Tony Blair says he would have voted for Johnson’s Brexit deal

The entire country must be under a Covid-19 vaccination program, according to Tony Blair. He also admitted that he would have endorsed Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal in the House of Commons.

Mr Blair made the call when he urged ministers to completely change the UK’s strategy to fight the virus.

Speaking on Times Radio, the former prime minister insisted that a target should be set to increase vaccinations to five million per week.

It is presented as a new document, ‘A Plan for Vaccine Acceleration’, published by the Tony Blair Institute.

He told Times Radio: “Because of this new variant, we have to completely change our strategy in my opinion.

“And the document we publish today shows how we can get up to three million, I think we could get up to three million a week by the end of January, as long as vaccines are available, and they should be.

“Not just Pfizer and AstraZeneca, but also possibly with the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine that will also be launched.

“We should aim for up to three, four, five million a week.

“We need the whole country to undergo a very, very fast vaccination program because right now, as a result of this new variant, we have the choice between a severe blockade or vaccination.

“But there is no other option.”

Mr Blair also explained that until vaccination is “scaled up” to the entire population, the UK will remain in a severe lockdown.

He said: “If I were the prime minister right now, I would be saying to the Downing Street team: ‘I need you to give me a plan to get this up to five million (vaccines) a week.’

“As long as we have the vaccine available and we should have it available. I mean AstraZeneca, not this week or next week, but next week, you can get up to two million doses a week, that’s just AstraZeneca.

Absorbent

“They could probably do more if they knew that the system is capable of absorbing the amount of vaccines they would produce.

“And then, as I say, it should get clearance for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine by the end of January, which is when they complete their testing and then we should be able to get it up and running in February as well.

“So if we really decided to do this, I think we could, and the alternative is that we just continue with this blockade and you have seen the problems that we have in the schools, but just multiply them across the country. for workplaces, for each type of activity we carry out.

“It is quite obvious now that until we get vaccination on a large scale and not only with the elderly, but the entire population, then we will be in a severe blockade with all the damage that this causes.”

On the return of primary schools in England, Blair said that unless there is a “radical change” in the vaccination program, it would be difficult to see how the schools would remain open.

Boris Johnson previously insisted that schools are safe for students to return to.

Blair said: “On the one hand, it is a disaster for school-age children, particularly the poorest school-age children if they don’t get an education.

“But it is also completely understandable for teachers and parents to say, not because they believe their children … the risk to children is very, very small, it is the risk to transmission rates and it is the risk to teachers and the parents, and therefore, for those whom your parents mingle with.

“So for all those reasons, it just emphasizes once again why it is so important to start vaccination.

“Otherwise, day by day and week by week you will face a very, very difficult decision as to whether to make more school closings and thereby deprive more children of educational opportunities or whether to leave schools open but they run the risk of further spreading the disease. “

Blair added: “Unless there is a radical change of a radical nature in the vaccination program, it is very difficult to see how it is going to keep the schools open.”

Brexi

The comments came as former Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair said that decisions for Britain have always been up to the British people, as he compared Brexit to “shock therapy.”

This morning he revealed that he would have joined Labor leader Keir Starmer in voting “tactically” for the government’s trade deal if he were still a MP.

When asked if he would have voted for the agreement in the Commons, he told Times Radio on Sunday: “I would have supported the leader [Keir Starmer] in this. I mean, look, it’s a tactical question for the Labor Party because the problem is … that their opponents can say that if they don’t support the deal, then they are voting for a no-deal. “

He continued: “I would have supported the leader in that. Look, there was a case to abstain and there was a case to … vote in favor because the alternative is not an agreement. “

He added: “I don’t think it is particularly important to the Labor Party in any way. I think what matters is that we are still in a position where we are pointing out what the problems are with this deal. “

Shock therapy

On the subject of Brexit he also said: “There is nothing that Brexit is going to do for Britain alone. It will leave us economically weaker and with less political influence.

“So the only way I make sense of Brexit is to treat it as shock therapy, that then we realize that we have to make certain important decisions as a country, we have to set a new agenda for the future, but that goes to be difficult to do.

“The truth of the matter is these so-called European regulatory freedoms that Brexit is supposed to give us, they don’t really give us anything at all.

“Because the truth is that decisions for Britain depend on and have always been in the hands of the British people and the British government of their choice.

“But what does it mean, if we continue to have the same old post-Brexit political debate that we had before Brexit, we are in a lot of trouble as a country.”

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