All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
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.
11 min listen
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
Dear Prime Minister, Chancellor, CMOs and Chief Scientific Adviser We are writing with the intention of providing constructive input into the choices with respect to the Covid-19 policy response. We also have several concerns regarding aspects of the existing policy choices that we wish to draw attention to. In summary, our view is that the
The main Tory attack on Starmer since he became leader of the Labour party is that he is ‘too much of a lawyer’; dull and metropolitan. The problem with this line is that it complements the narrative Starmer is trying to build himself, namely that he is competent while Boris is not. As such, it
There’s no shortage of parents who failed to think through their kids’ names before signing the birth certificate. The kid in the year above at school called Poppy Field; the elderly neighbour called Stan Still. As a child, I spent a lot of time laughing with friends at those misfortunate enough to end up with a
It would be fair to say that Piers Morgan was one of the top cheerleaders for caution during our initial response to coronavirus. Since March he has consistently urged his Good Morning Britain viewers and social media followers to restrict their daily activities to help fight the virus. On Sunday he tweeted in support of cancelling Christmas in
‘My water bottle has leaked in my bag!’ The 11-year-old girl was distraught. It was her first week at secondary school. Her neatly titled exercise books – hitherto in pristine condition – were dripping wet; was she in trouble? What would become of her? That happened in my wife’s class. She is also a teacher
I’ve been bombarded with emails and messages from data scientists who firmly believe that the trend to Covid-19 infections, based on when a specimen was taken, is flattening or even falling. On the basis of that analysis, they are convinced the government is overreacting by threatening to impose new social distancing measures. And if you
The trouble with women is that they have opinions and not necessarily the correct ones. Some even have the audacity to demand a say in how the term ‘women’ is defined, which has been causing all sorts of problems lately. All credit, then, to the Liberal Democrats, who have devised an ingenious solution to the hassle
Health Secretary Matt Hancock was one of the two big political guests of the day on the Andrew Marr show. The government is preparing to introduce a new system of fines and restrictions to combat a winter wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Andrew Marr asked about the government’s strategy if the rate of re-infection did
Will the current cycle – lockdown; open up; eat out; restrictions; lockdown – go on forever? In their handling of coronavirus, Boris Johnson and his colleagues have become increasingly media-responsive, fear-bound, model-sensitive, sound-byte producing, u-turn prone and, quite frankly, embarrassing to all who believed the UK to be a beacon of rational thought. Has the
Could Boris do a Harold Wilson? Over the years there has been much speculation about the sudden resignation of Wilson as prime minister less than a year after he had settled, apparently for good, the momentous question of Britain’s future in Europe via the 1975 referendum. Was he forced out by MI5? Had he already
As from this Thursday, I am a peer, although I must wait until next month before I can take my seat in the House of Lords. My letters patent confirm that I am Lord Moore of Etchingham. As do all new boys and girls, I went to see the Garter King of Arms, and he
Ruth the Moabite is the only Biblical figure to merit the description ‘eshet chayil’ – ‘a woman of valour’. One rabbinical exegesis sees Proverbs 31’s womanly virtues as a reference to Ruth: ‘Many women have done well, but you surpass them all.’ Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died aged 87 on Erev Rosh Hashanah, surpassed the
The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a terrible blow to Democrats, but there is an important point to be considered – the principled arguments Democrats made in 2016 after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia prevail. Democrats insisted that the Scalia vacancy should be filled swiftly by President Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, but