The Week

Leading article

New fault lines are appearing in the EU

Anyone who imagined that the departure of Britain would make for more harmonious EU summits in future will have been disabused of this belief by the four days of meetings to establish an EU coronavirus recovery fund, which came within an hour of being the longest on record. Agreement was reached on a €750 billion

Portrait of the week

Diary

Will masks mean the end of smiling at strangers?

I’ve been a regular runner for 40 years, pounding my way across Hampstead Heath to Kenwood House and back. This year, thanks to a combination of heart surgery and coronavirus, I’ve become a walker, and my perspective has changed. Walking is a genial activity, requiring you to open yourself up to the world around you.

Ancient and modern

Will all roads soon lead to York?

Should the PM move parliament to York? There is, of course, historical precedent for such a move, as he very well knows. Rome was founded in 753 bc and when it became a republic in 509 bc it had a population of about 40,000. By about 260 bc it commanded manpower across Italy of about

Barometer

How many people would refuse a Covid vaccine?

Worth a shot? How worried should we be about people refusing to have a Covid-19 vaccine if one is developed? In a YouGov poll for the Centre for Countering Digital Hate this week, 6% said they would definitely refuse a vaccination, a further 10% said they would probably refuse and a further 15% said they

Letters