Boris’s recent pick for his new No. 10 policy board, Neil O’Brien, will have seriously ruffled some backbench Tory feathers this morning with comments he made on TimesRadio, imploring Covid lockdown-sceptic colleagues like Steve Baker to “try and present what is true rather than what you hope is true,” given this is a “matter of life and death”.  Neil has been tweeting charts and statistics to counter Covid-disinformation and wishful thinking…

The provocative comments came in response to accusations from Stig Abel that some of his fellow MPs are pushing false information and talking “nonsense” – arguments with which O’Brien said “I basically agree”. There’ll be a good three dozen Tory MPs riled by this blunt intervention from an MP Boris trusts enough to send out on the only morning media round the day of Rishi’s spending review…