Is Boris Johnson being guided by the science or the Tory backbenchers?

As the calls for a rapid rollback of restrictions grow louder, Sean O’Grady considers what’s really behind the government’s decisions – and whether it’ll have implications at the ballot box

The CRG is irrelevant so far as Covid is concerned, but perhaps not so much for the political career of Boris Johnson (AFP/Getty)

Some 62 Conservative members of parliament in the Covid Recovery Group (CRG) have written to the prime minister demanding that Covid restrictions are lifted – for good – as soon as the over-50s have been vaccinated, which may be in a matter of weeks. They want all schools open on 8 March, and pubs and restaurants thriving again by Easter (a literally moveable feast this year, which starts on 1 April). As the daffodils come out, so will the British public, in this scenario. Boris Johnson is trying to deliver it, but he can’t give them a guarantee because the dates the CRG chose are obviously arbitrary, and we’ve been through too many abortive “freedoms days” before. If the CRG were put on God’s earth to make Mr Johnson look sensible, reasonable and driven by science, then the divine plan could not have been more immaculately conceived.

The CRG is yet another Tory parliamentary faction, this one led by Mark Harper, a former Tory chief whip, and Steve Baker, self-styled veteran Spartan of the Brexit wars, and fuelled by the kind of unrelenting chipiness that has caused so much trouble in recent years. Given their numbers, they easily have the ability to overturn the government’s majority and reject any fresh or renewed restrictions on personal and economic liberties that might be put to the House of Commons. Its membership comprises adamantine serial rebels, some with scant respect for the prime minister. Yet the CRG is irrelevant so far as Covid is concerned, but perhaps not so much for the political career of Boris Johnson.