UK coronavirus live: Boris Johnson expected to reveal his next moves on local restrictions and Brexit | Politics

Good Morning. Boris Johnson faces two major, and largely unrelated decisions today, and it’s not 100% clear in which direction they will go. Your administration has multiple flaws, but you can’t complain that it ever gets boring.

First, what are you going to do about areas of England with high Covid where stricter restrictions need to be imposed (more or less everyone agrees) but local leaders will not agree? It is mainly Greater Manchester and Lancashire, and there is a deadlock right now. Here’s our story overnight.

And secondly, what are you going to do with the trade talks between the UK and the EU? In September Johnson said: “If we cannot agree [15 October, the EU summit]So I don’t see that there is a free trade agreement between us, and we should both accept it and move on. “Well, that was yesterday, this is not an agreement, and yesterday the EU leaders issued a statement that was relatively intransigent. Johnson has to decide whether to implement his threat from last month to walk away or to keep talking.

One way or another, we will hear from him today. There will be an information session in the Downing Street lobby. You may record a clip for the stations. Or we can even have a press conference. Issue 10 won’t say if one is scheduled, but this morning Downing Street posted this on Twitter, usually a sign that a press conference is imminent.

Apart from all that, it is also a key day for Covid data. Here is the agenda.

9.30 am: The ONS publishes reports on Covid mortality rates by ethnicity and on the social impact of the coronavirus.

12:00 h: The ONS publishes its weekly Covid infection survey, considered one of the most reliable guides on the prevalence of the virus in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

12:15 pm: Nicola Sturgeon, the Prime Minister of Scotland, will hold her regular briefing on the coronavirus.

12:15 pm: Mark Drakeford, the Welsh Prime Minister, conducts a briefing on the coronavirus.

Time to eat: The government publishes its latest estimate of R, the reproduction number, and the growth rate of Covid.

Politics Live has doubled as the UK’s coronavirus live blog for some time and given the way the Covid crisis overshadows everything, this will continue for the foreseeable future. But we’ll cover non-Covid political stories, like Brexit, and if they seem more important or more interesting, they will take precedence.

Here’s our global coronavirus live blog.

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