this government the illusion of competence? I’m Adam Forrest, and welcome to The Independent’s daily Inside Politics briefing.

Inside the bubble

Our political correspondent Lizzy Buchan on what to look out for today:

Brace for fresh drama in Labourland as the cross-factional Labour Together group publishes its post-mortem into the party’s electoral showing this morning. The report sets out findings from more than 11,000 people about what went wrong at the polls in December. Elsewhere, new figures from the Office for National Statistics will lay bare the impact of lockdown on the retail sector, and a separate set of data will reveal the number of coronavirus deaths during the peak of the pandemic by religion, ethnicity and disability.

Daily briefing

WHATEVER WORKS: Another big U-turn. The government has ditched its contact-tracing app and will try to work with Apple and Google on a new one. Hancock blamed the failure on Apple’s restrictions on Bluetooth by third-party apps. “Our app won’t work because Apple won’t change that system... and their app can’t measure distance well enough to a standard that we are satisfied with.” Trying his best to sound upbeat about collaborating on a new system, based on “decentralised” technology, Hancock said: “What matters is what works. Because what works will save lives.” But will this damn thing ever work? Test and trace chief Baroness Dido Harding said she would only approve Apple-Google tech if she deems it “fit for purpose”. Hancock added: “I am confident we will get there – we will put that cherry on Dido’s cake.” The Daily Mail is not convinced about the cherry, or the cake. Its front page today reads: “How many more Corona fiascos?”

ON BENDED KNEE: Foreign secretary Dominic Raab is taking a lot of flak for saying he wouldn’t take a knee for Black Lives Matter, describing it as “a symbol of subjugation, subordination”. Worse still, Raab said the gesture “seems to be taken” from Game of Thrones (ignorant of American football star Colin Kaepernick’s protests in 2016). Labour leader Keir Starmer said Raab was “probably already living to regret” his words, while Lib Dems’ acting leader Ed Davey advised Raab to offer a “fulsome apology”. It came as Boris Johnson welcomed Emmanuel Macron to No 10, where the PM told the French president it “makes no sense” to drag trade deal talks out until the autumn. Elsewhere, Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove said new NI-GB border controls shouldn’t be fully implemented because they would undermine support for the Brexit agreement among unionists.

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN: The big review into Labour’s whopping 2019 election defeat offers a gloomy warning: a new leader and getting past Brexit won’t be enough for Labour to win back power. The Labour Together report concluded there was a “mountain to climb” to regain power, and recommended the party build a coalition of voters “which spans generations, geographies and outlooks”. Attacking last December’s campaign (“the strategy was inadequate, the organisation was muddled and the execution was poor”), the post-match analysis said public dislike for Jeremy Corbyn played a “significant” role in the historic loss. Former leader Ed Miliband, one of the authors of the report, said “the Herculean task of winning the next election will require vision, imagination, discipline and unity”.

CATCH ME UP IF YOU CAN: The government is setting up a £1bn fund to help England’s children catch up with work missed during the pandemic. While schools will have £650m “to use at their discretion”, a further £350m will be used to give disadvantaged pupils access to tutors over the next year. Northern Ireland’s executive has announced that the two-metre social distancing rule will be cut to one metre in schools to allow “full classes to attend”. In Scotland, meanwhile, anyone who lives on their own is allowed to form a bubble with one other household from today. First minister Nicola Sturgeon set out other lockdown changes on the horizon. From Monday dentists can reopen, professional sport can resume behind closed doors and places of worship can reopen (for individual prayer). Non-essential shops in Scotland won’t reopen until 29 June.

DOCTORING THE TRUTH: Dr Anthony Fauci, the leading figure in the White House’s coronavirus taskforce, has said the US no longer needed widespread lockdowns. “I don’t think we’re going to be talking about going back to lockdown,” he told AFP, adding that the focus would now switch to disease control measures in “areas of the country that seem to be having a surge of cases”. Donald Trump will be pleased, but he clearly got bored of Covid a while ago. Trump shared a doctored CNN clip featuring a fake news segment about a “racist baby” on Twitter – and lashed out at the book-writing former national security adviser John Bolton “as disgruntled boring fool who only wanted to go to war”.

FOOD OF LOVE: People in Singapore reunited with lovers and friends as the city-state lifted almost all curbs on socialising, shopping and dining out after more than two months of strict lockdown. Many residents have been forbidden from mixing with those outside their families since early April. Singapore won plaudits for its early containment efforts before a surge in imported cases and outbreaks in cramped migrant dormitories saw it enforce one of the world’s most draconian lockdowns, with hefty fines and even jail for non-compliance. Infections topped 41,000 – one of Asia’s highest tallies.

On the record

“I take the knee for two people – the Queen and the missus when I asked her to marry me.”

Dominic Raab dismisses the idea of kneeling in protest.

From the Twitterati

“Matt Hancock today: “We backed both horses” – and worked on two apps at once. Department of Health told me in an on-record statement on May 18: “There is no alternative app.””

The Mirror’s Dan Bloom suggests the health secretary is confused…

“I think it’s time to turn Matt Hancock off & then on again.”

…while James O’Brien suggests a solution.

Essential reading

Nels Abby, The Independent: Dominic Raab’s obliviousness to Black Lives Matter feels so deliberate

Sean O’Grady, The Independent: Boris Johnson will bring the world together in laughter on Clown Force One

Kate Andrews, The Spectator: The coronavirus app was always doomed to fail

Kent Sepkowitz, CNN: The remarkable idiocy of holding a Trump rally in Tulsa

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