Comically, Chinese Communist party officials have speculated that Covid-19 was planted by the US army. Yet a respectable conspiracy theorist would deduce that a virus sending the rest of the world into an hysterical, wholesale economic shutdown has ‘Made in China’ written all over it. After all, China didn’t flat-line its entire economy to contain
‘Shut up — don’t you know there’s a war on?’ Strong hints of that attitude have emerged in recent weeks, and the hints are getting stronger. The attitude is mistaken. The right answer to any enquiry about whether we know there’s a war on is that there isn’t a war on. Nobody with sensible questions
A psychiatrist once told me that it takes one’s subconscious about three weeks to catch up with a significant life event, and that is certainly holding good now. We have gone through shock and disbelief while simultaneously accepting the situation. Mostly we have also accepted the rules and restrictions, and I wonder if many who
Welcome, then, to a country in which the police send drones to humiliate people taking a walk and dried pasta has replaced the pound as the national currency. ‘Gimme that pappardelle, mofo.’ ‘Not until you prise it from my cold dead hands, punk.’ A week is a long time in politics, but also a long
Last summer, in the bc era, I took my then three-year-old to a new group play session: ‘Lottie’s Magic Box.’ Off we trooped in the usual north London fashion: child on scooter, imperious and unmoving, hauled along by mother in the role of husky. Micro, purveyor of scooters to the middle-classes, sell colour-coordinated leads especially
‘Now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in To saucy doubts and fears.’ Shakespeare got there first, as ever, and he probably knew a thing or two about being in quarantine. The plague lurked darkly, and people were as aware of its dangers as we are of Covid-19. The theatres definitely closed, so it is
In the past ten days we have seen the greatest expansion of state power in British history. The state has shut down huge swaths of the economy, taken on paying the bulk of the wages of millions of private sector workers, and told citizens that they can leave their homes only for a very limited
Perhaps we are at least past the beginning of this crisis. The phase where the hunt for multipacks of loo-rolls briefly became the national sport. Now we are into the second, perhaps even less glorious stage, in which we all have to sit in our solitude and hope that the storm blows over us. And
Hulking fat chavs pushing shopping trolleys full of lavatory paper back to their Nissan Micras. I can’t think of a better image to sum up the coronavirus crisis right now. I saw a bunch of them outside my local branch of Morrisons on Sunday morning, their expressions uniformly defiant and smug. One family had at
We are in a make-or-break moment for trust, not just in this government but in the British state itself. The measures that were announced by Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak this week are extraordinary in economic, social and legal terms. When the Covid-19 crisis is finally over, the state will be judged against how effective
Even amid plague, economic apocalypse, and the cancellation of 2020, dumb stuff keeps happening. Besides, loads of us will now beeline for any column not about coronavirus. Key words: Hachette, Woody Allen. See also: Douglas Murray. This isn’t the first time we’ve agreed on something. American publishing has hardly covered itself in glory regarding Woody
Something about the word ‘bomb’ has always thrilled me, and I know why. No school today. In the 1950s we lived in Nicosia, Cyprus, when the island was a British colony and Greek Cypriot terrorists were trying to kill us. Our house was near a big army camp and our Cypriot neighbours were friendly, so
At least none of us will have to pretend that we read Woody Allen’s memoirs. This week the publishers Hachette took that little responsibility away from us. After a staged walkout by staff in New York and Boston it was announced that the book (titled Apropos of Nothing) would be pulped rather than published next
British politics has not lost its flair for the dramatic. If it was not enough to have Sajid Javid resign as -chancellor less than a month before the -Budget, Wednesday’s statement was delivered against the backdrop of a global economic crisis. Coronavirus is causing a shock to both demand and supply. We have not had
I was mansplaining to my wife earlier this week about why we ought to be very, very concerned by the coronavirus. It wasn’t the prospect of one person in 50 dying, I said — or not just that. It was more, I said sagely, the knock-on effects. You know, if everyone self-isolates, you’re only about
The most surprising thing about the letter from Guardian and Observer journalists moaning about Suzanne Moore’s supposed ‘transphobia’ is that it contained 338 signatures. This must be the first time a newspaper has had more writers than readers. What an extraordinarily bloated institution — how does it survive? Through those often advertised workshops where Owen
We have now got past the absurd stage of glaring in a reproachful manner at Chinese people on the tube. Coronavirus is disrupting sporting events, so this rather mild-mannered little bug has acquired crisis cachet and we must all take it very seriously. Lots of us will die of it, apparently — in this country
I’ve put off sending a private email that’s been ready to go for weeks. Then last Sunday, I read Julie Burchill’s column in the Telegraph about the rigid ideological conformism amidst today’s purportedly ‘creative’ class, and it hit a nerve. Despite our sanctification of inclusivity and diversity, Burchill wrote, ‘exclusivity and groupthink still control the
When Sajid Javid resigned in a row with No. 10, there was much speculation about what would be in the coming Budget. No one, though, predicted that it would end up being overshadowed by coronavirus. The short-term economic effects of this outbreak are almost unknowable. It is still hard to work out how serious it
Months ago, not long after Boris Johnson’s 2019 general election triumph, I wrote a Times column of a cautiously hopeful nature about his prospects in Downing Street. The column was in reaction to well-sourced reports that Mr Johnson’s management philosophy was to encourage ministers to get their heads down and get on with the job,
