Politics

Dominic Raab is a lawyer, not a doctor, by temperament as well as training. He is not a politician who talks about his feelings much. This made it all the more striking to hear him talking about Boris Johnson as a ‘friend’, and his hopes for his recovery. The reassuring news is that Boris Johnson’s condition is stable and he hasn’t required a ventilator. Raab faced a barrage of questions about how him deputising for Boris Johnson will actually work Understandably, Raab faced a barrage of questions about how him deputising for Boris Johnson will actually work. Raab emphasised Cabinet collective responsibility and how they were implementing the plans that

Sympathy for Conservative politicians rarely overwhelms their political opponents. But everyone with the interests of the country at heart (not to mention a modicum of human decency) should try to put themselves in their place. Imagine being a government minister. You are in a crisis like nothing you have encountered before. Unlike every political storm you’ve trudged through, the pandemic has no foreseeable end. A temporary emergency is one thing. Most people are capable of handling short-term privation, and can repeat dozens of clichés about the need to grit our teeth, tighten our belts and keep calm and carry on. But no government in the world has a viable coronavirus

Donald Trump was one of the first world leaders to voice his support for poorly PM, wishing him a speedy recovery and calling Johnson ‘a great gentleman’. At last night’s White House press briefing, the US President went a step further, telling reporters that he had personally instructed private medical staff to assist Boris Johnson. Trump said: I’ve asked two of the leading companies… They’ve come with the solutions and just have done incredible jobs – and I’ve asked him to contact London immediately. They’ve really advanced therapeutics… and they have arrived in London already. The London office has whatever they need. We’ll see if we can be of help. We’ve contacted

After Boris Johnson’s admission to hospital, Dominic Raab tried to use Monday’s daily press conference to reassure the public that the Prime Minister was still firmly in charge: ‘I can tell you that the PM had a comfortable night in hospital, and he’s in good spirits. He’s still in hospital under observation. He is being given regular updates on developments, and he continues to lead the government. I can reassure the British people that the Government remains united in a single overriding priority, which is to defeat the coronavirus and see this nation through the challenge ahead.’ However, the message was complicated by the Q and A. Raab – who as first secretary of

At the daily press briefings of senior ministers, the medical and the scientific advisers, there is a reluctance to talk about a timescale for an ‘exit strategy’ from these unprecedentedly severe restrictions on our freedom to move around and see people – and even to discuss what that strategy might look like. The understandable priority is to get us to commit wholeheartedly to the surrender of these basic rights so that the incidence of the virus can be slashed and many lives can be saved. Among the senior medical and scientific advisers, who seem to be steering pretty much everything right now, any initiatives that aren’t about immediate virus suppression