A rather bullish Dowden hit the airwaves this morning to spin for the party after the disastrous North Shropshire by-election result. He told LBC, Sky, BBC Breakfast and Today that while voters “gave us a kicking” it was a typical mid-term by-election that represents a protest, not a sea change moment. Sky News got a differently worded appraisal – that voters had handed the Tories an “absolute drubbing”…

Major news from North Shropshire this morning as the Tories lose the seat in the post-Owen Paterson by-election after nearly 200 continuous years. The swing to the LibDems, 34%, represents the third-largest by-election swing against the Tories post-Thatcher after Christchurch in 1993 and Clacton in 2014.

While a LibDem victory was always possible, their new 6,000 majority may well terrify other Tory MPs waking up this morning. Boris’s own nightmare before Christmas…

Guido’s spotted that every time a political issue is raised, Richard Burgon pops up with the same, supposedly perfect solution: a “top 10% wealth tax” that would, according to Burgon, raise £69 billion. This may sound like a hefty sum, although given the near endless list of things Burgon wants it spent on, it may not stretch as far as he’d like…

Today, Burgon suggests it would be a great way to solve future vaccine schemes. Just two weeks ago, he said it could be used to build 150 hospitals. In September, he wrote an entire article about how it should be used to fund a new National Care Service. Of course, if he chose any of these options, he’d have to deny the NHS workers a pay rise he promised the wealth tax could fund back in July…

Based on a tweet search, Guido sums Burgon’s called to spend this exact sum of tax money on 19 political projects. As a wise man once said, Burgon’s useless, Burgon’s rubbish, Burgon doesn’t know what he’s doing…

Nutty Remainers have managed to get the hashtag “Plague Island” trending on Twitter today, primarily following Macron’s illogical belief that by restricting travel from the UK to France he’ll be able to contain the global rampage of Omicron. Not only does this betray the masochistic English exceptionalism of FBPE-ers, it flies in the face of current facts:

The sort of nationalist, anti-fact rhetoric usually expected from Trumpian Republicans…

Hat-tip: Chris Snowdon

Co-conspirators may remember back to May this year when, after the local elections, the LibDems and Greens teamed up with the Tories to take back control of the London Assembly’s committees. They argued Labour had had control of too many for too long, and in the name of scrutiny, wrestled the chairmanship of some extra committees from the party. At the time Labour accused them of “betraying their progressive values” and “getting into bed with the Tories”…

Clearly Labour aren’t over this uncomradely jilting. Following Shaun Bailey’s resignation this week, in the wake of The Mirror’s photo of his unlawful Christmas Party, the assembly’s Police and Crime Committee was in need of a new chair.

Guido learns the Tory group proposed a Labour AM, Unmesh Desai, for the role, yet Labour refused to nominate anyone given the ongoing partisan committee row. Their bizarre refusal to accept this additional role on a platter means Tory leader Susan Hall has had to nab the position instead. With Green Leader Caroline Russell as her deputy.

A City Hall insider asks “What game are they playing? Sadiq Khan will be furious with the Labour group. He will now have to face the Tory leader and explain his policing policies.” A very odd decision by Labour…

It seems Boris’s 80 seat majority has caused both Parliament and MPs to become rusty when organising rebellions. The record Covid passport rebellion on Tuesday night saw major difficulties in actually tallying how many Tory MPs had broken the whip. Initially there was confusion as the Labour whips said there were 101 Tory rebels, yet the official count tallied just 96 plus two tellers. Steve Baker went on a hunt for the missing characters, eventually turning them up as Desmond Swayne, Bob Seely and Pauline Latham, all three of whom have now been added to the official 101 rebellion vote count. Guido, however, has discovered number 102…

Yesterday Steerpike noticed a remarkable u-turn from Southampton Itchin MP Royston Smith. On Monday he tweeted of Covid passports:

As for covid passports, I have never supported them and still don’t but I do support individual premise owner’s right to manage their establishments as they wish. https://t.co/NsuaILImla

— Royston Smith MP (@Royston_Smith) December 13, 2021

When push came to shove, however, he found himself in the ‘aye’ voting lobby, as the government whips had wanted. His social media’s been conspicuously quiet since the vote. 

Guido’s since seen an email sent from Royston to a constituent claiming that, thanks to some procedural confusion, while he had planned on rebelling he found himself accidentally in the wrong voting lobby:

“Last night, there were to be four votes. I was supporting three but not the Covid Passports.

Vote number two was to change the rules from quarantine, for those in contact with a positive Covid case, to daily Lateral Flow Tests. Unbeknown to me there was unanimity on that measure and the House did not divide (vote). I was coming from another meeting and went into the Government lobby thinking I was voting for tests not quarantine (vote number two) and didn’t discover until afterwards that I was actually in the Government lobby voting for Covid Passports (vote number three).”

Smith confides that, while he understands and acknowledges “the disappointment you will feel… I can, with certainty, tell you it is nothing compared to the disappointment I feel in myself.” Another backbencher off Boris’s Christmas card list…