RED BOX | PATRICK MAGUIRE

Jabs for all, says Boris — but will it be enough to beat Omicron?

Five things you need to know this morning

Monday December 13 2021, 9.00am, The Times

1. Say hello, wave goodbye
Merry Christmas from Boris Johnson: the prime minister’s got you a booster jab. That was the top line of last night’s gloomy statement to the nation from No 10. No new restrictions, as some had feared, but an unprecedented acceleration of the vaccination programme as what Johnson called a “tidal wave of Omicron” crests over Britain. Every adult in the country will be offered a third jab by the end of the year, NHS staff will be redeployed to get needles in arms and troops are on standby. But will it be enough?

On Times Radio this morning Sajid Javid, the health secretary, sounded even more downbeat than the PM. “It is spreading at a phenomenal rate... two doses of the vaccine are not enough, but three would give you excellent protection against symptomatic infection,” he said of Omicron. “The one thing we don’t know enough about yet is the severity of this... even if fewer people are ill as a percentage of those infected, because the total number of people infected is likely to be so large, a million people by the end of this month, then lots of people will be sadly hospitalised.”

How many people is lots of people? As Tom Whipple notes in yet another essential analysis in today’s paper – as many as 8,000 daily admissions, twice as many as last January’s peak.

That, unquestionably, would overwhelm the NHS. As Chris Hopson, the chief executive of NHS Providers, warned on Sky News earlier, the health service is “busier than it’s ever been before”. Hopson said: “That’s obviously a worry because it’s before the traditional winter peak in January and it’s before any cases really coming into hospitals and we are now starting to do in terms of Omicron cases, so we’re already at beyond full stretch.”

All of which makes you wonder whether boosters will be enough. But, for now at least, ministers are still unwilling to entertain speculation about a plan C – or indeed plan D – of more stringent restrictions. As Javid told Times Radio: “The British people are very smart... people are already changing their behaviour.” No 10 could yet be forced to change its own.

2. Rebel rebel
Rising almost as quickly as Omicron infection rates: the number of Conservative MPs who have declared that they will vote against government plans for vaccine passports tomorrow. The Spectator’s running tally is at 71 this morning – and Tory sources suspect the final figure will be north of 80. Two things to note, by the way, about the rebels. Not only has their number already exceeded the 54 required to trigger a vote of no confidence in the prime minister, it also includes more than a dozen MPs first elected in 2019. Discipline has almost entirely broken down.

That much is clear from the tone and tenor of exchanges on Tory WhatsApp over the weekend. Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, spent much of Saturday night having it out with the former minister Jackie Doyle-Price over vaccine passports in the group for all Conservative MPs, to the bafflement of colleagues weighing up how to vote on Tuesday. “No other cabinet minister does this,” one sniffed.

Attempts to win hearts and minds have fallen on deaf ears. Maria Caulfield, the health minister, sent colleagues a lengthy dispatch from her second job as a nurse: “Hi all if it helps with the vote next week I have just finished a 15hr shift on the wards. It is crazily busy and we have Covid hospitalisations this weekend... I don’t know how Omicron will effect our hospital numbers but we are struggling with Delta right now.” One would-be rebel called it “emotional blackmail”.

Nor are threats from the whips cutting any ice. In the WhatsApp group for the Covid Recovery Group of lockdown sceptics last night, the MP Laurence Robertson – the prime minister’s trade envoy to Zambia and Angola – wrote: “My whip is threatening me with losing my (unpaid) trade envoy role. What he doesn’t realise in such threats push me the other way. And because of red list restrictions I’m being asked to do the job with one arm and one leg tied behind my back anyway!”

Tough crowd. And that’s before we even think about the half-a-dozen frontbenchers reportedly planning to resign. No wonder this morning’s Telegraph reports that Boris Johnson wants to recruit a “hard man” ally of Sir Lynton Crosby to bring MPs back into line.

3. What the voters think
The question of whether the public have a) noticed or b) care about the stories of desk drinking and Zoom quizzing that have dogged the prime minister all week has been answered pretty conclusively by the polls, it seems.

Yesterday’s Observer carried an Opinium survey that gave Labour their biggest lead since 2014 – nine points (though at this point we might pause to reflect on what happened to undermine Ed Miliband’s chances of winning a general election that year).

It isn’t an outlier. Three other polls over the weekend – from YouGov, Savanta ComRes, and Focaldata – all show clear daylight between Labour and the Conservatives. But just as, if not more striking than these pronounced shifts in headline voting intention is the implosion of Boris Johnson’s approval figures: down from minus 21 per cent with Opinium a fortnight ago to minus 35 per cent yesterday. Leaders seldom find themselves able to recover when public opinion turns so sharply.

4. Losing here?
While we’re on the subject, there’s another set of numbers doing the rounds that probably merit a mention. Lib Dem canvass data reportedly shows them just one point behind the Tories – on 39 per cent to 40 per cent – in North Shropshire with less than 72 hours before polling day.

Treat that with due caution – I’ve yet to detect the genuine panic Tories felt in the days before the Lib Dems won Chesham and Amersham this time, and locally Labour insist that they are in second place. But to hear the education secretary Nadhim Zahawi admit that the government could find itself the victim of a “protest vote” on Times Radio yesterday suggested things could well be too close for comfort.