Keir Starmer came close to declaring a policy position this morning, saying that while he won’t come out against Covid passports at this stage, their potential rollout would be against the “British instinct”, and that allowing landlords to implement such plans themselves “is just wrong in principle“. Speaking to the Telegraph, Starmer said:

“My instinct is that, as the vaccine is rolled out, as the number of hospital admissions and deaths go down, there will be a British sense that we don’t actually want to go down this road […] I think this is really difficult and I’m not going to pretend there’s a clear black and white, yes-no easy answer on this. It is extremely difficult […]

Awkwardly for Sir Keir, however, he appears to once again be misreading the mood of the public. YouGov polling earlier this month revealed that almost six in ten Britons (58%) would support a Covid passport system for domestic activities during the vaccine rollout, with just 34% opposed under any circumstances, with even a majority of Labour supporters backing the idea. There are myriad arguments against Covid passports – Starmer just happened to cite to one that doesn’t hold water…