Labour are spinning hard this morning over their newfound opposition to the scrapping of the pensions lifetime allowance cap. Now, their line is it’s a “gilded giveaway for the wealthy“, with Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves doing the rounds to attack the move and announcing Labour will force a vote on it. On Peston last night she said:

“I think this could unravel as quickly as it began. If you remember last September Liz Truss tried to cut the top rate of tax from 45p to 40p, everybody kicked off about it. Next week there will be a vote on this, Labour will force a vote on this next week. I would say to Conservative MPs… Are you on the side of ordinary working people in your constituencies who are seeing their taxes go up or are you going to vote with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt for a tax cut for the wealthiest in society?”

These are also questions she might want to ask her frontbench colleague, the Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting. In September, Streeting told the Telegraph in no uncertain terms that Labour would also abolish the “crazy” pensions cap if elected. Apparently it was the “hard headed and pragmatic” thing to do:

“I’m not pretending that doing away with the cap is a particularly progressive move […] But it is one that sees patients seen faster, and will inevitably save lives. I’m just being hard headed and pragmatic about this.” 

Now, six months later, his party is plotting to derail it as a political gambit– forcing a vote which, presumably by Wes’s own logic, would cost lives. Wes is insisting he meant Labour would scrap it only for doctors, although there’s no mention of that in the Telegraph interview. “Whose side are you on”…

There’s still no love lost between Liz Kendall and Jeremy Corbyn. Both appeared on Robert Peston’s ITV show last night, and clearly the wounds of 2019 haven’t yet healed for Liz Kendall, who tore into Corbyn for the scale of Labour’s defeat and his total failure to root out antisemitism within the party. As usual for the absolute boy, he repeatedly claimed the problem had been “grossly exaggerated”  and refused to apologise. “He only has himself to blame”, Kendall seethed…

Kendall then proceeded to list all positive ways Sir Keir has improved Labour since Corbyn left, claiming:

“I am proud that Keir Starmer has taken firm action on this issue since he became leader of the Labour Party, and that he has changed the Labour Party since Jeremy Corbyn was leader. That he said that we love our country, that we’re proud of our armed forced, we stand up for NATO… people who think that the problem was exaggerated are actually part of the problem themselves…”

Corbyn also vowed to return as the MP for Islington North after the next election – “1000%” chance, apparently. Stone-faced, Kendall replied ,“I might put it down the other end of the scale.” Ouch.

Conor Burns’s defence of the PM’s lockdown birthday party – that he was “ambushed with a cake” – may have received a Twitter ribbing, including from Nigella herself, though it’s hardly the most unbelievable claim. The PM himself was once caught on camera in exactly such a situation back on Peston’s show in 2016. At the time he’d been facing a barrage over his “have cake and eat it” quote regarding Brexit. Who ambushed the then-foreign secretary with the cake? None other than Robert Peston’s co-presenter, Allegra Stratton…

Clearly in no mood to mince her words, Ruth Davidson tore into the government last night over plans to introduce mandatory photo ID at future elections. Appearing on Peston, Davidson said: 

“I think in terms of this particular part of the Queen’s Speech, I think it’s total bollocks. And I think it’s trying to give a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, and that makes it politics as performance. And I think given where we are, and the year we’ve had, we’ve got real problems to solve in this country. And the idea that this is some sort of legislative priority, I think is for the birds.”

Davidson then took to Twitter to add that “there are bigger threats from agents outside our borders than from someone who forgets to take their drivers’ licence (if they have one) to a polling station”. David Davis said essentially the same thing; Guido wouldn’t be surprised to see this argument carry on for a while yet…

“I’ve got to talk to you, I’m afraid, about poo” probably wasn’t the line of questioning DCMS Secretary Oliver Dowden was expecting when he agreed to appear on Peston last night. Asking about the opening of public toilets in line with increasing freedom to visit parks and other attractions, Dowden did a cracking job of keeping a straight face as one of the nation’s supposed top political broadcasters asked him whether the public can poo in a loo at a zoo. The public now has clarification that it is not government policy to allow excretion in public parks – where would we be without Peston…

On Tuesday evening, ITV Political Editor Robert Peston made extraordinary and widely shared claims that “there is no shortage of the relevant reagents” – implying that the Government was either lying or simply hadn’t bothered to ask around. His tweet has attracted over 14,000 retweets and 20,000 likes.

His single anonymous Chemical Industries Association source could be right. On the other hand, Guido has pulled together some other people who might just know what they are talking about:

• Professional Association of Laboratory Medics, Germany: “The association is worried that the materials required for testing — sample kits, materials for extracting samples, and reagents — are becoming scarce”
• Department of Health, Australia: “Due to global demand exceeding supply, stocks of all laboratory related testing consumables are under considerable strain. At the moment there are particular concerns around supplies of swabs and DNA extraction kits.”
• Centre for Disease Control, United States: Important reagents are “now are in short supply,”
• Leo Varadkar, Ireland: “The current cause of delay is a shortage of reagents. We hope to address that but then there may be a shortage of something else. We have to be honest about that – we will hit delays.”
• Chief Public Health Officer, Province of Manitoba, Canada: “Right now the major roadblock is the reagent and that is worldwide.”
• Center for Disease Control and Prevention, South Korea: “Kwon Jun-wook, deputy director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said … it was true that Roche Diagnostics’ supply of reagents for nucleic acid extraction was not stable.”
• Health Ministry, Israel: Deputy Director General Prof. Itamar Grotto said that “Unfortunately what we just received is not exactly what we needed. The test is comprised of many components and the main problem is that we are missing swabs.”
• National Public Health Surveillance Laboratory, Lithuania: “The reagent kits have been shipped out but have not yet arrived. Supply chains are breaking down. We are following the situation and trying to coordinate.”
• Metropolis Health Ltd, (registered lab offering tests) India: “Since resources are limited, including protection equipment for sample collectors and reagents, we have decided to prioritise testing to those who are most at need.”
• Virology Laboratory at Italy’s National Institute for Infectious Diseases, European Commission Coronavirus Advisory Group: “major companies that provide the reagents that labs need to analyze tests are reaching “the maximum of their capacity,” said Capobianchi, noting there’s also a need for more swabs for collecting samples. “I don’t know how long they would require to scale up their capacity,” she said of reagent producers.”

Whilst he later acknowledged that there was a global problem, Peston has still not deleted the original thread. Inevitably his later correction only got a tiny bit of attention, with fraction of the interaction.

Guido understands that the predominant reason Germany has a much higher testing rate is fortunately for them the specific diagnostics facilities needed to test for Covid-19 have a large number of branches in Germany, meaning domestic production just happened to be enormous to begin with. The UK will at least be very well served if any future pandemic requires a large supply of snide punditry…

Last night Peston had to be corrected again by Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van Tam on his understanding of which tests can do what, this morning Peston tweets that he “was slightly taken aback at the ferocity of the Deputy Chief Medical Officer’s response”. Painful viewing, see for yourself…

Isn’t it about time big news outlets had their health, rather than political teams leading on Coronavirus coverage?..