Can Boris Johnson Stop The ‘Summer Recovery’ From Turning Into A Stormy Autumn?
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Appy days are here again?
Boris Johnson is having to firefight on several fronts at the moment. Some of his own MPs are in revolt about his ‘Rule of Six’. Some are furious about his ‘last resort’ plans to break international law. Others are demanding rapid improvement in test-and-trace, a priority starkly underlined today when the UK’s crucial Covid ‘R number’ rose above 1.
But as a man who prefers to see the glass half full rather than half empty, there were three welcome developments for the prime minister in just a few hours: the signing of a new UK-Japan trade deal, GDP figures showing the economy bouncing back and - most timely of all - an actual launch date for the long-awaited contact-tracing app.
With an alarming rise in the R number showing virus cases doubling every eight days across the country, the app could not come soon enough. In what feels like a smart move (not least to increase its take-up by the public), the app will allow pubs, restaurants, hairdressers, cinemas to log the details of all customers who scan a simple QR code on entry.
Given that contact tracing rates in the community are much lower than those for hospitals and care homes, let’s hope the new app (launched on September 24) will have an impact. The testing bottlenecks are still a here-and-now problem that Matt Hancock and Dido Harding have to sort out, but an app brings an extra weapon to the knife fight against corona.
The Japan deal has great symbolism because it is the first the UK has signed one as an “independent” nation (copyright Liz Truss) and will help car manufacturers and others. It could prove a stepping stone to the much bigger prize of joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) with lots of Asian nations.
A dose of realism came when it emerged that the deal was worth a tiny amount to overall...
