No Green Pass in UK: Parliament and entrepreneurs against. And the alternative is not closures
Boris Johnson puts the Green Pass in the attic. On Sunday, in front of BBC 's Andrew Marr Show cameras, health minister Sajid Javid confirmed the conservative government's no to vaccination passport, which will announce measures this week to tackle the pandemic during the upcoming fall and winter season. . “We don't have to do things just to do them,” Javid said, “and we don't have to do them because others do them,” he added.
Since taking over from Matt Hancock at the Department of Health, Javid, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, has been one of the most convinced "aperturists": there is not only the Covid emergency for the National Health Service (NHS), but there are others diseases that need treatment, especially oncological ones. It is estimated that due to the lockdowns for Covid almost 6 million British are queuing in hospitals for visits and operations that can no longer be postponed. There are no series A and series B patients for the NHS.
Yet, until a few days ago the government had established a timeline for the introduction of the Green Pass . Johnson had announced it and Javid himself and the minister for the distribution of vaccines, Zahavi, had announced it. What happened in the meantime? Why did the Tories change their minds? Like any measure taken at the start of the pandemic crisis, the government must pass through the House of Commons for its approval. And on the Green Pass there is no majority in Parliament. Conservative backbenchers have already digested the three lockdowns and the recent tax hike carried out by the government and have no intention of giving the green light to a new measure to restrict individual freedoms. Even the leader of the Lib Dems, Sir Ed Davey has exposed himself against the measure calling it "divisive, expensive and not very functional", while Labor is not supporting us, as it has done in the recent past, measures that would be approved with the votes of the Labor MPs and that without exposing the government to at least bad figures.
In fact, the question Johnson is debating goes much deeper. His government has alternated draconian measures to close economic activities – we remember the lockdown last Christmas that lasted until late spring – but it was the first in Europe to reopen all of last July 21, without social distancing and without the obligation of masks (which in the UK it has always been limited indoors).
Contemplating the needs of the economy and social life on the one hand and those of the health emergency on the other seems to be Johnson's new way of running the country and continuing to enjoy the support of his parliamentary majority. This explains the farewell to the Green Pass – classified as "Plan B" – for entry to discos and events with high crowds such as concerts and football matches. Actually, on the stadium front, spot-checks are active that verify the vaccination carried out and the negativity of the Covid test. But there is no legal requirement and the images from across the Channel show full stadiums in every order of place.
The protest of the entertainment associations – which consider the Green Pass too penalizing for an industry that has already had its failures during the pandemic – did the rest. The Night Time Industries Venue Association and the Music Venue Trust said the Green Pass could lead to cases of discrimination in the treatment of customers and uncertainty about the future of the industry.
Johnson, meanwhile, works to ensure that the NHS does not find it difficult to manage Covid . The privileged tool in the fight are vaccines. The premier has already announced that the "booster jab" , what we call the "third dose", is ready for the most fragile individuals and the elderly, and has invited those who have not yet been vaccinated to do so as soon as possible. There is no talk of vaccination obligation but of advice advocated by the authorities. Political and economic needs impose this line on the Tories , also considering the difficulties in the food supply chain dictated by the lack of truckers and the "pingdemic" , the self-isolation imposed by tracking on all those who have been in contact with coronavirus positives.
In the ruling party there is a battle between those who want to redefine the Tories as a social-conservative tax & spend movement and those who do not want to abandon the Thatcherian creed based on economic and individual freedoms. To the premier the arduous task of keeping the two factions together: if last week the extension of National Insurance had marked a point in favor of the Tories One Nation , the abandonment of the Green Pass seems to have rebalanced things waiting for the Conference of the started in October in Manchester and a reshuffle that Johnson himself seems to want to postpone to the Greek Kalends.
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/niente-green-pass-in-uk-parlamento-e-imprenditori-contrari-e-lalternativa-non-sono-le-chiusure/ on Tue, 14 Sep 2021 03:54:00 +0000.