United Kingdom

General secretary of the Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association

26 Dec 2021 5 3

Toby Helm

Inserted 2 years ago

“What is clear is that, initially at least, Brexit is making us poorer. It has contributed to labour shortages in many business sectors as EU workers have returned home. There are grievances that run deep in specific sectors that were promised much and got almost nothing. Fishermen feel betrayed. Farmers are uncertain that a replacement subsidy and payments regime will be all it is being cracked up to be. Small businesses which export to the EU have been hit by extra costs and paperwork.”

Observer's Political Editor

25 Dec 2021 5 2

Joël Reland

Inserted 2 years ago

“The main message is that the UK has been talking a big game on divergence. Frost has spoken repeatedly about the long dark years of EU membership and the need for change to free up growth and innovation but it has just not been followed through. If you look at the most significant policy changes in the budget or the net zero strategy there is very little that could not have been done inside the EU. In agriculture, city regulation, and areas such as green taxation and fintech, new ideas and progress on divergence are evident but in big areas such VAT little or nothing has happened. There is no joined up thinking on divergence strategy across government. The reason is that while replacing all EU regulation sounds neat, in practice it is complex and costly for business. I think the UK is finding that it is really difficult to develop and there is more bureaucracy rather than less once you try to change everything. The cost of getting all UK companies stamped with a UK mark rather than an EU mark … it is not worth the cost.”

Researcher at the independent thinktank UK in a Changing Europe

25 Dec 2021 (approx) 9 3

Charles Grant

Inserted 2 years ago

“Lord Frost refused to have any form of structured relationship on foreign and defence policy post-Brexit with the EU - though the EU wanted one - and we are paying a very heavy price as a result. We lack intelligence about what is happening in the EU because we don't have any regular system of meetings with people in Brussels. We can't influence what is going on because we are not in the room. On issues such as Russia, China and climate issues the British - even outside the EU - could have a degree of influence because we have good people and real expertise.”

Director of the thinktank the Centre for European Reform

25 Dec 2021 (approx) 6 3

Chaand Nagpaul

Inserted 2 years ago

“What we know now of course is that the patients, people who are becoming seriously ill, who are being hospitalised, are those who have not been vaccinated and those who have not had their boosters.”

Chair of the British Medical Association

24 Dec 2021 3 4

Rory Challands

Inserted 2 years ago

“The number of cases is still breaking records pretty much every day. Omicron does seem to be less severe than the other variants … but as it is so infectious … there is still a chance that the burden on the NHS could be unacceptable.”

Al Jazeera’s journalist reporting from Liverpool

24 Dec 2021 3 2

Emily Lawson

Inserted 2 years ago

“This Christmas, before sitting down to your dinner with your family, I would encourage anyone not already boosted to come forward, book an appointment and get the gift of a jab.”

Head of the NHS COVID-19 vaccination programme

24 Dec 2021 2 4

Boris Johnson

Inserted 2 years ago

“Though the time for buying presents is theoretically running out, there is still a wonderful thing you can give your family and the whole country and that is to get that jab, whether it is your first or your second or your booster. Omicron is surging. [And] we all know we must together try to stop the spread of this new variant - we must test ourselves and take extra care when meeting elderly or vulnerable relatives.”

UK Prime Minister

24 Dec 2021 4 4

Liz Truss

Inserted 2 years ago

“Any Russian incursion would be a massive strategic mistake and would be met with strength, including coordinated sanctions with our allies to impose a severe cost on Russia's interests and economy.”

British Foreign Secretary

23 Dec 2021 4 3

Ben Wallace

Inserted 2 years ago

“Ukraine is not a member of NATO so it is highly unlikely that anyone is going to send troops into Ukraine to challenge Russia. We shouldn't kid people we would. The Ukrainians are aware of that.”

Euronews

UK Secretary of State for Defence

16 Dec 2021 4 2

Boris Johnson

Inserted 2 years ago

“No one should be in any doubt: there is a tidal wave of Omicron coming. I'm afraid we're now facing an emergency in our battle with the new variant Omicron, and we must urgently reinforce our wall of vaccine protection to keep our friends and loved ones safe.”

UK Prime Minister

12 Dec 2021 2 2

Liz Truss

Inserted 2 years ago

“There was a very much a united voice from the G7 nations who represent 50 percent of global GDP, being very clear that there will be massive consequences for Russia in the case of an incursion into Ukraine. When the UK has wanted to send clear messages and achieve clear goals we have been prepared to use economic sanctions. We are considering all options.”

British Foreign Secretary

12 Dec 2021 5 2

Rory Challands

Inserted 2 years ago

“Liz Truss is trying to position herself as a kind of unifier of the free world. She has said we have to deter Russia from taking that course of action (invading Ukraine).”

Al Jazeera’s journalist reporting from Liverpool

11 Dec 2021 5 2

Liz Truss

Inserted 2 years ago

“We need to defend ourselves against the growing threats from hostile actors. And we need to come together strongly to stand up to aggressors who are seeking to limit the bounds of freedom and democracy.”

British Foreign Secretary

11 Dec 2021 4 1

Ben Wallace

Inserted 2 years ago

“Russian concerns about NATO encirclement made little sense. Only 6 percent of the Russian land border is bordered by NATO countries - that's hardly being surrounded by NATO.”

Rferl

UK Secretary of State for Defence

09 Dec 2021 2 3

Richard Moore

Inserted 2 years ago

“Our adversaries are pouring money and ambition into mastering artificial intelligence, quantum computing and synthetic biology, because they know that mastering these technologies will give them leverage. As a society, we have yet to internalise this stark fact and its potential impact on global geopolitics. But it is a white-hot focus for MI6.”

Chief of the UK Secret Intelligence Service MI6

29 Nov 2021 5 4

Sajid Javid

Inserted 2 years ago

“We must move quickly and at the earliest possible moment.”

Koreatimes

UK Secretary of State for Health and Social Care

27 Nov 2021 3 2

Liz Truss

Inserted 2 years ago

“I want us to build a worldwide network of liberty that advances freedom, democracy and enterprise and encourages like-minded countries to work together from a position of strength.”

Koreatimes

UK international trade secretary

22 Nov 2021 3 1

Nick Carter

Inserted 2 years ago

“Traditional diplomatic tools and mechanisms available during the Cold War and an era of unipolar U.S. dominance are gone. Without those tools and mechanisms there is a greater risk that these escalations or this escalation could lead to miscalculation. So I think that's the real challenge we have to be confronted with.”

Rferl

Chief of the British Defense Staff

13 Nov 2021 7 2

Kwasi Kwarteng

Inserted 2 years ago

“The end of coal is in sight. The world is moving in the right direction, standing ready to seal coal's fate and embrace the environmental and economic benefits of building a future that is powered by clean energy.”

UK Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy

04 Nov 2021 2 4

Alok Sharma

Inserted 2 years ago

“We need to come out of Glasgow saying with credibility that we have kept 1.5 alive. We're already at global warming at 1.1 degrees above pre-industrial levels. At 1.5 there are countries in the world that will be underwater, and that's why we need to get an agreement here on how we tackle climate change over the next decade.”

President of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26)

31 Oct 2021 4 4

Boris Johnson

Inserted 2 years ago

“There is absolutely no question that this is a reality we must face. I would say that humanity as a whole is about 5-1 down at half-time. We've got a long way to go, but we can do it. We have the ability to come back but it's going to take a huge amount of effort. Team World is up against a very formidable opponent in climate change. Rome's ancient monuments could be seen as a memento mori to us, demonstrating how quickly civilisations can decline. Humanity, civilisation, society, can go backwards as well as forwards, and when things start to go wrong they can go wrong at extraordinary speed. You saw that with the decline and fall of the Roman empire, and I'm afraid to say that it's true today that unless we get this right in tackling climate change, we could see our civilisation, our world also go backwards.”

UK Prime Minister

29 Oct 2021 3 4

Boris Johnson

Inserted 2 years ago

“I am very worried because it might go wrong and we might not get the agreements that we need and it is touch and go, it is very, very difficult, but I think it can be done.”

UK Prime Minister

25 Oct 2021 1 2

Adam Finn

Inserted 2 years ago

“The vaccination programme by itself was not enough to bring things under control. We do need to have people using lateral flow tests, avoiding contact with large numbers of people in enclosed spaces, using masks, all of those things now need to happen if we're going to stop this rise and get things under control soon enough to stop a real meltdown in the middle of the winter.”

Bbc

Member of the government's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI)

24 Oct 2021 1 2

Rachel Reeves

Inserted 2 years ago

“I think the first thing is the government have got to do more to make Plan A work. If the scientists are saying work from home and masks, we should do that. So get A working better because the vaccination programme has been stalling, and introduce those parts of Plan B. But there are also things not in A or B that need to be done, like paying statutory sick pay from day one and also better ventilation in public spaces.”

Bbc

British politician serving as Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer

24 Oct 2021 3 4

Deepti Gurdasani

Inserted 2 years ago

“There is nothing at all mysterious about what happened in England. The high levels of community infection resulted in explosive growth when schools re-opened in September. Everything that's happening here was entirely predictable. I expect that the NHS [National Health Service] will collapse. I don't think the NHS is going to cope with winter.”

Politico

Epidemiologist at Queen Mary University London

22 Oct 2021 3 2

Quique Bassat

Inserted 2 years ago

“The U.K. is an outlier, because it does have quite high coverage of vaccination - and is still having 45,000 cases per day. Yet after Britain marked 'freedom day' in July, it was to be expected that there would be a persistence of transmission as opposed to other countries which have maintained much more stringent preventive measures.”

Politico

ICREA Research Professor, Head of the Malaria Programme

22 Oct 2021 3 1

Chaand Nagpaul

Inserted 2 years ago

“The [UK] government has taken its foot off the brake, giving the impression that the pandemic is behind us and that life has returned to normal.”

Politico

Chair of the British Medical Association

20 Oct 2021 2 4

Andrew Bridgen

Inserted 2 years ago

“I would like to see more government support for these industries [energy intensive manufacturers - steel, glass, ceramics, paper] in the short term to ensure that we don't lose them from the UK and we don't deter further investment. I think they'd like to see a cap on the prices they're going to pay for gas.”

UK Conservative Party politician

09 Oct 2021 2 3

Gareth Stace

Inserted 2 years ago

“If the government doesn't take any action then basically what we'll see for the steel sector is more and more pauses of production in certain times of the day and those pauses will become longer.”

Director general of UK Steel

09 Oct 2021 1 2

Jonathan Portes

Inserted 2 years ago

“A few days of disruption to fuel supplies makes the government look foolish. Much larger fuel bills are a much bigger deal.”

Nytimes

Professor of economics and public policy at King’s College London

09 Oct 2021 2 2

Rishi Sunak

Inserted 2 years ago

“We now have a clear path to a fairer tax system, where large global players pay their fair share wherever they do business.”

Chancellor of the Exchequer

08 Oct 2021 3 2

Boris Johnson

Inserted 2 years ago

“The answer to the present stresses and strains, which are mainly a function of growth and economic revival, is not to reach for that same old lever of uncontrolled immigration to keep wages low. The answer is to control immigration to allow people of talent to come to this country, but not to use immigration as an excuse for failure to invest in people in skills, and in the equipment, the facilities and machinery ... they need to do their jobs. To deliver that change we will get on with our job of uniting and levelling up across the UK - the greatest project that any government can embark on.”

UK Prime Minister

06 Oct 2021 2 4

Oliver Dowden

Inserted 2 years ago

“We will make sure that people have their turkey for Christmas, and I know that for the Environment Secretary George Eustice this is absolutely top of his list.”

British politician serving as Co-Chairman of the Conservative Party

03 Oct 2021 3 2

Boris Johnson

Inserted 2 years ago

“The way forward for our country is not to just pull the big lever marked uncontrolled immigration, and allow in huge numbers of people to do work ... So what I won't do is go back to the old failed model of low wages, low skills supported by uncontrolled immigration. When people voted for change in 2016 and ... again in 2019 as they did, they voted for the end of a broken model of the UK economy that relied on low wages and low skill and chronic low productivity, and we are moving away from that. There will be a period of adjustment, but that is I think what we need to see.”

UK Prime Minister

03 Oct 2021 6 3

Penny Ward

Inserted 2 years ago

“The availability of a well-tolerated, effective oral antiviral [molnupiravir] will be particularly useful in supplementing vaccination as a means to reduce the proportion of patients needing hospital care. It is greatly hoped that the antiviral taskforce has, like the vaccines taskforce, preordered courses of this medication so that the UK can, at last, properly manage this condition by treating vaccine breakthrough disease and relieve pressure on the NHS during the forthcoming winter.”

Visiting professor in pharmaceutical medicine at King’s College London

01 Oct 2021 4 4

Boris Johnson

Inserted 2 years ago

“We now are starting to see the situation improve. We are hearing from industry that supplies are coming back onto the forecourt in the normal way and I would just really urge everybody to go about their business in the normal way. What we want to do is make sure that we have all the preparations necessary to get through until Christmas and beyond, not just in supplying the petrol stations but all parts of our supply chain.”

UK Prime Minister

28 Sep 2021 4 1

Ed Davey

Inserted 2 years ago

“Someone in government needs to explain their incompetence and there must be a case for someone to resign - whether it's transport secretary Grant Shapps, business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, or someone in the MoD. But this is shockingly bad government.”

UK politician - Leader of the Liberal Democrats

27 Sep 2021 2 3

Keir Starmer

Inserted 2 years ago

“The consequences of Boris Johnson's failure to prepare or plan are being felt across our country. The government must now bring together businesses and trade unions to develop a proper plan, both for the immediate crisis, as well as to tackle the long-term issues that have led us here.”

Leader of the UK Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition

27 Sep 2021 3 3

Kwasi Kwarteng

Inserted 2 years ago

“The UK continues to have strong supplies of fuel. However, we are aware of supply chain issues at fuel station forecourts and are taking steps to ease these as a matter of priority. If required, the deployment of military personnel will provide the supply chain with additional capacity as a temporary measure to help ease pressures caused by spikes in localised demand for fuel.”