All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Imagine if a vaccine for Covid-19 was approved tomorrow, and that within weeks we had all been vaccinated. Would life be able to go quickly back more or less to normal? Don’t bet on it. The long shadow of Covid-19 will mean mass panic every time another novel virus comes to light. Indeed, news of
Boris Johnson had hoped to use today’s speech in Dudley to draw a line under the past 14 weeks of lockdown and return to his election agenda. However, with the government announcing overnight that Leicester is to go into a local lockdown, the ongoing challenge of coronavirus isn’t far away. The Prime Minister acknowledged that some
China’s multi-pronged militarism against its neighbours in recent weeks is intended as a show of strength. In fact, it reveals a weakness at the top of Xi Jinping’s Communist party which could prove to be counterproductive. Why is Xi lashing out? A detection of dissatisfaction among China’s people, mixed with a perceived opportunity for China to
It may seem a bit premature to make a speech now about Britain after Covid, when that deceptively nasty disease is still rampant in other countries, when global case numbers are growing fast and when many in this country are nervous – rightly – about more outbreaks, whether national or local like the flare-up in Leicester.
Antibody tests on random samples of the population have so far shown much lower levels of general infection than the government’s scientific advisers claimed would be necessary to attain ‘herd immunity’. In London, for example, tests have shown that 17 per cent of the population have antibodies to Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. In
Dame Helen Mirren has called for a ‘huge investment’ in the arts, warning that the UK’s theatres are only weeks from collapse. The theatre, she said on the Today programme, is central to the ‘identity of our nation’ and ’embedded in what it means to be British.’ With live performances banned since lockdown, most people
The Liberal Democrats were once the progressive voice of fiscal restraint. Not anymore. Leadership hopeful Ed Davey has tabled nearly 130 written questions over the last two weeks in a bid to generate some much-needed coverage – costing an estimated £140 a pop. According to Mr Steerpike’s back-of-a-fag-packet calculations, these often pointless interventions set the taxpayer back a cool £18,000. Probing
Over the last few months, I have watched events with growing incredulity. So much ‘normality’ has been lost, and even when measures have been eased recently, it has always been with strings attached. This makes it feel like more restrictions have appeared; at the height of the epidemic, we were still able to get on a
It’s funny how politics works. This time last year, the talk was of whether Labour moderates should leave their party and join with the Lib Dems after some of them had already taken the plunge. Labour’s hard-left was unassailably in charge of the party and it seemed there was no way they could be defeated
The government’s decision to lock Leicester down, closing all non-essential retail from today and schools from Thursday for all but the kids of key workers and vulnerable children, is a hugely significant moment. The government’s whole Covid-strategy relies on replacing the sledgehammer of a national lockdown with far more targeted local interventions. Leicester will be
The Conservative party is no longer the party of the rich, while the Labour party is no longer the party of the poor. That is the central finding of my new report for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF). Boris Johnson is certainly a prime minister under pressure. Public disapproval of his government is drifting upwards.
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Leicester is set to lock down locally. It’s an approach that the Prime Minister has dubbed ‘whack-a-mole’, referring to clampdowns on local clusters that will inevitably arise in the coming months. All eyes are on Leicester’s experience now as it signals whether or not the national lockdown is a thing of the past. Katy Balls
Now that we are two months past the peak of the UK coronavirus epidemic, many fear the emergence of a second wave of the disease and remain anxious about any evidence that reopening the country has gone too far. For this reason media headlines like ‘Germany’s R number rockets again – from 1.79 to 2.88’
At last, with the partial easing of lockdown, we have the consolation of an escape into the countryside. There, in the unquestioning simplicity of it all, we can leave society’s struggles behind. A sweet idea, but now rather behind the times, as shown by BBC Countryfile’s recent stirring into action. In its programme last night,
With the world’s attention focused on the ongoing fight against coronavirus, Syria’s conflict rumbles on. Hundreds of thousands have died. Millions have fled. Yet this isn’t even the beginning of the end in the battle for control in this blighted country. The reality is that the future for Syria is filled with darkness and turmoil.
These may well be the defining few days of the Johnson government. Having failed to make a towering success of the initial response to the Covid-19 crisis – by his own admission on Times Radio this morning – the Prime Minister is now embarked on the kind of structural reform of the machinery of government
One of the mysteries of the Covid-19 crisis is how the disease seemed to bubble up out of nowhere in Italy at the end of February – at a time when it seemed to be under control in China. In spite of local quarantines and the isolation of individual patients, the epidemic quickly took hold.
Huge infrastructure projects. A massive rise in public spending, and the creation of public works for an army of unemployed. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has started pitching himself as the new Roosevelt, modelling himself on the 1930s American president who spent big to pull the country out of the Great Depression, and re-wrote the rules of
How helpful of the comedian Sacha Baron Cohen to reveal that there are two or three people in America who are happy to join in a sing-along containing the line ‘Liberals, what we gonna do? Inject them with the Wuhan flu.’ Trouble is, it really only was two or three people. If Baron Cohen really
The death of the High Street has been greatly exaggerated before, but could this really be it for our town centre shops? The ease of Amazon has made life under lockdown bearable and has tempted people away from popping to the shops. As a result, more and more shops are boarded up. Even large companies
You may not have heard of Graham Linehan but you will be familiar with his work. Linehan is the creator of Father Ted and the IT Crowd, among other comedy shows. And in the wake of the attacks against JK Rowling, he is the latest high-profile person to have been targeted by the mob for speaking out
How did Britons enjoy this recent bout of nice summer weather? Many people certainly headed to a nearby beach. Some opted for a local park, National Trust site or countryside walk. And many people stayed at home in the garden on a sun lounger. Mr Steerpike is fairly confident though that sun-kissed Brits did not
Two well-known women were degraded last week as Britain continues to be ethically cleansed. The first was Nancy Astor, whose statue in Plymouth was dubbed with the word ‘Nazi’. The second was Baroness Nicholson, honorary vice-president of the Booker Prize Foundation, who was relieved of her duties after her views on trans issues and gay
As we learn of Mark Sedwill’s departure, I talk to Katy Balls and James Forsyth about its wider implications. While the announcement itself has not come as a total surprise (Sedwill was always more of a Mayite appointment than this government’s preference), James points out that it follows on the heels of a speech given by Michael Gove
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The Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill has announced that he will be stepping down in September, though his resignation letter suggests that it wasn’t necessarily his decision. This move comes as Michael Gove makes a wide-ranging speech on reform of the civil service. The government looks to be gearing up its Whitehall reform, and on the
One of Boris Johnson’s closest allies, David Frost – who has been negotiating the terms of the UK’s future relationship with the EU – is to become National Security Adviser, succeeding Sir Mark Sedwill, who is standing down both as cabinet secretary and NSA. This is an unusual and controversial appointment because Frost is a
Boris Johnson has responded to the resignation of Mark Sedwill, the now former Cabinet Secretary. The full text of The Prime Minister’s handwritten note is below Dear Mark, Over the last few years I have had direct experience of the outstanding service that you have given to the government and to the country as a
Priti Patel – Violence against police will be met with ‘full force of the law’ Sophy Ridge interviewed the Home Secretary Priti Patel, asking her about the difficulties involved in policing Britain under lockdown. Recent weeks have not only seen mass protests on the streets, but also scenes like an illegal street party in Brixton
Michael Gove gave the Ditchley Annual Lecture on Saturday in which he discussed the responsibility of government and the need for Whitehall reform. The full speech is below. Writing in his Prison Notebooks, ninety years ago, the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci defined our times. “The crisis consists precisely of the fact that the inherited
A Japanese banker once told me that his company had opened an expensive showcase office block in the centre of Tokyo. The building had a rare employee-friendly additional space and large balconies on the upper floors, where staff could relax and enjoy the views. Despite this apparent sensitivity to their employees, in every other way
What has followed the killing of George Floyd did not begin with the death of a man under the knee of a police officer. The rioting and the statue-toppling, the shunnings and the firings, the institutional genuflections and the gleeful marching through newly conquered territory are the fruits of ideas and impulses long in germination.
Four months after the election, Ireland finally has a government and a prime minister, Taoiseach Micheál Martin. The country has since independence been governed by the two old Civil War parties – a conflict without any resonance whatever in contemporary Ireland – and, surprise surprise, it still is. The difference now is that whereas previously,
The first local lockdown – and therefore a test of whether local lockdowns will be effective in suppressing coronavirus outbreaks – could take place within days, according to senior members of the government. One pointed out that there has been a surge in cases in Leicester: there were 658 coronavirus cases in the Leicester area