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Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots and Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast.

I'm Katie Balls and I'm joined by James Fife and Isabel Hardman.

Last night we saw the largest Tory rebellion that Boris Johnson's face since he won that majority of 80.

James, can you crunch the numbers for us?

When it came to the new tier system, it passed quite comfortably.

But ultimately, on rebellions, it didn't look too good for the Prime Minister, did it.

Yeah, so there were 53 Tory rebels who actively voted against number two tellers.

So that's 55 full-on rebels.

I mean, the worry for Boris Johnson will be that these COVID rebellions keep getting bigger.

You know, the first Emergency Powers Act vote back in March passed without a vote.

Then in September 7 Tory MPs voted against

the restrictions, then 42 voted against the 10pm curfew in October, 53 last night. And it is

going up. I think it's reasonable to assume that when Parliament votes on this towards the end of

January, the same dynamic will repeat itself. But I think that,

you know, you had an example of Boris Johnson being a lucky general in that I think we were all getting

set for kind of days of analysis of this Tory rebellion and what it meant. And then the news dropped

this morning that the Pfizer vaccine has been approved by the regulator for use here in the UK and people will start being

injected from next week. Now, this is not only something that moves the story on, but it also

is a reminder that these vaccines kind of do offer a way out of this crisis. And I think a few months

ago, it looked like Boris Johnson's government could be broken on the wheel of lockdown.

This constant cycle of coming in and out was just going to end up destroying his administration.

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