More on KentOnline
More on KentOnline
Often in politics, judgements about the Prime Minister and the government tend to be in black and white when actually they are a shade of grey.
So the consensus this week seemed to be that Boris Johnson had a pretty dreadful time of things, notably because of the rebellion of backbench MPs, including a clutch of Kent MPs, over the the new restrictions being imposed on the country after the month-long lockdown.
The fact that he had quite a reasonable margin of victory when it came to the crunch vote did not stop the doom-mongers from concluding that it was another step towards a terminal political decline.
Certainly no Prime Minister would want to to suffer a revolt among his own backbenchers barely a year into his premiership. So, for 56 MPs to feel emboldened to do so is cause for concern.
So, how bad was it for the Prime Minister? It is worth noting the backbenchers from Kent who had been leading the charge over Covid restrictions did not stay united when it came to the vote.
Of the seven MPs who signed a joint letter complaining about the nature of the restrictions and calling for a district-by district assessment, four defied the party whip.
Their call for a change in the way the restrictions are calculated was slightly undermined when the latest infection rates for Kent were published and in most of the areas, there had been a rise - albeit from a low starting rate.
For normally loyal backbenchers, there was more sorrow than anger about the revolt - encapsulated by the carefully measured contribution to the Commons debate Ashford MP Damian Green who had been championing the call for a review.
And while the Prime Minister did not capitulate to the demands, he did at least offer to consider how future judgements about restrictions might be based on more “granular” interrogation of local data.
The pledge to regularly review the restrictions also offered some succour to his critics. And the news about the vaccine helped deflect the focus on his own performance.
The wider issue for the Prime Minister is if this rebellion marks the start of a period of attritional political warfare within Conservative ranks.
The jury is out on that front just now.
Brexit
There is a growing sense that time is running short for all the necessary pieces of the Brexit jigsaw to be in place when the transition period ends.
Managing the various strands of the Kent Resilience Plan - which draws together different organisations and groups including councils, the police and the NHS - will be a gargantuan logistical exercise and for all the precautionary measures there is a sense that while everything is being done to mitigate against disruption and congestion, no one really knows what is going to happen on the ground.
As the American Vice President Donald Rumsfeld infamously put it: “There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know.”
Which might apply to Kent County Council’s assessment of the state of readiness. A report updating the Brexit position and the arrangements for dealing with the practical fallout across the county strikes a note of caution: "With 22 days to go until the EU Transition period ends on 31 December, there is still much to do to complete the preparations.
"We are relying on government to provide medical and welfare facilities at each of the key sites, to ensure that a fully tested "Check an HGV service" online system is ready and functional for hauliers to be able to cross the Channel as smoothly as possible, and to grant KCC powers to enforce against anti-socially parked HGVs.
"We also we need government to provide details of how it will deal with levels of freight that exceed Kent’s capacity.”
That sounds like a fairly long wishlist.
