Just before the British House of Commons went for its summer break in July, Boris Johnson announced plans to require those going to nightclubs in England to be double vaccinated from September. His reason for talking about this at that time was obvious – to prevent scrutiny of the idea. Johnson does tend to fall apart at even the most gentle probing.

Then a poll came out in early August citing vaccine passports for nightclubs as one of the reasons for a major decline in his popularity. And since then, the government has gone deadly silent on the idea. Partly because they don’t want those numbers shrinking further and partly because they’re all on holiday with Dominic Raab anyway.

It’s leading me to suspect they’re going off the idea. The Events Research Programme has now mostly concluded its work and they seem to think it’s possible to hold mass events safely – quite how accurate this is has been questioned, but if the government were to introduce vaccine passports, wouldn’t they be going against what their own research told them?

All I’m saying is don’t be surprised if the idea quietly disappears. This government has considerable form for this practice when things start becoming politically difficult…