Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Friday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Matt Hancock’s good news day

After weeks of speculation over whether Matt Hancock would meet his target of 100,000 daily tests by the end of the month, the Health Secretary today had good news. He told viewers that not only had the target been met – it had been done with over 20,000 tests to spare: 122,346 tests in total were carried out yesterday. In his comments at the press conference, Hancock appeared at times to be giving an acceptance speech at an awards ceremony. He thanked the multiple government figures, outside organisations and health workers who had made this feat possible. Given the heat Hancock has received in recent weeks both in the media and

Steerpike Steerpike

How did Matt Hancock hit his 100,000 test target?

Matt Hancock has announced that the government has managed to meet its 100,000 coronavirus tests a day target. The Health Secretary confirmed at a Downing Street press conference that on 30 April, Public Health England carried out 122,347 tests – suggesting the government not only reached its target in time, but also over-delivered. But look at the small print and there were barely 73,191 people tested yesterday. There is another mysterious second category, now introduced, that takes the figure over 100,000. Here’s the graph: So what’s the trick? The Health Service Journal reports that to reach the testing target, the government has begun to count home-testing kits which have been posted

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The fall of Margaret Thatcher: a Whodunnit

46 min listen

Charles Moore recently published Herself Alone, the final volume of an authorised biography of Margaret Thatcher. When writing, he realised that the story is half-tragedy, half-Whodunnit. Many of those involved in her fall had a motive. This podcast is a narrative of the events leading up to Mrs Thatcher’s fall, voiced by Charles Moore and Kate Ehrman, who assisted with all three volumes of the biography.

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Why Covid cuts are off the cards

How will the UK recover after lockdown? Although social distancing is expected to continue for months, talk has turned to how the government will deal with its coronavirus debts. The Treasury is seeking to raise £180 billion over the next three months to meet its pledges – putting the UK on course to see its budget deficit rise to a level never seen before in peacetime. Some estimates put borrowing this financial year at over £300 billion, far outpacing the years following the financial crash. This has led a number of public figures to predict a return to the Cameron and Osborne era with mass cuts in the years ahead. However, when Boris Johnson was

Robert Peston Robert Peston

How the lockdown could be relaxed

We’ll get a fairly detailed plan from the PM next week encouraging businesses to start operating again, public transport to increase its shrunken capacity, and children to return to school. But there’ll be no firm date for any of that to happen – only a condition that even such modest returns to normal life must not risk a dangerous resumption of rapid viral spread. The transport and schools stuff is hardest, because social distancing on a train or on the London Underground is not going to be easy to organise, and keeping young children far enough apart to prevent infection will also be tricky. But maybe employees will be encouraged back to

Thursday

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

The way out: what is the Prime Minister’s exit strategy?

37 min listen

James Forsyth writes in this week’s cover piece that the government ‘is going to go South Korean on the virus’. In other words, test, track, and trace. But as James points out, this raises the obvious question of why we weren’t doing this already. On the podcast, Cindy Yu talks to James and the Economist‘s Adrian Wooldridge. Adrian argues that the West is too slow at learning the lessons of elsewhere in the world, a costly mistake as Asian states like Singapore offer instructive lessons in governance. As this global pandemic lays bare the differences of national approaches, it’s a timely discussion. On this episode, Cindy also speaks to Owen Matthews about

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Boris Johnson sets the bar for any lockdown easing

The Prime Minister used his appearance at the daily government press conference to confirm that the UK is past the peak of coronavirus infections. However, those hoping for a rapid easing of the lockdown are to be left disappointed. Johnson spoke of the need to avoid a second peak and promised a menu of options to be unveiled next week. He said that this would still not include specific dates as any easing will depend on infection data. As James says in this week’s Spectator cover piece, data will be crucial to informing these decisions. The underlying principle that will guide these decisions: the rate of infection – also known as the ‘R’ rate. Johnson said that the country’s virus reproduction rate

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Lockdown sceptics might be wrong, but let’s still listen to them

Does Laura Perrins want me dead? The conservative commentator is coruscating about the government’s Covid-19 response. She abhors the lockdown and demands it be lifted immediately. ‘This lockdown and the extension on the 7th is the biggest error in British politics since WW1,’ she says. I am in the ‘at high risk’ group three times over and would quite like to go on living, if you don’t mind.  I follow Perrins on Twitter because, although we agree on almost nothing, I like to hear what the co-editor of the Conservative Woman thinks about the affairs of the day. In recent weeks, however, my finger has hovered indignantly over the ‘unfollow’ button as she

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Can a South Korean approach help Britain defeat coronavirus?

The government now has a plan for how it intends to get out of this crisis. It is, as I say in the magazine this week, to drive the coronavirus transmission rate down as low as possible and then stay on top of it through a ‘track, trace and test’ approach. In other words, the government is going to go South Korean on the virus. For this approach to work, you need accurate data – something which has been sorely lacking to date. But the hope in Whitehall is that clarity is on the way. The Office for National Statistics is undertaking a mass random testing programme that should provide the

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

We crave certainty over Covid-19. There isn’t any

One of the strangest developments to have occurred during this very strange time is that the Prime Minister’s special adviser, Dominic Cummings, may have attended a meeting of some people. Worse, various politicians are suggesting that he may have actually said something at this meeting. Very senior people are insisting that if Mr Cummings did say something at this meeting, even if we have no idea as to what it was he said (‘Can you fetch the Gummy Bears please, Mary, I think this going to be a long one’ or ‘Sorry, Zoom is on the blink again’), then he shouldn’t have done so. The Prime Minister’s special adviser attending

Shanker Singham

China’s coronavirus cover-up shows it can’t be trusted

‘Hide your capacities, bide your time’, China’s former leader, Deng Xiaoping, famously once said. Few in the West understood what he meant then. But they understand it today. The coronavirus outbreak has brought home the reality that China does not play by global rules. It’s time for countries committed to open, liberal democracy, free trade and free markets to accept the reality that China is not a partner but a strategic competitor. The coronavirus cover-up of the emergence of the disease might even have included lax standards in laboratories as the US Embassy had complained of. These are the actions you would expect from the Chinese Communist Party, a crony

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Boris Johnson’s cautious path out of lockdown

Ever since Boris Johnson was admitted to hospital on 5 April, the government has been in a holding pattern. No big decision could be taken without the Prime Minister, but he was in no position to make one. He is now back at work, though, and has a plan for what to do next. Put simply, it is to drive the coronavirus transmission rate — the reproduction number, or ‘R’, which shows the expected number of infections directly generated by one case — down as low as possible and then stay on top of it through a ‘track, trace and test’ approach. In other words, the government is going to

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Rishi Sunak must stick to his guns

Was the Chancellor wrong to guarantee only 80 per cent, rather than 100, of ‘coronavirus business interruption loans’ to keep small- to medium-sized companies afloat? Rishi Sunak’s announcement this week of fully guaranteed micro-loans for the smallest companies seeking to borrow up to £50,000 was reported as a partial climbdown in the face of pressure from the CBI and many of his own MPs to do away with the on-risk slice of the larger scheme, which provides loans of up to £5 million through 40 accredited banks — but which many would-be borrowers have claimed is a bureaucratic nightmare. Readers certainly confirm that picture. One in the motor trade tells

Wednesday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Could Remdesivir eliminate the need for a coronavirus vaccine?

Over the past few weeks the government’s scientific advisers have indicated that the only real way out of the coronavirus crisis is a vaccine – until then a high degree of social distancing will have to remain. Given that no-one expects a vaccine to be ready for deployment for another year at the very earliest, this would have very serious implications for the economy, and for society at large. But there is another possible route out of social distancing – not so good, but possibly available a lot more quickly. This is for an effective therapeutic drug to emerge. It would not stop anyone contracting the virus but could improve

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why shouldn’t Cummings attend SAGE?

One of the key committees advising the government is SAGE — the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies. At the weekend, there was a rumpus after the Guardian reported that Dominic Cummings had been present for some of its meetings; though given the enormity of what was being discussed there would have been problems if no one from Downing Street was at these meetings. Last night, Bloomberg reported on the SAGE meeting of 18 March. Alex Morales and Suzi Ring wrote that Dominic Cummings had at that meeting raised questions, including asking ‘why a lockdown was not being imposed sooner’. I am informed that at that meeting Tim Gowers, a Cambridge maths professor and

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Keir Starmer’s PMQs performance was painfully wooden

‘Such happy news amid such uncertainty’. The Speaker began PMQs with this tribute to Carrie and Boris’s baby. But his talk of ‘happy news amid such uncertainty’ might have referred to MPs tuning in via webcam whose living areas have been denuded of clutter. Last week, viewers got an eyeful of their MPs’ soft furnishings which proved a major distraction from politics. Honourable members have now realised that their utterances are much less interesting than their wallpaper. Today most of them appeared in plain white surroundings. Cheryl Gillan, a rare exception, had set up her camera in what looked like a magical grotto decorated with turquoise box-files. The first secretary,

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The SNP is using Covid to bury bad news

This, everyone agrees, is no time for politics as normal. We are – all of us – engaged in a great national struggle. Partisanship is for yesterday and tomorrow; these are different times and the ordinary rules of politics have been suspended. Even so, the occasional green shoot of normality can still be seen and for some of us this is a joyous thing indeed. So yesterday I was delighted to see the Scottish government announce that an inconvenient and controversial review of Scottish education, due to be led by officials from the OECD, will not report its findings until June 2021 at the earliest. Elections to the Scottish parliament

Matthew Lynn

It’s no bad thing that the airline industry will never be the same again

British Airways is laying off 12,000 staff. Virgin Atlantic is desperately looking for a buyer. Air France-KLM is being bailed out by the French and Dutch governments, Lufthansa is getting rid of planes, and Airbus is furloughing workers. The once mighty airline industry is in terminal trouble, with massive state support now required to keep it alive. Rishi Sunak hasn’t stepped in with his chequebook yet, but, heck, it is only Wednesday and it is probably somewhere on his ‘to-do’ list for the week. But hold on. Sure, we want to rescue most industries and bring them back to life as soon as practically possible. That is certainly true of