MPs back Covid passes in England despite huge Tory rebellion

[Eugene]

Also: Boris Johnson sees record rebellion from his own Conservative Party on covid policies (Washington Post)

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Source: BBC

MPs back Covid passes in England despite huge Tory rebellion

15 December 2021

Boris Johnson has won backing for Covid passes in England, despite the biggest revolt by Tory MPs since he became PM.

A total of 99 Conservatives voted against the government, but the measure was passed by a majority of 243 thanks to Labour support.

So NHS Covid passes, showing a recent negative test or full vaccination, must be shown to get into many large venues, including nightclubs, from Wednesday.

MPs also voted to back compulsory face masks in most indoor settings.

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Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-59659851

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Source: Washington Post

Boris Johnson sees record rebellion from his own Conservative Party on covid policies

By William Booth and Karla Adam
December 14, 2021 at 4:03 p.m. EST

LONDON — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has mostly been able to do what he wants since his Conservative Party won a historic majority of seats in Parliament, but on Tuesday he faced a massive rebellion from his own side, as lawmakers came out against his proposals to head off an exploding number of coronavirus infections driven by the new omicron variant.

Johnson wants people to work from home if they can, wear face coverings in more settings and, most controversially, prove they are fully vaccinated or have had a negative coronavirus test before they can enter large, crowded gatherings, both indoors and out — like some company Christmas parties and sports events.

In a vote on “covid passes,” 99 Conservative lawmakers voted against Johnson’s measure, even more than the 70 to 80 who had earlier pledged to rebel. Another 17 Conservative lawmakers abstained.

The measure still passed easily, as did others, with support from the opposition Labour Party. But it was an embarrassing rebuke for Johnson — the largest rebellion he has seen since the December 2019 election and one of the biggest for a Conservative prime minister.

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/boris-johnson-tory-rebellion/2021/12/14/458ef4ca-5cea-11ec-b1ef-cb78be717f0e_story.html

[T_i_B]

1. My MP (Miriam Cates) is one of those who rebelled

I would take her concerns about freedom and the economy more seriously if she applied those concerns to all of the other government legislation wrecking our freedoms and trashing the economy.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. So did mine - Steve Brine, a former health minister

and normally moderate enough that he was suspended from the Tories for not being gung-ho enough about Brexit. Surprising to see him lining up with the wingnuts.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Desmond Swayne proves himself to be the Muhammad Ali of stupid - the stupidest of all time

Swayne is the Muhammad Ali of stupid. Not The Goat but The Stoat. The Stupidest Of All Time. And not merely The Stoat but The Stoat of Stoats.

It is occasionally argued that Ali stands alone for being the greatest in an era of greats. Other commonly agreed goats, like, say, Simone Biles or Tiger Woods, did their great deeds in comparatively quiet times. Swayne, on the other hand, not only exercises a stupidity that towers above the rest, he does so in the most stupid era there has ever been. There has, without question, never been a House of Commons this stupid, yet no one can lay a glove on him.
...
“In a typical winter’s day, between 200 and 350 people will die of flu,” he said. He glowered at the opposition benches and the government benches as he did this, at least acknowledging the fact that he was taking on both at once, the kind of thing that might give a man, or indeed single-celled organism, brief pause for thought. It was the kind of glower one imagines he might have practiced the night before. His little eyes probably bulged in just this way when he researched this little factoid on, say, the Office for National Statistics website, which will have shown it to be wildly inaccurate by, depending on how you break out the numbers, a factor of about 10. Then you have to consider the fact that, we’re almost two years into all this now, and so almost two full years since anyone sane dropped the flu comparisons for reasons that no sentient being should still be expected to type out.
...
It is, arguably, disappointing that Labour chose not to take this very big opportunity to make it very clear to the public, who have consistently and overwhelmingly been in favour of restrictions to contain the spread of Covid, that the Conservative Party is so utterly mad and so utterly dysfunctional that it couldn’t have won this kind of vote on its own. That it very clearly can’t, in short, be trusted to keep the people safe – the actual bear minimum requirement of any government.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/desmond-swayne-vaccine-passports-omicron-b1976083.html

Each time I've heard Swayne speak, I've genuinely wondered about his mental health. I think he really does have paranoid fantasies.

Marcus Fysh had compared the Government’s plans to Nazi Germany. Sir Desmond Swayne wasn’t to be outdone, suggesting that the UK Health Security Agency had been thought up by “Stalinist minds” in the “ministry of fear”.

https://inews.co.uk/opinion/nhs-staff-shortages-record-waiting-lists-tories-trouble-long-after-the-covid-rebellion-1352502

[Celerity]

4. All 99 Tory rebels on Covid passes

Jackie Doyle-Price (Teller)
Philip Hollobone (Teller)
Adam Afriyie
Lee Anderson
Shaun Bailey
Siobhan Baillie
Steve Baker
Harriett Baldwin
John Baron
Scott Benton
Bob Blackman
Peter Bone
Ben Bradley
Karen Bradley
Graham Brady
Andrew Bridgen
Steve Brine
Miriam Cates
Christopher Chope
Brendan Clarke-Smith
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
Tracey Crouch
Philip Davies
David Davis
Dehenna Davison
Jonathan Djanogly
Richard Drax
Iain Duncan Smith
Tobias Ellwood
Luke Evans
Liam Fox
Louie French
Richard Fuller
Marcus Fysh
Nusrat Ghani
Jo Gideon
Chris Grayling
Chris Green
Damian Green
James Grundy
Robert Halfon
Stephen Hammond
Mark Harper
John Hayes
Adam Holloway
Tom Hunt
Mark Jenkinson
David Jones
Simon Jupp
Alicia Kearns
Julian Knight
Greg Knight
Robert Largan
Andrea Leadsom
Edward Leigh
Andrew Lewer
Julian Lewis
Chris Loder
Mark Logan
Jonathan Lord
Tim Loughton
Craig Mackinlay
Anthony Mangnall
Karl McCartney
Stephen McPartland
Esther McVey
Stephen Metcalfe
Damien Moore
Robbie Moore
Anne Marie Morris
Holly Mumby-Croft
Robert Neill
Matthew Offord
Mark Pawsey
Mike Penning
John Penrose
Andrew Percy
Tom Randall
John Redwood
Laurence Robertson
Andrew Rosindell
Gary Sambrook
Bob Seely
Greg Smith
Henry Smith
Ben Spencer
Jane Stevenson
John Stevenson
Julian Sturdy
Robert Syms
Derek Thomas
Craig Tracey
Tom Tugendhat
Theresa Villiers
Christian Wakeford
Charles Walker
David Warburton
Giles Watling
William Wragg

8 Labour rebels who voted against Covid passes

Diane Abbott
Apsana Begum
Dawn Butler
Emma Lewell-Buck
Clive Lewis
Rebecca Long Bailey
Bell Ribeiro-Addy
Graham Stringer

Other MPs who opposed Covid passes

Caroline Lucas (Green)
Jeremy Corbyn (Ind)
Rob Roberts (Ind)

Lib Dem MPs voted against Covid passes

Alistair Carmichael
Wendy Chamberlain
Daisy Cooper
Tim Farron
Sarah Green
Wera Hobhouse
Christine Jardine
Layla Moran
Sarah Olney
Munira Wilson

DUP MPs who voted against Covid passes

Jeffrey M Donaldson
Paul Girvan
Carla Lockhart
Ian Paisley
Jim Shannon
Sammy Wilson