All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
For anyone who watches the daily Covid-19 briefings, it is quite clear that too many of our politicians and journalists have little to no understanding of science and mathematics. Out of the 26 ministers attending cabinet, only three have higher-level STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) backgrounds. In parliament, only around 100 MPs have science
One of the consequences of the virtual parliament is fewer opportunities for MPs to lobby No. 10. However, this afternoon MPs were given a rare audience with the Prime Minister as Boris Johnson appeared via video link for a meeting of the 1922 committee of Tory backbenchers. With a growing number of MPs anxious over
Some unwelcome publicity this week for Rupert Soames, Churchill’s grandson and brother of the former Conservative MP Nicholas – once known as ‘Fatty’ – Soames. Rupert posted a curious tweet on Tuesday extolling the virtues of the Caledonian Sleeper train, run by the company he heads, Serco. The sleeper service from London to Scotland has
Today the Liberal Democrats have published an independent review into their disastrous showing at the 2019 election, which saw its former leader Jo Swinson lose her seat, and the party drop to only 11 MPs in the Commons – despite starting the campaign at 20 per cent in the polls. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the election review
In less enlightened times, an outbreak of a deadly virus was taken as a sign of God’s displeasure and would be accompanied by the persecution of an unpopular minority. It was less than a coincidence that the scapegoats tended to be those of whom the Church took a dim view: heretics, ‘witches’ (i.e. unmarried women)
There has been much chatter about people being puzzled by the lockdown rules. Critics of Boris Johnson are partly right: the law is confusing. But this isn’t necessarily the Prime Minister’s fault. And nor should it come as a surprise. Why? Because the law can never give absolute clarity about what you should do. Only
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I suppose most of us have a hole or two in our lives right now. This is a time of absence; a hollow period in which time seems congealed. Every so often we receive a fresh reminder of all that’s missing. One such came to me this week as Cricket Scotland confirmed there will be
Remember the no-nonsense plumber who criticised those who claimed to be baffled by Boris Johnson’s lockdown announcement? Ryan Price defended the Prime Minister, telling Channel 4 ‘It’s not really hard to understand’ when asked to comment on the next steps in the lockdown plan. Price – who has been giving free call-outs to NHS workers – was
Why does president Macron want European debt mutualisation? Why has France become the spokesman for the ‘southern states’ on a European rescue package? Why did the French finance minister punch the air on learning that 500 billion euros (£440bn) EU funding had been agreed on 9 April? There are three reasons. First because France’s soaring
David Frost briefed the Cabinet yesterday on the state of the Brexit negotiations and he has now issued a very downbeat statement. Boris Johnson’s chief Brexit negotiator says that the third round of negotiations ‘made very little progress’. The problem is that (as always in these talks) the UK and the EU have very different
Could having a common cold protect you against Covid-19? The intriguing prospect has been raised by a team from the La Jolla Institute for Immunology in California. They were researching the response of human T cells – which play a vital role in the immune system – in patients who have recovered from Covid-19. The
China is a bully and the sooner the West understands that, the sooner we can begin to push back. Beijing has banned beef imports from four Australian abattoirs and slapped tariffs of up to 80 per cent on the country’s barley exports. The dictatorship is citing trumped up hygiene and safety concerns, but these are
One of the constants of Boris Johnson’s political career has been his opposition to ‘nanny state’ interventions in people’s lives. In 2006, he overshadowed David Cameron’s first conference as Tory leader by supporting mothers who were pushing pies through school railings in protest at attempts to make their children eat Jamie Oliver inspired healthy school
After losing the leadership contest in April, the left of the Labour Party regrouped. Organising as part of old factions like the Socialist Campaign Group and new ones such as Don’t Leave, Organise, they have held Zoom events and created websites, pledging to make life difficult for Keir Starmer. One thing is missing, however, from
Covid-19 shows the dangers of an excessively connected world, but it also presents huge political opportunities for critics of globalisation. And who better to seize the moment than the latest scion of the Le Pen political dynasty: Marion Maréchal, the 30-year-old granddaughter of the National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen and the niece of the
Could the future of pandemic planning lie in our past? A century ago, there were hundreds of so-called ‘fever hospitals’ dotted across Britain. These small institutions were built for diseases of a bygone age – smallpox, scarlet fever and typhus – but were designed for precisely the same problems we face today. They contained isolation wards, separate accommodation for
This week was meant to mark the moment the whole of the United Kingdom began to ease lockdown. Instead, it’s England that has become an outlier – moving to the slogan ‘Stay Alert’ while Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland stick with ‘Stay Home’. With the devolved governments adopting different approaches to easing lockdown, Downing Street is facing a
Where Brits have voiced their opposition to the coronavirus lockdown, they’ve mostly done so from their own homes over the internet. But some Germans who are unhappy at the restrictions imposed to thwart the spread of the virus are adopting a more radical approach. Demonstrators gathered in Munich, Stuttgart and other German cities last Saturday to
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Public Health England has approved its first mass antibody test. Roche, the supplier behind it, says that the test has an 100 per cent accuracy. So how much of a game changer is this development?
Britain has long flattered itself that it leads the world in administration. But, as I write in the magazine this week, Covid-19 has highlighted just how far from being true that now is. It’s hard to argue that the UK has done much better than France, Spain and Italy, and we have clearly done worse than
So far, so good: the Oxford university trials on a potential vaccine for Covid-19 is reported to be going well. It has been tested on more than a thousand people, and it looks to be safe. There is another, more important question, however, and one where an answer might take a frustratingly long time. Does
Having a passionate national debate now about specific future tax and spending plans is like having a debate about how to fund the restoration of Notre Dame while it is burning down. It is too early for many reasons, but mainly because we just don’t know yet what the shortfall is. Put the fire out,
Boris Johnson’s address on Sunday was always going to be challenging. The effects of Covid-19 – in terms of its horrific death toll and the drastic measures we’ve taken to prevent more loss of life – meant it was one the biggest and most important political statements in living memory. But what was also required
I don’t have a cleaner. Admittedly, whether I do or not isn’t really relevant to the argument I’m about to make. But quite often when you talk about cleaners, you’ll get a reaction like this: ‘That lazy, dirty Karen, she should clean up after herself instead of farting out columns while someone picks up around
Every generation has an event that defines it. For my father, it was the Second World War. For his father, the First World War. Some might have thought Brexit would have been ours, but the coronavirus pandemic puts politics into perspective. There is no doubt that 2020 will be viewed by historians in the same way 1918
Nothing causes Whitehall headaches like a government IT project. Remember the Ministry of Defence digital upgrade back in the 2000s? MoD officials originally told MPs that the software roll-out would cost an eye-watering £2.3 billion. The upgrade, which suffered multiple delays, eventually ended up costing the taxpayer somewhere north of £7 billion. Or cast your
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With Matt Mayer, President of free market group Opportunity Ohio and contributor to Spectator USA.
Just how bad will the Covid economic hit be? Today’s figures for the first quarter of 2020 show Britain’s economy shrunk by two per cent, but that takes into account just a few days of lockdown (and suggests that the recession started some time before). The March figure is more like it: despite only formally being in lockdown for
At times such as these, politicians like to say that ‘this is not the time for politics’. Which is not true, of course, because politics never stops, and especially not the politics of personal advancement. Just as sharks must always swim forwards to stay alive, politicians must always be thinking about the next thing, the
A former prime minister once told me that PMQs in the Commons is an event that can only be enjoyed in retrospect, after the final whistle has blown. Even if exchanges with the opposition leader had gone well, there remained the possibility of being tripped up by a minor party leader, an opposition backbencher or
Keir Starmer is a very rum package. His body and his manner seem to belong to different organisms. His physique is martial, sturdy, invincible. The square jaw, the trunk-like neck, the unsettlingly symmetrical face, the blue but eerily lifeless eyes. But his personality has no trace of manliness at all. He seems grannyish, nervy, over-delicate,
The National Education Union, the largest teaching union in the UK, has branded Boris Johnson ‘reckless’. What’s he done now? He said Britain’s schools should start to reopen in June. This is how weird politics has become in Covid-hit Britain. The ‘Evil Tories’ want working people, especially teachers, to get back to work, while the