The Sunak stimulus
14 min listen
Politics
Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
Tuesday
The Sunak stimulus
Boris Johnson used his daily coronavirus press conference to respond to the economic emergency the country is increasingly finding itself in. Accompanied by his Chancellor Rishi Sunak and chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance, the Prime Minister said that he was aware the virus would severely impact the economy and that the government was focussed on mitigating this. In light of this, Johnson said: ‘We must act as a wartime government and do anything it takes it takes to support our economy’. In a bid to do just this, Sunak unveiled an economic package of business loans worth over £330 billion. Following on from the Budget, the Chancellor described today’s announcement as ‘the next
The risk of the NHS collapsing under coronavirus may have just reduced
There was widespread anxiety and concern that the Government was basing its measures to suppress spread of coronavirus on an assumption that the numbers infected were doubling every five days, when the evidence here and internationally suggested a doubling rate of nearer four days. I raised this concern with Neil Ferguson, the Imperial College expert whose forecasting has underpinned the Government’s accelerated moves to constrain our freedom of movement. He told me: ‘I misspoke when I said five days.’ His baseline for the spread rate (R0) is that each sufferer would infect 2.4 people on average (technically: R0 = 2.4) which implies that the numbers infected would double every 4.3
Why schools haven’t shut yet in response to coronavirus
One of the big sources of confusion in the Government’s latest advice on coronavirus is about schools. You don’t have to go far on Twitter or Facebook to find memes like this one, suggesting Boris Johnson is wrong not to order teachers and pupils to follow the rest of the country: Angry pupils and parents are piling in, calling for schools to shut their doors. MPs are being inundated with calls to intervene. There are reports that some children are already being taken out of school by their parents, while other schools are checking kids’ temperatures when they arrive for classes to determine whether they are allowed to stay or
Macron’s ‘war’ on coronavirus is bringing out the best and worst in Parisians
I missed Emmanuel Macron’s address to the nation last night. I popped to the supermarket, guessing (correctly) that the queues of earlier in the day would have dissipated with most people at home in front of their television sets listening to what their president had to say. I stocked up on essentials – wine, cheese and chocolate – and returned to the anticipated news that as of midday today France is under lockdown, or as they say across the Channel ‘confinement’. Bars and restaurants have been closed since midnight on Saturday, and from now until the end of month (and probably beyond) one can only venture outside with a completed
The new thinking behind the government’s coronavirus approach
As the British public adjust to new social distancing measures, a common question: how long will this last? At the press conference on Monday, Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty was keen to stress that the government measures to tackle the coronavirus resemble a ‘marathon not a sprint’. While the elderly have been told they could need to self-isolate at least for three months, increasingly the view in government is that the coronavirus response will go on much longer. The government’s initial strategy was to mitigate the virus and allow for a controlled peak of the virus in the summer – around June – and in the build up cocoon vulnerable sections of society so
Boris must borrow from Corbyn’s playbook to prevent a coronavirus crash
A few principles should inform how the Government – any government – responds to what is a devastating act of God that affects all of us. They are: 1) The vulnerable, those who can’t look after themselves, need more help than most. 2) If certain behaviours help to keep all of us safe, they should be incentivised. 3) If vital infrastructure and services are at risk of collapse, and the market cannot bear the cost of restoring them, those costs should be socialised, or shared between all of us, with the wealthy shouldering the lion’s share. Here I am thinking of the genuine risks that, if, as the Government has said,
Brexit won’t stop a coronavirus vaccine reaching the UK
The Brexit culture wars are back. On Saturday, the Guardian published an article entitled: ‘Brexit means coronavirus vaccine will be slower to reach the UK.’ As usual with such pieces, the words ‘if’ and ‘could’ do more heavy lifting than Atlas. The gist of the article’s argument is that leaving the European Medicines Agency (EMA) means the UK will no longer be able to benefit from processes that expedite the authorisation of pharmaceuticals for use. This is because manufacturers may decide to meet the approval process for the much larger EU market first before applying to the UK regulator for approval here. That might be true, but only if the
Monday
Boris tells Brits: halt all non-essential social contact
In a dramatic escalation of government advice, Boris Johnson, the chief medical officer and the chief scientific adviser have said that those with anyone in their household with a fever or a new continuous cough should self-isolate for a fortnight. They also urged even those without any symptoms to avoid non-essential social contact – so no trips to the pub or the theatre – to work from home where possible and that the vulnerable should soon begin to self-isolate. Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, explained that these measures were necessary as we were now moving into the ‘upswing of the curve’. He said, in a slightly defensive note, that
Youngsters are ill-equipped to cope in this time of coronavirus
We’re all worried about older people right now. But I’m worried about the young too. I fear they lack the social nous and moral muscle to deal with a crisis as profound as the Covid-19 pandemic. I fear that the cult of fragility is so widespread among the youth that some will struggle to rise to the occasion of facing down this wolf at the door of our society. Our first priority must be the elderly, of course. We know Covid-19 is more dangerous for them than it is for other age groups. (Though I wish the media would stop giving the impression that every old person who catches it
The madness of #ToryGenocide
The hashtag #torygenocide was trending on Twitter all day Sunday. This is because seemingly rational people have got it into their heads that Boris Johnson is using the Covid-19 outbreak to orchestrate a social cull in the UK. There is a debate over the wisdom of the strategy the government has been advised to take by the chief scientific adviser. Robert Peston asks a question about testing that, if I’m honest, makes me wonder about the wisdom of how we’re going about this. Still, I am not a scientist. I don’t know whether Downing Street has taken the right or the wrong approach. I’m happy for others to have that
Corbyn should be ashamed of his coronavirus point scoring
So there I was being non-partisan by praising the Labour party for its generally mature response to the coronavirus crisis when clearly I should have been putting this down to Jeremy Corbyn’s erratic level of engagement with major events rather than a deliberate strategy. Because it turns out that shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth’s wise mixture of qualified support for the Government underpinned by the asking of sensible, probing questions was not, after all, sanctioned by the Leader of the Opposition himself. Instead, despite his impending exit stage left, Corbyn has found irresistible the temptation to try and weaponise one of the biggest governmental challenges of our lifetimes against the prime minister
Can the government keep the public’s trust?
16 min listen
Is ‘crazy’ Bernie trying to tear the Democrats apart?
Bernie Sanders needs a wing and a prayer to overtake Joe Biden in the delegate count. Last week’s resounding defeat in Michigan, a state that represents the working-class voter Democrats must pick off from Donald Trump if they hope to reclaim the White House in November, was a bad omen for the Sanders campaign and a metaphorical nail in his coffin. The next month of primaries is going to be absolutely brutal for the Vermont senator, whose approval ratings among African-Americans, Americans over the age of 45, and suburbanites is below sea-level. Sanders knows he’s on borrowed time and already surely realises he has lost the Democratic presidential primary to
Sunday
Seven extraordinary graphs which show the economic impact of Covid-19
We’ve just seen one of the worst weeks in stock market history, with the FTSE100 ending on Friday 17 per cent down and billions of pounds wiped off British share values. This has been spurred on not by the fear of Covid-19 itself, but by the reaction to the virus: when sentiment switches from confidence to caution, panic can be self-reinforcing. In response to the panic, the Bank of England slashed interest rates to 0.25 per cent; hours later, Chancellor Rishi Sunak used his first Budget to respond with a £30 billion stimulus package – the biggest giveaway of any Budget since 1992. In reality just £12bn of the £30bn is for
Sunday shows roundup: Matt Hancock announces new emergency coronavirus measures
Once again, Health Secretary Matt Hancock took to the TV studios to update the public on the response to the coronavirus outbreak. The UK has now seen 1,140 people testing positive for the virus, including the Health Minister Nadine Dorries, and the number of related deaths has risen to 21. Hancock told Sophy Ridge that the government, with input from the opposition, was due to set out its plans for emergency powers next week: MH: We’re going to set out the emergency powers on Tuesday… SR: Is the government going to be banning gatherings of over 500 people? MH: …I’m absolutely prepared to take actions like that if that’s what
Matt Hancock attempts to set record straight on ‘herd immunity’
After a weekend of opposition party criticism and anonymous briefings over the government’s coronavirus strategy, Matt Hancock appeared on the Andrew Marr show in a bid to set the record straight. With the number of UK fatalities now at 21, the Health Secretary attempted to reassure members of the public that the government was doing everything in its power to protect life. Key to this was an effort to distance the government from reports that they are pursuing herd immunity. The idea of herd immunity – as previously mentioned by both a government source and chief scientific officer Sir Patrick Vallance – is that if enough of the population eventually get infected by
Coronavirus panic buyers should calm down
It is a sign of our extraordinary times that the main trade association for shops – the British Retail Consortium – is sending out an urgent message to customers: “buy less”. More specifically, they have urged people not to buy more than they need. The national panic buying and stockpiling has emptied shelves in supermarkets across the country, and has brought out the worst in a few people. One relative said he saw a man clear a supermarket shelf of pasta into his shopping trolley, and an old lady asked if she could just have one packet to eat, and he said no. It makes the blood boil. It has
Boris should build to save the Union
In the past week, the Boris Bridge between Northern Ireland and Scotland has changed into a Tory Tunnel and been ridiculed by a leading think tank. The Prime Minister’s plans for the bridge may have morphed but they have not disappeared, as the Fraser of Allander Institute would like to see. The respected policy shop looked at the tunnel’s growth potential, climate impact, connectivity and opportunity costs and concluded: ‘It won’t deliver the economic boost some claim, it isn’t a priority, it would go to the wrong location, it wouldn’t be consistent with climate change objectives, and the money could be better spent on other things. Apart from that, it’s a cracking