Inside Politics: Matt Hancock puts Leicester back into lockdown

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Tuesday 30 June 2020 07:59 BST

Matt Hancock announces lockdown to be extended in Leicester

Britain’s latest lockdown failure saw hundreds of teenagers follow YouTuber Canking through the streets of Birmingham like the Pied Piper. The 17-year-old star became famous for challenging people to punch him in the face. Matt Hancock – who has become something of a social media punching bag during the coronavirus crisis – is more concerned by events in the east Midlands. The health secretary has announced a strict local lockdown for Leicester, forcing retailers to shut up shop once again. I’m Adam Forrest, and welcome to The Independent’s daily Inside Politics briefing.

Inside the bubble

Our chief political correspondent John Rentoul on what to look out for today:

The main event is Boris Johnson’s speech in Dudley about “bouncing” or “building” in a generally forward direction. In Westminster, shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds has put down a sharply-pointed urgent question to Priti Patel about the appointment of David Frost, a political adviser rather than a civil servant, as national security adviser. And shadow justice secretary David Lammy will ask when the government will enact the findings from his review into the way the criminal justice system treats black and ethnic minority people.

Daily briefing

LOCK AND A HARD PLACE: Leicester’s local lockdown means non-essential shops will be shut again from today, schools will close from Thursday and the city will not be enjoying England’s “Super Saturday” pub re-openings. Announcing the measures in the Commons on Monday night, Matt Hancock said he recommended the people of Leicester “stay at home as much as you can” after the spike in Covid-19 infections. The city accounted for 10 per cent of all the UK’s positive cases over the past week, the health secretary said. After Boris Johnson talked about “whacking moles” as soon as they pop up, Labour’s shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth pointed out the outbreak was known of 11 days ago. The government would have to speed up a bit, he suggested, “otherwise we risk no moles getting whacked”.

INTO HIS ARMS: Johnson is speaking in Dudley today and will unveil plans to bring forward £5bn for infrastructure projects, including £900m for projects in 2020 and 2021. The government is ready to “put its arms around people at a time of crisis”, the PM will say. But not everyone is convinced there’s anything new here. Lib Dem leadership candidate Layla Moran said it looked like “a rehash of manifesto pledges”. Labour have warned that he PM’s “go it alone bravado” on Brexit will make it harder for the UK to rebuild the economy. The opposition party has criticised the government’s decision to leave Eurofound, a major EU employment agency studying the impact of coronavirus on jobs. Andy McDonald, shadow employment secretary, told The Independent cutting ourselves off “will undermine our ability to get to grips with the pandemic”.

BREXITEER BUM STEER? News of Sir Mark Sedwill’s imminent departure from cabinet secretary and national security adviser roles has prompted dismay. Top military, security and diplomatic figures condemned the “appalling and unnecessary” briefings which preceded his departure. No 10 officials have been saying privately the cabinet secretary role will go to a Brexiteer, and there is anger that Eurosceptic negotiator David Frost will take up the national security job. General Sir Richard Barrons, former chief of Joint Forces Command, told The Independent: “It is a move for chumocracy. Someone in Boris Johnson’s inner circle is being moved higher up the inner circle.” Yet the PM played down claims he wanted Brexiteers in top positions. “The great thing about the civil service is that nobody should know [their views], least of all me,” he said.

BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE: NHS leaders and politicians from every major party have called for change in the approach to testing after The Independent exposed serious concerns over the laboratory network. Jeremy Hunt, chair of the health select committee, said our “vitally important investigation” showed the “critical importance of speed in turning around test results – and that the centralised structures set up were initially too cumbersome to deliver this reliably”. Elsewhere, education secretary Gavin Williams said parents who don’t send their children back to schools in England this September will face fines. “There will be many frightened and anxious parents out there,” said Geoff Barton, head of the ASCL head teachers’ union. And transport secretary Grant Shapps has officially ended the universally-unpopular quarantine on UK arrivals just three weeks after it was imposed.

ELECTORAL COLLEGE DROPOUT? Even in the darkest of days there is hope. Donald Trump may drop out of the 2020 race if he thinks he has no chance of winning, a Republican operative told Fox News. The report cites several GOP insiders worried about Trump’s abysmal polling. It comes as Iran issued an arrest warrant for the US president. The US special representative for Iran has dismissed it as a stunt, while Trump has stayed quiet on the matter. For now. Elsewhere, Arizona’s governor Doug Ducey has ordered bars, gyms and cinemas to shut down again for at least 30 days because of a big spike in Covid-19 infections (more than 3,000 cases in seven days of the last 10). Ducey described the state’s virus data as “brutal.”

TRANS-EUROPE ACCESS: The EU has published a list of 14 countries whose citizens will be allowed in from 1 July – including Canada, Australia, Japan and South Korea. The US and Brazil are among the major nations excluded. Brussels said China could soon be added to the “safe” list, if Beijing comes up with reciprocal arrangements for EU travellers. If the lifting of travel bans suggest progress, there was a grim warning from the World Health Organisation that the worst of the pandemic could be yet to come. “Although many countries have made some progress, globally the pandemic is actually speeding up,” said WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who criticised countries yet to introduce reliable contact-tracing programmes.

On the record

“We all want this to be over. We all want to get on with our lives. But the hard reality is this is not even close to being over.”

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on the pandemic.

From the Twitterati

“Lessons must also be learnt from the handling of Leicester spike. Govt was too slow getting Council even basic postcode data which is essential to tackling the problem.”

Labour’s Leicester West MP Liz Kendall says government was too slow…

“If we’re going to have local lockdowns (sympathies to Leicester) will there also be local furlough extensions? What happens if you unexpectedly can’t get to your job now (schools/nurseries shut)?”

…while The Guardian’s Gaby Hinsliff worries about the local economic impact.