More than 20' Labour MPs prepare to defy Keir Starmer

Sir Keir Starmer is facing a growing revolt led by former shadow chancellor John McDonnell over his decision to tell Labour MPs to back Boris Johnson’s Brexit trade deal.

Sir Keir has told Labour MPs to vote for the accord when it is crashed through Parliament tomorrow on the grounds that it is better than a damaging no deal split from the EU which is the only alternative.

But Labour MPs, councillors and activists are increasingly angry at the leader’s decision and are demanding that he perform a U-turn.

Dr. Peter Salk vaguely remembers the day he was vaccinated against polio in 1953. His father, Dr. Jonas Salk, made history by creating the polio vaccine at the University of Pittsburgh and inoculated his family as soon as he felt it was safe and effective.

Although the vaccine hadn’t undergone any trials yet, 9-year-old Peter was among the first children to ever receive the vaccine.

“My father had brought home some vaccine (and) these terrifying pieces of equipment that neither I nor my brothers very much enjoyed seeing,” Salk told USA TODAY. “Big glass syringes and reusable needles that needed to be sterilized by boiling over the stove.”

Salk remembers getting the shot while standing alongside his brothers in the kitchen of their family home outside of Pittsburgh. Two weeks later, the boys visited their father at the D.T. Watson Home for Crippled Children to receive their second shot. This time, cameras were waiting for them.

“I remember hiding from injections. There was a big wastebasket next to the refrigerator and I chose one occasion to squat down behind that and try to make myself invisible,” Salk said. “Which, of course, didn’t work.”

Mr McDonnell, former Cabinet minister Ben Bradshaw and former shadow business secretary Clive Lewis are among those to have signed a statement blasting Sir Keir for supporting Mr Johnson’s ‘rotten’ deal.

The statement calls on all opposition parties not to support the agreement and warns Labour against ‘falling into the trap’ of backing it.

Cases of polio peaked in the early 1950s, but it arrived every summer disabling an average of more than 35,000 people each year for decades, sometimes causing paralysis and death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Public officials closed swimming pools, movie theaters, amusement parks and other places associated with summer vacation.

The highly infectious disease spread through contact with infected feces, often when children didn’t wash their hands correctly, according to the University of Rochester Medical Center.

Jonas Salk’s vaccine helped wipe polio from most of the world, something that many people hope will happen with the coronavirus vaccine. However, Peter Salk warns eradicating polio from the United States was a long and difficult journey, and he doesn’t expect eliminating COVID-19 will be any easier.

Salk is a doctor and part-time professor of infectious diseases at the University of Pittsburgh, where his father developed the polio vaccine. He also heads the Jonas Salk Legacy Foundation.

“It’s going to be a long road, just even getting enough vaccines out to people around the world. … This virus does not respect borders,” he said. “It travels by airplane everywhere in the world and unless this virus can be contained everywhere, it’s going to continue to spread and be a problem.”

Sir Keir is calling on Labour MPs to support the ‘thin’ post-Brexit free trade agreement, despite misgivings that it will fail to protect many key economic sectors.

He argued, however, that the alternative of ending the Brexit transition period on December 31 without a deal in place would be even worse for the economy.

His stance has upset some pro-Europeans in the party who say they should not support a flawed agreement and should abstain instead.

Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine was proven safe and effective in 1954 after the largest trial in the nation’s history, which included about 1.8 million child participants. However, it took the U.S. more than 20 years to eradicate polio. According to the CDC, no polio cases have originated in the U.S. since 1979.

About 3 million people, mostly frontline health care workers, have been vaccinated against the coronavirus after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

Federal officials expect 20 million doses to be manufactured and available for shipping by early January, another 30 million doses by the end of that month and 50 million more by the end of February.

The statement has been organised by the campaign groups Another Europe is Possible and Labour for a Socialist Europe — both on the left — but it has attracted support from both wings of the party.

As well as Mr Bradshaw, the signatories also included ex-cabinet minister Lord Adonis from the Blairite wing of the party.

From the left, Mr McDonnell is joined by Mr Lewis as well as a number of former MEPs, councillors and party activists.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said vaccines should be available for the general public as soon as late February or early March. However, most experts think vaccines won’t become widely available until late spring or early summer, assuming there are no production problems and the FDA authorizes two additional vaccines by sometime in February.

Logistics aside, another hurdle that will continue to take time to overcome is vaccine hesitancy, Salk said.

In a recent USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll of 1,000 registered voters, 46% said they will take the vaccine as soon as they can. Meanwhile, 32% said they will wait for others to get the shots before they do so themselves.

Two-thirds of Democrats, 67%, are willing to take the vaccine as soon as possible. The percentage of Republicans ready to take the vaccine is a stitch lower than the percentage who say they would never take it, 35% compared with 36%.

Vaccine hesitancy is not new to America, Salk said. According to a Gallup Poll from 1954, when the field trial began, only 53% of Americans said they thought the vaccine would work.

“So even back then, given the degree to which people were frightened about polio and wanting a vaccine,” there was still hesitancy, Salk said. “I was surprised to see that.”

Salk’s father attempted to get ahead of this setback by vaccinating his family and co-workers to instill a level of confidence before expanding clinical trials to the greater Pittsburgh area and, later, the rest of the nation. (Government oversight laws wouldn’t permit this today.)

The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis — now called the March of Dimes — also enlisted the help of some of the most famous celebrities at the time such as Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Marilyn Monroe, Louis Armstrong, Grace Kelly and Elvis Presley.

The U.S. government has begun to take part in a similar campaign for the coronavirus vaccine; high-profile figures choosing to get publicly vaccinated include Vice President Mike Pence, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci and President-elect Joe Biden.

While the U.S. is far from eliminating COVID-19, Salk is impressed with the coronavirus vaccines and hopeful for the future.

“Even with polio vaccines, it’s been a very complex road that we’ve traveled,” he said. “This is still early in the game and we’ve got to keep a close eye on all of the people who were vaccinated … (but) we’re on a good track and the results are extremely promising.”

Health and patient safety coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation and Competition in Healthcare. The Masimo Foundation does not provide editorial input.

As speaker of the House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999, the Republican arguably did more anyone else to sow the seeds of division in Washington. “Newt Gingrich turned partisan battles into bloodsport, wrecked Congress, and paved the way for Trump’s rise,” reflected the Atlantic magazine in 2018.

The vital task now is opposition: proper parliamentary scrutiny of this and all future trade deals, and the setting out of an alternative future in which we not only regain the rights and jobs we have lost, but become a better and more equal society.

‘That task gets harder if opposition parties fall into the trap of rallying around this rotten deal.

‘We call on Labour, the labour movement and other opposition parties not to support the Tories’ Brexit deal when it is put to a vote in the House of Commons.’

But now the 77-year-old party grandee, former history professor and author of three books lionising Trump must contemplate a new chapter in which the ultimate outsider president makes way for Joe Biden, the ultimate insider who has promised healing, unity and a return to pre-Gingrich norms.

So where does the Republican party go from here? “I’m guessing, but I think we’re going to be the commonsense reform party,” Gingrich says by phone from Rome, where his wife, Callista, is American ambassador to the Vatican.

“You look at the degree to which the bureaucracies don’t work. You look at these Democratic governors who are petty dictators and you look at the challenges facing us — whether it’s a collapsing education system, a collapsing infrastructure, competing with China — and you know that the Democrats, as the party of government employee unions and liberalism, aren’t going to be able to deal with any of this.”

As the dust of last month’s elections settled, Marco Rubio, a Republican senator for Florida and potential White House contender in 2024, called for the party to cool its love affair with big corporations. “The future of the party is based on a multiethnic, multiracial working-class coalition,” he told the Axios website.

Gingrich believes it is already on the way but, as seems habitual among many in Trump’s orbit, he again pivots to a critique of the other side. “It is becoming that partly because the left is so desperately committed to being the party of very wealthy people living in enclaves, explaining that the police don’t matter because they have their own security guards.”