Today on Coffee House

On Covid, there is a basic question: what is the government's strategy? No one seems to know what ministers are doing and why. But how could we? Neither do they. The lockdown approach is based on a premise, which has turned out to be false: that we could suppress and eliminate the virus – or at least keep it under control until the arrival of a vaccine. But there is no reason to believe that there will be a vaccine any time soon.

What do Conservatives care about? First, high-quality education and academic attainment. Second, value for money for the taxpayer. Third, (unless you are an arch-libertarian) recognition that the battle that must be won is not between big government or small government, but good government. Combating child hunger should, therefore, be a cause that all Conservatives can embrace. That should include the temporary extension of free school meals over the holidays while (and only while) the economic impacts of the pandemic continue to be felt.

Italy is the only European country where Brexit is viewed with some sympathy and the British are not assumed to be off their heads. It is an odd state of affairs. The country benefited spectacularly from the EU. It transformed itself in a few years from a society of peasants and small craftsmen into an advanced, export-oriented economy based on engineering, cars, pharmaceuticals and consumer electrics, with an impressive standard of living.

In four decades working as an engineer and scientist, I have rarely known a more polarised time within the scientific field. The marketplace of ideas is depressingly split down the middle: you are either for herd immunity in the shortest possible time or for a full lockdown. There is, however, a third way: a method that will allow the coronavirus to slowly spread within the population without causing a very high death toll and overwhelming the NHS – while, at the same time, protecting the economic and social wellbeing of the country.