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As one European country after another approaches a second coronavirus lockdown, Boris Johnson is walking a narrow path between scientific evidence and political pressure.
Opinion polls reveal a British public eager to impose severe restrictions to suppress the virus, but conservative supporters believe the government has already gone too far.
“The reality is that Conservative MPs don’t see the future struggles of the NHS in their correspondence. They are seeing the current struggles of companies in their constituencies, the mental health issues of the people, all the very high costs are what makes it to their inboxes, while perhaps the ministers are being told what will happen. with the NHS if we don’t repress. And that’s where this tension comes from, ”Wycombe MP Steve Baker told The Irish Times.
During Theresa May’s Brexit struggles, Baker chaired the Eurosceptic European Research Group (ERG), which made her life hell and ultimately ousted her from office. In recent weeks, he has played a leading role in the conservative rebellion against Johnson’s coronavirus policy, which forced the government to accept increased parliamentary scrutiny of the lockdown measures.
The prime minister’s strategy is based on two big bets
“I have a certain ability to organize things in parliament,” he said.
Baker is in the libertarian wing of the party, but the secondary insurrection extends much further, with the chairman of the 1922 committee, Graham Brady, one of its leading figures.
Johnson introduced a three-tier system of local locks this week, but rejected his scientific advisers’ request for a nationwide “circuit breaker” lockdown lasting two to three weeks.
‘Joy comes to pass’
Labor leader Keir Starmer’s call for such a shutdown, accompanied by a promise of Labor votes to offset any Conservative rebellions in parliament, has made Johnson’s position even more uncomfortable.
“The prime minister’s strategy is based on two big bets. The first bet is a successful trial of the phase three vaccine. And the second bet is that, if the vaccine is successful, it will be able to vaccinate the vulnerable population again in time to keep the economy still sustained by QE. [quantitative easing] and cheap credit, ”Baker said.
“The Parliamentary Conservative Party does not want to divide. I am very deliberately not setting up the usual structures that I might have made for Euroscepticism. We don’t want to divide. We want to support the prime minister. “
‘Boris Johnson and the people around him must accept that the EU must receive strong guarantees’
Last month, Baker compared Johnson to King Theodon in The Lord of the Rings, under the spell of advisers like Dominic Cummings and needing to be awakened before “joy comes true in the kingdom.” He remains convinced that the prime minister must free himself from Cummings and the veterans of the Vote Leave campaign who favor tough and polarizing political discourse.
“You know, there is also a poetry. Boris doesn’t want to be where he is. This is not who he is. He is a charismatic visionary, full of fun, loves his freedom. I wanted to spend a lot of money changing the country. All that money has now skyrocketed, ”he said.
Limited support
Baker has withdrawn from the Brexit debate and stressed that whatever happens in the coming weeks of negotiations with the EU, “this Brexit will be Boris’s Brexit and he is nailed that it is his.” He would rather leave the transition period with a deal and believes Britain should give the EU the comfort it needs on state aid rules to control state subsidies to companies.
“Boris Johnson and the people around him must accept that the EU must receive strong guarantees on state aid, that we will not distort our markets or export those distortions. That is not the same as submitting to the jurisdiction of the [EU] Commission and its state aid legislation, what we cannot do. If it does, the Conservative Party will split in two, ”he says.
“But the corollary of that is that the European Union must accept that we are serious, that we do not want to be members.”
Baker rejects the comparison between Johnson’s situation on coronavirus and May’s on Brexit on the grounds that Tory MPs were more evenly divided in Europe. On the coronavirus, he claims that support for government policy is limited to a handful of ministers and advisers, including Cummings, Michael Gove and Health Secretary Matt Hancock.
“Out of 365 members of parliament, I think probably 350 or more oppose this strategy,” he said.
“So it won’t be like Theresa May, because if the final straw and he is on the wrong side of the discussion, it will be over very quickly for him.”
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