Evening Standard Comment: Perilous times for London — and for Boris Johnson

The Omicron tidal wave is coming. Covid cases in London are accelerating at their fastest rate since March 2020 while Professor Graham Medley, chairman of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, has warned that the new variant will infect “10 times more people” in the capital in the next month than Delta would have.

In this moment of peril, one-third of Londoners remain completely unvaccinated, leaving themselves at risk of serious illness and placing even greater pressure on the NHS.

Also in the virus’s favour is the decision of 100 Conservative MPs to defy the whip and vote against what is sometimes termed “vaccine passports” but is more accurately a “Covid passport”, in that a negative lateral flow test is sufficient to gain entry to relevant spaces.

Covid passports are a moderate policy, one of many tools at our disposal to slow down the spread and keep our economy open. That the measure passed only with Labour support tells us two things.

First, that Boris Johnson’s authority has taken a major, perhaps irrevocable, hit. And second, that any Tory leader will now struggle to reintroduce further restrictions whatever the Covid data.

The public broadly supports reasonable measures like Covid passports, and so Labour is more in line with voters than a sizeable element within the Conservative Party. In bailing Johnson out, Keir Starmer can also credibly claim to have put nation before short-term partisan gain.

Having strengthened his front bench and facing a Government in disarray, Starmer now has the opportunity to set out a viable alternative government.

With a difficult by-election tomorrow and the continuing fallout from this significant act of rebellion, there is no doubt that the Prime Minister is also facing perilous times.