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UK approves vaccine passes and mandatory jabs for healthcare workers

Vote signals the next step in the UK’s march towards a “new normal”, and perhaps a change in government

Last night the UK Parliament voted through a bill forcing NHS workers to either get vaccinated or lose their jobs, as well bringing in “vaccine passports” for some events and venues.

Over 70,000 NHS workers are officially counted as “unvaccinated”, if you trust government numbers. Considering the NHS employs well over a million people, I wouldn’t be surprised if that number were actually much higher.

If just half of the unvaccinated workers resign it could put a lot of pressure on the always-over-burdened healthcare system.

The government wouldn’t mind that, of course, because it will make it easier to claim the NHS is being “overwhelmed” with Covid patients, and this will be blamed on the unvaccinated and used to justify further mandates and coercion.

Any deaths resulting from the under-staffed health system can be PCR tested and added to the “died with Covid” tally.

It’s a win-win.

The vaccine passport element of the bill is likewise concerning, even if it currently only applies to nightclubs and venues with a capacity of more than 10,000. That’s the thin edge of a rapidly-expanding wedge.

An interesting aspect of the vote was that it passed entirely thanks to the Labour party. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer announced on Tuesday, in a bizarre-looking televised speech, that his party would support the government:

As a result all but eight “opposition” MPs voted with the government, whilst Tory rebel votes counted an even 100. If Labour had opposed the bill, it would not have passed.

Jeremy Corbyn, now an independent, voted against the government and emerged from his Covid hibernation to (finally) make a statement.

Much too little, and far too late, but it does illustrate why they needed to get rid of him in December 2019, just before the Covid roll-out, and why they so obviously rigged that election.

If he, as leader of the opposition, had been offering even this small amount of resistance from the beginning, the Covid narrative would never have made it this far.

Labour voting with the government, without even asking for concessions on sick pay or pay rises for NHS workers, is a sign that a changing of the guard may be on the horizon, with Keir Starmer being groomed to be the next PM, perhaps in the very near future.

That would explain the sudden emergence of the Christmas party scandal, which had further fuel added to its fire just today by yet another leak.

That, combined with the massive rebellion by his own MPs, is a massive knock on his authority.

Official polls, always a tool for controlling opinion rather than a scale for measuring it, are already putting Starmer 13 points ahead as the nations “most capable Prime Minister”.

Don’t be surprised if there are calls for another election, probably sometime soon. And they won’t be rigging this one for Boris.

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Categories: coronavirus, latest, UK