author-image
RED BOX | PATRICK MAGUIRE

Five things you need to know this morning

Patrick Maguire
The Times

1. Submarine Saj
I hope you had better things to do this weekend than parse Sajid Javid’s tweets. Alas, some of us weren’t so lucky. Should you have a life – always hard to tell if you subscribe to this thing – then you might have missed the health secretary apologise for suggesting we need not “cower” from Covid.

Much disdain for that U-turn among Conservative MPs – though not for the reason you might think. To them the loaded language was rather more striking because it seemed to describe Javid’s own evasive style.

The 100 or so Tory MPs in a Whatsapp group set up by Department for Health spads and ministers at the outset of the pandemic received a curious message from