Early evening summary
- There were 10,476 new Covid-19 cases in the UK and 11 new deaths reported in the today as the Delta variant now accounts for 99% of cases.
- The Irish taoiseach, Micheál Martin, called for calm as Northern Ireland emerges from a “very turbulent” 24 hours after the resignation of the DUP leader, Edwin Poots.
- Prime minister Boris Johnson said the Conservatives’ performance in Chesham and Amersham was “disappointing”.
- Jess Phillips, Labour’s shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding, said the government’s actions from its rape review is “small fry” and “piecemeal”.
- Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey said the party is ‘sending a shockwave through British politics’ after defeating the Conservatives in the Chesham and Amersham byelection.
That’s all from me. But coronavirus coverage continues on the liveblog, here:
Public Health England (PHE) says younger people are driving the rise in Delta cases – which have soared by 79% in just one week, while hospital admissions have almost doubled.
Dr Jenny Harries, the chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, said spread across the UK was being driven by younger age groups, reports PA.
The Delta variant now represents 99% of coronavirus cases.
Harries said:
Cases are rising rapidly across the country and the Delta variant is now dominant. The increase is primarily in younger age groups, a large proportion of which were unvaccinated but are now being invited to receive the vaccine.
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People in east Belfast react to Edwin Poots’ resignation, from the BBC:
'They're a shambles - that's all I can say to you.'
— BBC News NI (@BBCNewsNI) June 18, 2021
People on the streets of east Belfast have their say on the crisis in the DUP following Edwin Poots' resignation https://t.co/cR60aBM1qN pic.twitter.com/fuljuBpFF3
Andrew Lloyd Webber has rejected Boris Johnson’s offer for his musical Cinderella to be part of a pilot scheme for live events, saying the industry has been treated as “an afterthought and undervalued”.
It comes after the prime minister earlier this week said he was in talks with the theatre impresario about his West End show, saying he would “do whatever we can to be helpful”.
But in a statement released today, Lloyd Webber said:
I have made it crystal clear that I would only be able to participate if others were involved and the rest of the industry - theatre and music - were treated equally. This has not been confirmed to me.
It has become clear that, while sporting events like Wimbledon had obviously been working with the government for some time on this pilot, and were even able to start selling tickets yesterday, the theatre industry and its audiences is, once again, an afterthought and undervalued.
He said the production, at the Gillian Lynne theatre, would open on June 25 with a 50% capacity.
He previously said he would be willing to risk arrest to fully reopen his theatres on June 21.
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10,476 new Covid cases and 11 new deaths reported in the UK
There were 10,476 new Covid-19 cases in the UK and 11 new deaths reported today, according to the latest government figures.
In the last seven days, 61,181 people tested positive - an increase of 33.3% on the previous seven days.
During the same time period there were 72 deaths within 28 days of a positive coronavirus test - an 18% increase on the previous seven days.
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Alok Sharma, the former business secretary and now Cop26 climate summit president, tells the BBC he has “spent 11 years cultivating this image of someone extremely boring” and that his style of politics is “a minimum of fuss”.
"I've spent 11 years cultivating this image of someone extremely boring"
— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) June 18, 2021
Former business secretary and now COP26 climate summit president Alok Sharma talks to @BBCNickRobinson about his style of politics: "a minimum of fuss"#PoliticalThinking https://t.co/G0kUdzhQ7l pic.twitter.com/IuO3eLcBvY
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Voters in Chesham say planning policy, HS2 and the environment are among the issues that led them to vote for the Liberal Democrats.
In a report by PA, who has been speaking to constituents of the Buckinghamshire market town, voters said they were “fed up and furious over the building of HS2” and that they felt “ignored” by the Conservatives, who have represented them since 1974.
Alan Price, 82, voted for the Lib Dems, despite being a long-time supporter. He told PA:
I just wanted to see a change. Like many, I’m so fed up and furious over the building of HS2. It’s a big, big bugbear for me.
My partner lives in Maidenhead and I used to be able to travel there in 30 minutes or so, now it takes me at least two hours. It’s chaotic.
It’s been really hard as she’s become ill. I don’t think they realise how many people it has affected.
Zeeshan Akhlaq, 22, who works at a mobile phone repair shop, said:
I voted for the Lib Dems so I’m happy. Firstly, I don’t trust the Tories but secondly they [Liberal Democrats] have promised a lot to the younger generation. But also one of the things that swayed me was they actually turned up to the Palestine-Israel demonstration. It made me think that they cared.
Irish taoiseach calls for "calm" amid political crisis in Northern Ireland
The Irish taoiseach, Micheál Martin, has called for calm as Northern Ireland emerges from a “very turbulent” 24 hours after the resignation of the DUP leader, Edwin Poots.
Here’s the latest from the Press Association:
Speaking in Dublin, Mr Martin said it had been a difficult period for Northern Ireland.
‘I think it is very important that we all work collectively on the island towards maintaining stability and calm heads and staying focused on what is important to the people within Northern Ireland.
‘That is a government that can work on fundamental pressing issues, like the health services, Covid-19 and indeed the broader economic issues. The government will work with all parties and the British government to protect the institutions, the Good Friday agreement and work to ensure the continuation of the assembly and the executive.
‘It’s been a very difficult period but it’s important we stay focused on the issues. We will work with the new leadership – that is a matter for the DUP – and whoever emerges as their leader. We will work constructively with the new leader. It’s been a very difficult time for the outgoing leader, Edwin Poots, but I think it’s important that we maintain relationships.’
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The DUP hierarchy is hoping to move quickly to replace Edwin Poots, who has resigned three weeks after being formally installed, reports PA, and is looking for a new leader.
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The Lib Dems’ byelection victory suggests trouble for the Tories “blue wall”, writes the Guardian’s political editor, Heather Stewart, in her analysis of the result:
Friday morning’s shock result in leafy Chesham and Amersham suggests that keeping Boris Johnson’s 2019 election-winning coalition together may be much more of a challenge than Conservative headquarters previously thought.
According to a recent analysis by the thinktank UK in a Changing Europe, there are 23 seats – most of the them in southern England – which the Lib Dems could take from the Tories on a 10% swing.
They include Dominic Raab’s Esher and Walton seat, Jeremy Hunt’s in South West Surrey and Stephen Hammond’s in Wimbledon.
Click here for more:
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PA reports that 61,606,582 Covid-19 vaccinations were administered in England between 8 December and 17 June, according to NHS England data, including first and second doses.
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Ahead of the England-Scotland game tonight, Haroon Siddique reports that VIPs will be ‘let into England without quarantine to keep Euros final at Wembley’.
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Turnout in the Chesham and Amersham byelection was 52.2%, reports Sky.
The education secretary has named a Department for Education adviser as his preferred candidate to lead England’s independent exams regulator.
PA reports:
On the selection of Dr Saxton, Mr Williamson said: ‘I look forward to welcoming Jo Saxton to the role, whose wealth of experience makes her the ideal candidate to lead such an important organisation.
‘With a deep understanding of the education system and Ofqual, she will play a vital part in upholding standards and confidence in our exams and qualifications. I am also grateful to Simon for his work as interim chief this year, helping the organisation to navigate the pandemic’s challenges.’
Dr Saxton will attend a pre-appointment hearing before the education select committee on 6 July. The MPs will then publish their recommendations.”
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The coronavirus reproduction number, or R value, in England remains unchanged from last week and is between 1.2 and 1.4, according to the latest Government figures.
PA reports:
R represents the average number of people each Covid-19 positive person goes on to infect.
When the figure is above 1, an outbreak can grow exponentially but when it is below 1, it means the epidemic is shrinking.
An R number between 1.2 and 1.4 means that, on average, every 10 people infected will infect between 12 and 14 other people.
The first minister of Wales has said there are “really serious issues” to consider over whether children should receive coronavirus vaccinations.
Speaking at a press conference, Mark Drakeford said health boards across the country were considering how a booster jab may be administered in autumn, as well as how children as young as 12 could be vaccinated.
He said:
That is partly because there are really serious issues to be thought through on safety on the one hand, safety of the vaccine for children, and ethical issues as well – for whose benefit are children being vaccinated?
“Is it ethically right to vaccinate children – because there is always a risk in vaccination – not because it will do them any good but because it will protect adults? I think those are quite tricky ethical questions, and it’s part of the reason why the JCVI has decided to take a bit longer in giving us their advice.”
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Boris Johnson has declined to confirm whether thousands of football fans will be allowed into the country for the semi-finals and final of Euro 2020 next month.
When asked, the prime minister said:
We’ll do what we have to do to keep the country safe from Covid – that’s obviously going to be our priority, and we’ll be talking to Uefa about what they want and see if we can make some sensible accommodations. But the priority obviously has to be public health.”
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Here’s PA report with more on Johnson’s lockdown comments:
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said he is ‘very confident’ that the remaining coronavirus restrictions in England will be lifted on July 19.
Speaking at Kirklees College in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, Johnson said: ‘I’m very confident that we’ll be able to go through with step four of the road map on the timetable that I’ve set out with treating July 19, as I’ve said, as a terminus date. I think that’s certainly what the data continues to indicate.’
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Writing in the Times, James Forsyth, political editor of The Spectator, reports that the cabinet’s Covid-O committee will discuss allowing more foreign travel late next week. One option, he writes, is “to allow those who have been double-vaccinated to travel to amber-list countries such as France and Spain without having to self-isolate on return”.
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And on hosting the semi-finals and finals of the Euros, Boris Johnson said the government would “do what we have to do to keep the country safe from Covid” and would be talking to Uefa about what they wanted and to see if the government could make some “sensible accommodations”.
On Northern Ireland, he said it was “very important” that the government was “stable”, and that the UK wanted to ensure it looked after Northern Ireland’s stability.
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Boris Johnson said he had “complete confidence in Matt Hancock” – citing the “outstanding” vaccine rollout, for which he credited Hancock and the NHS.
He also said he was “very confident” that the government would go through with step 4 of the roadmap treating 19 July as the “terminus date”.
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The PM also said that he thought there has been “some misunderstanding” on planning reforms but that he believed young people “should have the chance of home ownership”.
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Prime minister says byelection result is 'disappointing'
Boris Johnson has just said that the Chesham and Amersham byelection result was “certainly a disappointing result” but claimed there were “particular circumstances there”.
Guardian political editor Heather Stewart reports:
Boris Johnson conceded that the result in Chesham and Amersham was, “disappointing,” but rejected the idea it shows he is alienating voters in the South of England.
Speaking to Sky News on a visit to a college in Kirklees, he said there were “particular circumstances” at play in Thursday’s byelection, though he did not specify what they were.
He claimed it was “bizarre” to accuse him of being unpopular in the South, pointing to the fact he won the London mayoral election twice, and highlighting gains for the Conservatives at last month’s local elections including in Basildon, Maidstone and Basingstoke.
“We are a great one nation party, and we will continue in our mission to unite and level up, because that is the best way to deliver jobs, prosperity, across the whole country,” he said.
The prime minister also defended his proposed planning reforms, which some Conservative MPs are pressing him to drop, after the issue featured heavily in Chesham and Amersham.
Johnson said the plans had been “misrepresented” by the party’s opponents.
“What we want is sensible plans to allow development on brownfield sites: we’re not going to build on greenbelt sites, we’re not going to build all over the countryside, but I do think that young people growing up in this country should have the chance of home ownership, and that’s what we’re focusing on.”
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The Delta variant now accounts for 99% of Covid cases in the UK and cases have risen to 75,953.
There’s more on this on the Guardian’s coronavirus live blog.
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Davey also told the Guardian that there was “quite a bit of anti-Boris feeling” on doorsteps.
“For them, the emperor has no clothes,” he said. “Those sorts of traditional, liberal Tories care about foreign aid, things like free school meals for poor kids, and worry about civil liberties. And they’re just being ignored.”
Peter Walker reports that the Liberal Democrats have said they can topple the Conservatives’ “blue wall” in the south of England after their byelection upset in Chesham and Amersham.
Sarah Green, a marketing company owner and long-time party activist, won 21,517 votes - nearly a 57% vote share. Tory candidate, Peter Fleet, won 13,489 votes.
At a rally with Green in Chesham, Lib Dem leader Ed Davey told cheering activists that it was a potentially pivotal moment.
“Do you know what, I think there are many Conservative MPs across the country who are now worried,” he said.
Davey told the Guardian:
I was really staggered by the number of people who said, ‘I’ve never had a politician knock on my door before.’ They said the Conservatives took them for granted, and now only seem to care about the north.
On the Chesham and Amersham byelection, the Spectator deputy political editor, Katy Balls, writes that the Conservatives are “now so focused on its new voters in the so-called red wall, that some in the original blue wall feel overlooked”. Balls also reports that Tory MPs say that the delay to lifting coronavirus restrictions “didn’t help with some of their voters as it meant the vaccine bounce effect was lesser”.
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Labour says government rape review actions 'small fry'
Jess Phillips, Labour’s shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding, has branded the government’s actions from its rape review as “small fry” and “piecemeal”, reports PA.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I’m afraid to say that almost every single thing that the government state that it is going to do in the review is very, very small fry and piecemeal.”
Here’s the Guardian’s story on the government’s apology to rape victims and pledge to overhaul the system:
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John O’Dowd, the Sinn Féin chief whip, tells Sky News that the DUP has to “become involved in 21st-century politics” and “legislate to respect the rights of others”.
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The education secretary, Gavin Williamson, has urged pupils to keep regularly taking coronavirus tests twice a week to help “break chains of transmission” reports PA.
In an open letter to secondary school pupils and their parents in England he said: “With the increase in cases with variants of concern, it is important to continue regular testing in order to detect cases of coronavirus, stay ahead of the virus and keep Covid out of the classroom.”
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Deputy Lib Dem leader Daisy Cooper tells Sky News that the Chesham win was in the “bluest of the blue” and that this is a “huge success” for the party.
Among the contributing factors for former Conservative voters who voted Lib Dem, she says, were Covid in care homes, housing planning and HS2. She says that in the Home Counties Lib Dems are making “huge gains” at a local government level.
The Lib Dems, she says, will continue to be a strong opposition and hope to “play our part” in ousting the Conservative government as soon as they can.
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Sam Coates on Sky News says this is the third biggest Lib Dem byelection result of all time and that the party hasn’t seen anything like it since the early 90s. He says the 25% swing – much bigger than the Tory victory in Hartlepool – has taken the breath away.
He says this will be a “wake-up call” for many Conservatives.
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First Minister Mark Drakeford has said that coronavirus restrictions in Wales could be eased after a four-week pause – even if there is not conclusive evidence that vaccinations have stopped rising infections and hospitalisations.
He told PA:
I agree that you cannot, in the end, delay everything in the search for perfection in terms of data. But what we are quite clearly told by our scientific advisers as well as others is that this four weeks will allow us to get a sufficiently good handle on the extent to which a relationship between falling ill and needing hospitalisation has been modified by the vaccine. Then we will make a calculation about how much headroom we have, as we always do, to take further steps.
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And a bit more:
We can see us going up. This election result is signalling that. We’ve got huge responsibility. This Government is out of touch, it’s very right. They have trampled all over our civil liberties.
Here’s more from PA on Ed Davey’s speech:
Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey, speaking at a victory rally with new MP Sarah Green, said: ‘Thanks to everybody who’ve helped in this by-election, we’ve worked so hard. This election sends a message to the whole country.
‘The Lib Dems came here as underdogs but we campaigned and we are sending a shockwave through British politics.
‘This is a great result, a huge swing to us. There are many Conservatives across the country who are now worried.
‘People have been talking about a red wall. Well, after Chesham and Amersham and Sarah Green’s victory they’ll be talking about a blue wall, and how the Lib Dems are the main threat to the Conservatives.
‘People here felt ignored and taken for granted, and we listened. Sarah Green is going to take these concerns to parliament and hold this appalling Tory government to account.’
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Rory Carroll, the Guardian’s Ireland correspondent, reports on the DUP crisis:
On the DUP leadership crisis, Ireland’s foreign affairs minister Simon Coveney has said the “last thing” Northern Ireland needs is for its largest party to be divided.
He said the DUP should be given “space” following Edwin Poots’ resignation after only three weeks in the role.
PA reports that he told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland programme: “We’re back to square one, if you like, where the party has to find a way of electing a new leader that can unite the DUP, or at least attempts to. And that’s important for politics in Northern Ireland.”
He added that ahead of what could be “potentially a very tense summer” Northern Ireland politics needs “stability and some predictability”.
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Here’s Ed Davey this morning on BBC Breakfast:
The people of Chesham and Amersham have sent a shockwave through British politics.
— Liberal Democrats (@LibDems) June 18, 2021
The Tory Blue Wall is beginning to crumble. @EdwardJDavey on @BBCBreakfast 🔶⬇️ pic.twitter.com/LRckWlXMUZ
Now for the latest on coronavirus. PA reports that new figures from Public Health England show that a total of 806 people in England have been admitted to hospital with the Delta variant of Covid-19 as of June 14 - an increase of 423 on the previous week. Of the 806, 65% were unvaccinated.
In the same period, there were 73 deaths in England of people who were confirmed to have the Delta variant.
Correction... It was not a hammer but an orange mallet:
Ed Davey knocks down the blue wall with an orange mallet! Hats off to whichever staffer sourced the mallet at a few hours notice. pic.twitter.com/Qz9sqosnV2
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) June 18, 2021
Davey says people will now be talking about how Lib Dems are a threat to Conservatives across swaths of the country. Voters felt “ignored” and “taken for granted” he says. Davey and Green will now hold what he calls the “appalling Tory government” to account, he says. Then he promptly knocks a blue wall down with a hammer.
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Davey: 'We are sending a shockwave through British politics'
Ed Davey speaking now. He thanks everybody for their work and says Sarah Green’s election sends message to the whole of the country. “We are sending a shockwave through British politics.” Says it is the party’s best result ever.
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Guardian political correspondent Peter Walker in Chesham reports that the Lib Dems have installed a literal blue wall:
There is a *literal blue wall* at the Lib Dems victory event in Chesham. I’m told Ed Davey will hit it with a mallet…. pic.twitter.com/hrsZLWMqgg
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) June 18, 2021
While we wait for news from Chesham, more reaction from Conservative MPs.
Simon Clarke, Conservative MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, tweets:
Britain needs more homes, built to the right design codes and with the right infrastructure to support them, with clear mechanisms to allow communities to designate those areas that are appropriate for development and those that should be protected (1/n)
— Simon Clarke MP (@SimonClarkeMP) June 18, 2021
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Ed Davey is due to speak at a youth centre in Chesham at 10am in what is being billed as a “victory rally”.
In a shock result, the Liberal Democrats last night pulled off a stunning byelection victory in a formerly safe Tory seat in Chesham and Amersham.
Sarah Green secured 21,517 votes, leaving the Conservative Peter Fleet trailing with 13,489, and giving the Lib Dems a majority of 8,028.
Here are Heather Stewart and Haroon Siddique with the full story:
Leader Ed Davey will be giving a victory press conference at 10am. We will be monitoring that and the rest of the day’s events here on the liveblog. Please get in touch at miranda.bryant@guardian.co.uk with any tips or suggestions.
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