All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The protest in Manchester today was supposed to be static and socially distanced. While that may not have worked out so well – leaving me somewhat yearning for Israeli efficiency as seen in the protests against Netanyahu – it was still a success. The vast majority were wearing facemasks and those who quite clearly wanted to
Three faces peered out of the screen. At noon, last Saturday, Facebook hosted a digital debate between a trio of grandees from the Stop the War Coalition. Former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, appeared in a plain white room that matched his open-necked shirt. The novelist Arundhati Roy spoke from Delhi. And the veteran activist, Tariq Ali, began
It’s official: criticising Black Lives Matter is now a sackable offence, even here in the British Isles, thousands of miles away from the social conflict currently embroiling the US. As protesters again fill the streets of a rainy London on Saturday, as part of a now internationalised backlash against the brutal police killing of George
What comes next, now that the transmission rate and prevalence of Covid-19 have fallen significantly? (Before you shout at me, yes I know there is frustration and some bemusement among scientists that illness incidence and numbers of deaths have not dropped faster in the UK, but they have nonetheless reduced significantly, if not uniformly, everywhere).
It’s pointless to deny that the government is currently performing poorly across a wide range of fronts – and I say that as someone who voted Conservative with enthusiasm in December and who wishes the government well. Despite the shrill claims of some, the onset of an epidemic of a horrible new disease would clearly
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Some decision-makers have already made timelines of their actions since the start of the pandemic, James Forsyth reveals in his political column for this week’s Spectator. How does the knowledge that an inquiry is coming change the way the pandemic is dealt with?
In taking a position on an issue, most of us like to think that we accumulate evidence, consider the pros and cons, and then rationally come to a view that we’ll be willing to change if and when the evidence demands it. But it turns out that this is very much a minority way of
This week, the government has come under criticism from a number of its scientific advisers for easing the lockdown too quickly. Meanwhile, both chief medical officer Chris Whitty and chief scientific officer Patrick Vallance have emphasised the need to move cautiously at this point in the lockdown easing. However, not every scientist takes this view.
I experienced a novel, if fleeting, sensation last week when I was struck with a powerful urge to vote for Japanese PM Shinzo Abe in the next election, expected within the next 18 months. This warm glow was sparked by Abe’s decision to give every adult resident of Japan a one-off corona ‘compensation’ payment of
On Friday, researchers at the University of Cambridge working with Public Health England estimated that the R number – Covid’s rate of transmission – has risen above 1 in the North West, meaning the virus may be starting to spread in the region. In every other region of England, the study suggested, the R number
Time was that toys would be recalled, removed from sale or quietly had their advertising pulled if they were covered in lead paint, defective, or in the case of Disney’s hilariously misjudged 1999 ‘Rad Repeatin’ Tarzan’ doll, appeared to be masturbating. Today all it takes is for them to be potentially perceived by someone, somewhere,
All through the Covid-19 pandemic we have been hampered by a lack of data on just how many people have had the disease. Given that several studies have indicated that as many as 80 per cent of people who are infected show no symptoms whatsoever, it is extremely difficult to estimate this crucial figure –
Another day, another BBC apology. But Mr S isn’t convinced this one is actually needed. The BBC’s new boss was announced this morning and it fell to the corporation’s media editor Amol Rajan to fill in viewers about who Tim Davie is. Rajan explained Davie had a ‘hellishly, hellishly difficult job’ in manning the ship over the next
The US economy created 2.5 million jobs last month – the biggest monthly jobs gain since records began a century ago, albeit only a partial recovery from the 22 million jobs lost during lockdown. These figures have blown expectations out of the water. Economists were predicting yet more unemployment: the consensus was unemployment reaching 8.3 million, or
To no one’s great surprise, Michel Barnier has made a very downbeat statement following the latest round of UK-EU trade negotiations. He has declared that ‘there’s been no significant progress since the start of these talks’, accused the UK of backsliding on the political declaration and warned that he doesn’t think the talks ‘can go
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With an NHS tracing app not fully up and running until autumn, contact tracing seems like the latest in a series of events where the government has over-promised and under-delivered. Is it time for the government to admit the mistakes it has made in dealing with the pandemic?
When lockdown was first imposed, there was little science to base it on. The virus was assumed to be growing at an exponential rate, with each infected person passing it on to about four others. The controversial assumption: only mandatory lockdown could stop this. Graphs were drawn, showing the infection rate barely dented by voluntary
It might seem hard to believe it was just a matter of months ago that senior Treasury advisor Tim Leunig made headlines when he suggested in leaked emails that Britain doesn’t need farmers. The ‘food sector isn’t critically important to the UK’, he wrote. Then Covid-19 descended, and the British farming industry was deemed vital again.
After the New York Times published an op-ed written by Republican Sen. Tom Cotton – calling for the military to be deployed in the face of nationwide protests – the editors are facing a staff revolt. Reporters at the paper have been quick to take to social media to denounce their own publication. Mr S was
Transphobia is a word thrown around far too easily. But Hungary’s move to end legal recognition of trans people really is something to worry about. While Britain has been embroiled in a heated debate over proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act, which allows people to change their legal gender on the production of medical reports and a diagnosis of gender
It was the plot-twist in the Covid drama nobody expected. At the start of the pandemic, Good Morning Britain host Piers Morgan quickly became the self-appointed Robespierre of the lockdown movement. Anyone who broke the rules, or did not support tighter restrictions, was in his eyes a killer, responsible for untold deaths as the virus
Responding to the Covid-19 pandemic has imposed great strains on governments and leading politicians. But, initially at least, the reaction of publics in much of the world was a supportive one; in a time of peril, many of them ‘rallied to the flag’. In some places, though, it was not entirely clear to which flag
It is a moment of cautious and much-contested transition in our Covid saga. I don’t mean the move from lockdown to a slightly more ‘nation as usual’ situation that’s being thrashed out in parliament, but in my father, Robin Hanbury-Tenison, and his mode of transport from mobility scooter to ‘yomping with confidence’. In the last ten
There is no doubt that the way disability is regarded in Britain has changed for the better. People with disabilities now enjoy legal protections that 25 years ago were absent. Yet for all the progress, there remains a glaring omission: a shameful contradiction in the legal framework that gives life to disability equality. Since 1990, we
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Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has announced that face masks will be compulsory on public transport from mid-June. Until recently, that was explicitly not the government advice. What’s changed?
Covid-19 has hit us harder than just about any country in the world. Lockdown has been eased chaotically, and no one has any idea what the rules are any more. And now, on top of everything else, it looks as if we are about to run out of medicines if the government doesn’t mange to
It is inevitable that there will be a public inquiry into the government’s handling of coronavirus at the end of all this – the death toll demands it. There is, as I say in the magazine this week, an interesting question about what kind of person should chair the inquiry. Leveson was a judge, Chilcot
Last week, the BBC show Newsnight found itself in hot water, after its presenter Emily Maitlis was rebuked by the BBC for not showing due impartiality, when she opened the show with a broadside against Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson. You would think, therefore, that the programme would be on its best behaviour at the
Equalities minister Kemi Badenoch was having none of it in the Commons chamber this morning. SNP MP Alison Thewliss asked the minister about the ‘no recourse to public funds’ policy, which Boris Johnson was quizzed over at the liaison committee last week. Safe to say, Badenoch wasn’t particularly happy with the line of questioning, accusing Thewliss of ‘confected outrage’
The twin temptations of American liberalism are to radical excess and conservative stasis. Because liberalism is a practical philosophy of government, given its most comprehensive expression in the Democrat party, it sometimes lists left and other times right. The Minneapolis moment is different in that it sees liberalism lean in two directions at once and
Huge stock has been placed in the development of a vaccine for Covid-19, with the Prime Minister suggesting this week that the disease will not be properly defeated without one. The government has held out on the idea of a vaccine being available as early as September. The CanSino vaccine is only one of 120