MARGARET Thatcher once claimed to be a “very good backseat driver”, much to the irritation of John Major, her successor. He called her tendency to interfere “intolerable”.

Sir John, as he now is, could at least console himself that he only had one backseat giver of advice. Boris Johnson has acquired so many that the prime ministerial vehicle has surely had to be upgraded to a people carrier, or a mini-bus.

Some of them took to the Sunday politics shows yesterday in a last minute bid to halt the UK Government’s planned cuts to foreign aid. Having pledged to spend 0.7%, or £14 billion, of national income on aid, the UK Government wants to reduce this to 0.5%, or £10 billion, to help pay the bill for Covid.

Conservative rebels and others believe their best chance of halting the plan will come in the Commons today with an amendment to the Advance Research and Invention Agency Bill.

The rebels are also aware that Mr Johnson is playing host to world leaders at the G7 summit in Cornwall from Friday. One way and another it is a good week to threaten Downing Street with bad headlines, particularly when the Prime Minister’s big idea for the summit is spreading vaccination to the rest of the world by the end of 2022.

Five members of the former Prime Minister’s club are among those urging the government to think again. One of them, Tony Blair, was a guest on The Andrew Marr Show. Having made his opposition to aid cuts known earlier, Mr Blair took the chance instead to talk about vaccinations.

He said one way of encouraging people to have both jabs was to make it worth their while. Some form of “biometric ID” setting out a person’s vaccination status would make it easier to travel, attend events, eat out, and so on. But wouldn’t this be discriminatory, Marr asked.

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“The word discrimination has a very loaded meaning in the English language now but really when it comes to risk management, it is all about discrimination,” said Mr Blair.

“The reason we vaccinate elderly people first is because they are more at risk, the reason we ensure people are vaccinated is because it then reduces the risk of transmission.”

Another way of making the benefits of vaccination clearer, he suggested, was to follow the example of Israel and publish the data comparing hospital admissions and deaths among the vaccinated and unvaccinated.

Marr was in a chipper mood, ending the interview by saying it had been a pleasure talking to Mr Blair. Common courtesy, no doubt, but the sentiment felt more heartfelt than usual. Has any interviewer ever ended a verbal tussle with Boris Johnson on a high? Generally, they are left frustrated by his bluster.

With Blair, it is different. With Blair it is back to the pre-Iraq days of early Tony, when he was, in his own estimation, a “pretty straight sort of guy”. Smooth, articulate, happy to engage with interviewers, arguing like the barrister he trained to be.

The present day Tony is not quite the same, but now that there is a distance between himself and office he can afford to be more relaxed. Not that this stops the inevitable backlash on social media whenever he appears. His former communications chief, Alastair Campbell, provokes a similar kind of reaction.

Next to pop up in Boris Johnson’s rear view mirror was Bob Geldof, his beard and shock of white hair giving the Boomtown Rats’ frontman the air of an Old Testament prophet.

Cutting foreign aid was contrary to British values, he said. “We don’t beat up the world’s poor … We don’t take the piece of bread from that child’s mouth in Yemen, we don’t snatch the one textbook it has ever had in its life from its only tin-shack school.”

While not of the same intensity as Geldof’s more memorable appeals during the Live Aid concert, it left viewers in no doubt about the campaigner's feelings.

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Matt Hancock, England’s Health Secretary, was making his first appearance on the Sunday shows since Dominic Cummings’ incendiary evidence before MPs.

During what Marr described as a “verbal machine gunning”, the Prime Minister’s former chief adviser said Mr Hancock should have been sacked for “at least 15-20 things” including lying.

As examples of backseat driving go, Mr Cummings’ performance was more at the Fast and Furious, tyres-squealing, doughnut-executing end of the market.

Mr Hancock was having none of it, neither after the Cummings evidence nor yesterday. When Marr asked if he had been honest and transparent, the Minister said of course he had. When told Cummings would disagree, he responded with an exaggerated shrug that could fairly be described as “Gallic” (or maybe Alan Partridge).

Even when Marr played a clip from Mr Cummings’ evidence, the Health Secretary kept his calm, insisting that he had always followed clinical advice.

This was more like the sort of backseat driver a Prime Minister would want. One willing to look out for their leader at the same time as defending themselves.

Mr Hancock may not always be in that position. In another stinging assessment, Mr Cummings said the Health Secretary had kept his job “because he’s the person you fire when the [public] inquiry comes along”.

For now, though, it is clear who is in the driving seat, and it is not Barnard Castle’s most famous visitor.