Fears of a Tory revolt over vaccine passports has put Labour in a unique position

Now that the Tory rebels are growing in strength, Starmer has the tantalising prospect of defeating the government on a measure, writes Sean O'Grady

The Labour leader says that he is ready to support vaccination passports for mass-attendance events (AFP/Getty)

Five days ago Keir Starmer stated that the Labour Party opposed using vaccine passports as a condition for entry to “crowded venues”, presumably including events such as football matches and music festivals.

Now the Labour leader says that he is ready to support vaccination passports for mass-attendance events – but going further than Boris Johnson currently proposes, so the passport would also be supplanted with the additional safeguard of a negative Covid test. Thus, the leader of the opposition has gone from attacking the government from a more libertarian stance than Johnson to attacking Johnson for not being restrictive enough.

To be fair to Starmer, he has been consistent that access to healthcare, food shopping and essential services should not be conditional on a so-called vaccine passport and he has stressed throughout the need for a “pragmatic” approach, which is a necessary alibi against charges of inconsistency.

However, a certain “Captain Hindsight” element seems to have entered into Labour’s policymaking. Back in April Jon Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, took the view that passports would be “discriminatory” and was “sceptical” about them. By definition, they are still discriminatory but the shadow health secretary presumably thinks them worth having now – but only with a negative test.

Labour’s tactics have also been puzzling, if not contradictory. For most of the pandemic, Labour’s general tendency towards caution meant that they supported the government in imposing lockdowns and when relaxations of the rules were periodically postponed. Thus Labour (and usually the other opposition parties) have consistently helped the government comfortably survive revolts among its own backbenchers when the opportunity to inflict a defeat on the government arose, though usually it was still unlikely. Labour enjoyed watching the government squirm, but safe in the knowledge that the policy would get through the Commons comfortably.

However, now that the Tory rebels are growing in strength to around 40, sufficient to defeat the government, Labour has the tantalising prospect of defeating the government on a measure – the passports – that Labour does not think is in the national interest. The Liberal Democrats have come out as militantly anti-vaccine passport, and the SNP are considering their options, both in power in Scotland and in opposition at Westminster.

But the prospect of actually defeating the government on a key public health measure has coincided with an apparent change of mind on tactics. Starmer now says that he will wait to see what precise measures the government puts forward. The action of the negative test requirement would enable Starmer to argue against the government and either force them to adopt the Labour policy, or to vote for the policy as the lesser evil. Given public opinion and the attitude of public sector trades unions, it seems unlikely, and would look bizarre, that Labour would want to abandon vaccine passports for crowded venues just because the government policy isn’t tough enough.

In any case, such machinations and parliamentary ambushes will need to await the return of the Commons on 6 September. By then events may have overtaken the vaccine passports debate, either as case levels continue to fall or if they start to soar once again as schools reopen. It is true that ministers have been all over the place on vaccine passports ever since they were first trialled in Israel and suggested for Britain many months ago.

It is also the case that Labour has been almost as unsure about what it wishes to do, similarly balancing the national interest with short term party advantage, all the time with a keen eye on (divided) public opinion. On both sides, there seems genuine uncertainty about what to do next, but politicians tend not to admit to such human frailty.