All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
In a strategy that now appears to be one of outright suppression, the government has put huge stock in the approval of a vaccine before too long. But could the answer turn out to be not a vaccine but an anti-viral drug? Research by a team from Bristol University and published in the journal Science
The government’s decision to reject ‘self-ID’ is a victory for this transgender woman. When I transitioned eight years ago, I had two ambitions: to keep my job and to stay out of the press. I achieved the first, but failed the second. However, this week’s announcement vindicates my decision to speak out. Back in 2016,
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A new poll from Harvard suggests that Joe Biden could win the votes of 60 per cent of under-30s in November’s election. But does the Democratic candidate really energise young people, or are they simply repelled by Donald Trump? Freddy Gray speaks to Marcus Roberts, director of international projects at YouGov, about the numbers dictating
Well, who can the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have in mind in their video message to Time 100 – for the magazine’s issue on influential people – when they talked about the need to reject ‘hate speech, misinformation and online negativity’ in the context of the US election? There are precisely two possibilities. Do
As the BBC’s new director general Tim Davie works to change the perception of the BBC – with social media crackdown and an alleged plan to tackle left wing comedy bias – there seems to be an acceptance across the corporation that they need to work harder to reflect modern day Britain. So, it was perhaps bad timing
Keir Starmer’s first conference speech as Labour leader took place in exceptional circumstances. Thanks to Covid, there was no party conference in the conventional sense. His speech lacked the usual enthusiastic audience primed to punctuate a leader’s rhetoric with cheers; nor was there a ten-minute-long standing ovation at its conclusion. It was a desperately low-key
Boris Johnson addressed the nation this evening to update the public on his government’s coronavirus strategy. After announcing the broad details of the new measures at the despatch box this lunchtime, tonight’s statement was focussed on justifying the new restrictions. The Prime Minister said that while there were no easy choices ahead, he was confident the country would
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Boris Johnson today warned that Britain has ‘reached a perilous turning point’ in its battle with coronavirus, as he ordered pubs to close at 10pm and pledged to crack down on rule-breakers. The package of new restrictions were not as sweeping as many Tory MPs had feared, but with the Prime Minister saying that his government
The government now knows that the country is losing the battle against Covid-19. Boris Johnson has announced a series of new restrictions on our daily lives which, he suggests, could last up to six months. After the first national lockdown, the government made clear that it was putting its faith in people to act responsibly, as well as its
The Prime Minister announced a raft of measures that will significantly delay the UK’s economic recovery, but whose impact on the spread of coronavirus is profoundly uncertain. The important point is that there is only one significant new measure, namely closing pubs and restaurants between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. Pretty much everything else is
Beware a government appearing to do the right thing. Liz Truss, minister for women and equalities, released a statement this morning that appears to do the right thing on reform of the Gender Recognition Act (GRA). Trans activists wanted the 2004 law changed in three key ways: 1) Remove the requirement for a medical diagnosis
Today, 32 scientists, economists and other academics have written to the Prime Minister demanding a change in policy on Covid-19, saying that attempting to suppress the virus is ‘increasingly infeasible’. They have instead demanded that vulnerable groups should be protected from the disease while younger people should be allowed to get on with their lives. Many
Sweden didn’t ‘refuse’ to lockdown. Nor does it have a herd immunity strategy, although it was recognised that some level of immunity in the population could be a side effect of its approach. The false premise of that rumour is that Sweden stayed open in order to allow the virus to spread, thus promoting herd immunity.
Liz Truss, in her role as equalities minister, has confirmed to Parliament that the Government will not amend the Gender Recognition Act 2004 to allow people to change their legal gender without the approval of doctors and officials. ‘Self-ID’ is not happening. There is a lot to say about this statement, and the way it
Boris Johnson has announced sweeping new Covid restrictions, imposing a curfew on pubs and restaurants and telling office workers to return to home working if they can. In a statement to the House of Commons, the Prime Minister said the UK is at a ‘perilous turning point’ and promised that more measures would be introduced
Sometimes you just need to accept that some political problems do not have a solution. One such is the Labour party’s increasingly fraught relationship with Scotland. One opinion poll published earlier this summer suggested the erstwhile people’s party now commands the support of just 14 per cent of Scottish voters. The optimistic view of this
When will the National Trust get it into its thick skull that it’s supposed to look after buildings and landscapes? It is not a political organisation. But now, yet again, the Trust has weighed in with its political blunderbuss, attacking its own properties for their connections with colonialism and slavery. It has published a document
The idea on the whole was sound. The execution less so. Boris Johnson was nowhere to be seen at yesterday’s press conference. Instead, the honest brokers in this crisis, the medical scientists, were front and centre, in what may be a Downing Street briefing remembered for all the wrong reasons. When chief medical officer, professor Chris Whitty,
Keir Starmer’s first conference speech as Labour leader did not go as he had first planned. Social distancing measures meant that he had to deliver it from Doncaster to an empty hall. Meanwhile, the time was changed at the last minute so as to avoid a clash with government announcements on new coronavirus restrictions. But Starmer still managed
With the country facing a possible second wave and the prospect of further restrictions to our daily lives, Labour’s Kate Green has an entirely different train of thought. The shadow education secretary wondered how best to exploit the coronavirus for political gain. Speaking at a Labour Connected event, Green said: ‘I think we should use the opportunity,
I’m delighted that we’re here in Doncaster. My wife’s mum was born and grew up here – just next to the racecourse. We’re regulars here. Visiting family friends but also to go to the Ledger. Though of course sadly not this year. I’m also told that this is the first Labour leaders’ speech in Yorkshire
It’s understandable that, in a crisis, politicians reach for wartime metaphors – but they don’t always fit. There was the ‘war on terror’. Now we have politicians talking about the need to vanquish Covid-19. This is about more than language. There’s a big difference between a Covid-19 eradication strategy and one that seeks to find
In a press briefing today Professors Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance showed epidemic curves for Spain and France — demonstrating how cases numbers have been growing rapidly, possibly exponentially, since August. As is often done when using case numbers by publishing date, the raw numbers are smoothed with a seven-day moving average. Drawn this way,
As the UK’s coronavirus alert level is upgraded from three to four, all focus is now on what new restrictions Boris Johnson will announce on Tuesday when he makes a statement to the Commons. Before he gets there, the Prime Minister must first meet with his cabinet and chair Cobra. Monday’s briefing from Chief Scientific Officer Patrick
Probably the most interesting new bit of information we received today on Covid-19 was from Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, who implied that he and the government are now assuming that fewer than one in 200 people who are infected with the virus will die. That still means this form of coronavirus is
Theresa May was away last week so she didn’t have to take part in the vote on the Internal Market Bill, which contain the controversial Northern Ireland clauses that disapply parts of the Withdrawal Agreement. But in a speech just now, May has made explicit her opposition to the bill, declaring: ‘I can’t support this
The chief medical officer, professor Chris Whitty, and chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, made a statement this morning on the latest data surrounding Covid-19, laying the groundwork for new restrictions that the government is expected to announce tomorrow. It wasn’t a press conference with questions, so they could not be challenged on what they
The first big speech by Labour shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds was highly significant for what it did not do — in that it was all about competence rather than ideology. Her speech had four main elements: a need for government to subsidise those hundreds of thousands of people forced into part-time working by the virus; a need
Is Tory mayoral hopeful Shaun Bailey a fan of renaming things or not? It’s hard to tell. When London mayor Sadiq Khan announced a commission to review statues, road names and plaques, Bailey was furious: But now it seems he has changed his tune, at least when it comes to the names of stations. Bailey
So Ruth Bader Ginsburg is gone. What do I hope is her legacy? That younger feminists take a leaf out of her book and fight for real, material change instead of targeting older feminists as ‘bigots’ and ‘irrelevant’. An old-school, early second wave feminist, Ginsburg was nevertheless loved and admired by legions of young women.
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In a Downing Street statement this morning, Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance presented their take on the latest coronavirus data. Speaking without a government representative, the pair said that Brits needed to ‘break unnecessary links between households’ and warned that the UK could see 50,000 new coronavirus infections a day by mid-October. But why didn’t
Actor Alan Cumming used an interview over the weekend to talk about the difficulty of being a Scot in London. Cumming, who is best known for appearing in TV show The Good Wife, said Scots like himself faced an ‘insidious and subliminal racism’ in the capital. He said: ‘I feel…assumptions are made about your intelligence, your background,
A taste of what to expect over the next six months came in today’s press conference with Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty and Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance. Following reports of plans in government for new national restrictions and a potential lockdown, the pair used their public address to provide an update of the latest
What we’ve seen is a progression where — after the remarkable efforts which got the rates right down across the country — we first saw very small outbreaks, then we’ve seen more localised outbreaks which have got larger over time, particularly in the cities. Now what we’re seeing is a rate of increase across the great