Politics

Is making young people show vaccine passports to get into nightclubs a good idea? Boris Johnson’s motivation in doing so appears to be that this is a good way to entice under 30s to get their jabs. In reality, the policy is illiberal, shows no gratitude for the sacrifices young people have already made during this pandemic, and should go against all of our British sensibilities. There’s also a better alternative: one demonstrated in New York.  I’ve been based in the United States for the past six months and Boris could learn a thing or two from the freedom-loving Yankees. Here, proof of vaccination is not required for entry into nightclubs, as I

The public’s willingness to back more authoritarian measures has been a constant feature throughout the pandemic. Poll after poll for the past 17 months has suggested strong support for tough restrictions, sanctions, deterrents and lockdowns – perhaps not a surprise in a country where a third of voters backed the use of live ammunition against the 2011 rioters. But is such authoritarianism now bleeding into the cultural sphere too? A new poll for The Spectator conducted by Redfield and Wilton reveals that some 40 per cent of the public would support the government censoring books with content that it deems ‘sexist, homophobic, or racist’. Of the 1,500 surveyed, only 30 per cent would oppose this, with

Anyone who thinks Boris Johnson lacks statecraft should pay attention to Dominic Cummings’s attacks on him. They often to seem to show the opposite of what Dom intends. Cummings now reveals that, in January 2020, he and his allies were saying: ‘By the summer, either we’ll all have gone from here or we’ll be in the process of trying to get rid of [Johnson] and get someone else in as prime minister.’ In fact, neither happened. By November, however, Cummings was (to use Mr Pooter’s joke) going; Boris stayed. The winner of the then still recent landslide election victory presumably discovered his adviser’s seditious conversations and, reasonably, did not like