Politics

‘Nothing has changed’ – the words of Theresa May could have been tattooed on Rishi Sunak’s forehead this afternoon. Appearing before the liaison committee for the first time, the new Prime Minister sought to convey an impression of authority. He deliberately tried to downplay issues of potential conflict like a second independence referendum and rigidly stuck to the government line on strikes and spending restraint. Sunak made much of his inexperience – dropping in several references to only having held the premiership for seven weeks – and ducking a question from Joanna Cherry on leaving the European Convention on Human Rights by saying he ‘wasn’t in government’ at the time

Journalists and editors make decisions every day about what stories to report and what to skip. That’s not just because there isn’t enough time, or enough staff, to report on everything. They also prioritise what they, or their publication, believe is most important, or interesting, to their readers. This is especially true for publications with a specific audience, like Edinburgh University’s Student newspaper, where I am editor. My decision not to report on Adult Human Female, a documentary due to be shown at my university by campaigners and academics who might call themselves ‘gender critical’, sparked something of a backlash. I was labelled a fascist, an enemy of free speech, ‘the

Exactly a year ago today, the cabinet met to decide whether or not to lock down to tackle Omicron. At the time, published Sage documents had outlined a range of 600 to 6,000 daily deaths unless more action was taken. Recalling the anniversary, I had an interesting exchange with Graham Medley, who chaired the SPI-M modelling committee that fed into Sage. ‘We obviously made sure that the people we were talking to did understand,’ he told me. That raises the prospect that a subset of people may have been briefed that Sage was discarding real-world South African data on the mildness of Omicron – so its ‘scenarios’ could bear no