Boris johnson

Thursday

Allison Pearson

How did the virus get past my Obsessive Compulsive Corona Disorder?

When two members of my family went down with what appears to be Covid-19, I felt concerned. What I hadn’t bargained on was the sense of wounded pride. As the patients, pale as veal, collapse into their beds for 16 hours of fretful, jagged sleep, I ask myself how the wretched virus could have penetrated my defences. Have I not for three weeks of lockdown carried out normal household tasks with the heightened vigilance of a Porton Down lab technician moving radioactive material across an infant-school playground? If an Amazon parcel came to the door, I commenced the Corona Protocol. First, don safe-cracker gloves (the indoor pair not the supermarket

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Boris recovers, flour sales soar and France and India extend lockdowns

Home The number of people with the coronavirus disease Covid-19 who had died in hospitals by the beginning of the week, Sunday 12 April, was 9,875, compared with a total of 4,313 a week earlier. Three days later it was 12,107. Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, was discharged from hospital after a week, three days of which were in intensive care. Thanking staff and nurses who saved his life ‘when things could have gone either way’, he said: ‘We will win because our NHS is the beating heart of this country. It is the best of this country. It is unconquerable. It is powered by love.’ He recuperated at Chequers

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How Covid-19 will change the Tory party

Politics is full of events that are meant to change everything but actually do little. Yet the coronavirus crisis will be one of those rare events that does have lasting political impact. This disease, and its aftermath, will change how the country works. Covid-19 has already directly affected every household, business and institution in the country in a way that not even the 2008 financial crash did. Boris Johnson’s government will now be defined by how it handles both the crisis and its aftermath. Before he went into isolation, Johnson remarked to Downing Street aides that he was keen to get back to the agenda on which he had been

Wednesday

David Patrikarakos

Keir Starmer is the conservative we need in this time of crisis

These are discombobulating times. A deadly pandemic; the United States at sea, China belligerent and the EU at war with itself. British politics was in flux before the virus hit. Now it is vertiginous. The Tory party, long seen as the guardian of the status quo, has been forced to change tack as it deals with the fallout. Keir Starmer, recently elected as Labour leader, will play a vital role in this realignment – but not one we would once have envisaged. Starmer’s election as Labour leader in the midst of coronavirus is a good thing. He is the anti-Corbyn for a Labour party looking for calm and stability after

Friday

Tom Slater

Obviously Boris doesn’t deserve coronavirus – but do those who say so deserve to lose their jobs?

Not for the first time since the coronavirus crisis began, controversy has hit Derbyshire. While the other week it was the county’s finest sending up drones to spy on and shame people walking in the Peak District, this week it’s a Labour councillor who has had the whip withdrawn and lost her job at a law firm for saying something nasty about Boris Johnson on the internet. Sheila Oakes, who is also the mayor of the Derbyshire town of Heanor, made a fool of herself the other day on Facebook. In response to another post, encouraging people to pray for the PM, she said that Johnson, who has just come

Thursday

Katy Balls

Boris Johnson moved out of intensive care

The Prime Minister was moved out of intensive care on Thursday evening but remains in hospital. After being moved on Monday night to an ICU where he received oxygen treatment, Boris Johnson’s health has slowly improved in recent days. Now, in the clearest sign he is on the road to recovery, Johnson no longer requires a bed in intensive care. A No. 10 spokesman said: The Prime Minister has been moved this evening from intensive care back to the ward, where he will receive close monitoring during the early phase of his recovery. He is in extremely good spirits. This is not to say that Johnson should be expected to return

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Queen speaks, mobile masts burn and Boris Johnson goes into hospital

Home The number of people who had died from the coronavirus disease Covid-19 in the UK by Sunday 5 April was 4,313, compared with a total of 1,228 by 29 March, and of 281 by 22 March. In the following two days the total rose to 5,373. Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, was taken to hospital after his Covid-19 symptoms had persisted for ten days, and then to intensive care. His fiancée, Carrie Symonds, roughly six months pregnant, had spent a week in bed with Covid-19 symptoms. The aim was for there to be 100,000 coronavirus tests a day in England by the end of April, Matt Hancock, the Health

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The problems of a sick prime minister

It is good of President Trump to offer Boris Johnson his best wishes and the best American pharmaceuticals (though no doubt Jeremy Corbyn would see this as a prelude to American takeover of the National Health Service). During the second world war, on Boxing Day 1941, Churchill had a minor heart attack after trying too hard to force open a window while staying at the White House. He had addressed the joint Houses of Congress earlier that day. Churchill’s doctor, Moran, did not inform President Roosevelt. In February 1943, however, when he knew Churchill had pneumonia, Roosevelt wrote to him: ‘Please, please, for the sake of the world, don’t overdo

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Dominic Raab is the constitutional choice, but a complicated one

We have never had a moment like this before in our history: a time when the Prime Minister is, in the most personal way possible, fighting the very problem his government is trying to tackle. After Boris Johnson tested positive for coronavirus, he insisted that he would keep leading the government from self-isolation in Downing Street. His determination was influenced by the fact that No. 10 believed that parts of government needed pushing to make sure they delivered; there is frustration in Downing Street about the speed of progress in testing, for instance. But those in virtual meetings with him did worry that he was often coughing, and his performance

Toby Young Toby Young

Britain needs Boris, the extraordinary man I’ve known for 35 years

As I write, Boris Johnson is in intensive care at St Thomas’ Hospital, battling with coronavirus. For someone with such an unwavering belief in his own destiny, this must be profoundly difficult. He is a man who’s beaten the odds over and over: to become mayor of London in a Labour city, to lead the Leave campaign to victory in the teeth of overwhelming opposition, to become prime minister in spite of all his personal baggage, and then to win the largest Conservative majority since 1987. Here is a man who cannot stare into the jaws of defeat without grabbing hold of victory with both hands. Yet the odds of

Tuesday

James Forsyth

Raab stands in for Boris – but he can’t take the biggest decision of all

Dominic Raab is a lawyer, not a doctor, by temperament as well as training. He is not a politician who talks about his feelings much. This made it all the more striking to hear him talking about Boris Johnson as a ‘friend’, and his hopes for his recovery. The reassuring news is that Boris Johnson’s condition is stable and he hasn’t required a ventilator. Raab faced a barrage of questions about how him deputising for Boris Johnson will actually work Understandably, Raab faced a barrage of questions about how him deputising for Boris Johnson will actually work. Raab emphasised Cabinet collective responsibility and how they were implementing the plans that

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Boris Johnson ‘stable’ and not on a ventilator, No. 10 says

Boris Johnson has been stable overnight and is breathing without mechanical assistance, his official spokesman said this afternoon. He has received standard oxygen treatment and ‘remains in good spirits’. He does not have pneumonia. There have been questions over whether Downing Street had been overly reticent about quite how unwell the Prime Minister has been, and whether it was right that the full picture wasn’t on offer. The spokesman insisted that No. 10 has been ‘fully frank’ about the Prime Minister’s condition throughout and that the change yesterday from ‘in hospital as a precaution’ to Johnson being moved to intensive care was because his symptoms worsened yesterday afternoon. Raab will

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Prime Minister taken into intensive care

Last night, Downing Street announced that Boris Johnson is now in intensive care at St Thomas’ Hospital after his condition deteriorated. He is not on a ventilator currently but has been moved there in case he needs one.  This is the statement from No. 10: Since Sunday evening, the Prime Minister has been under the care of doctors at St Thomas’ Hospital, in London, after being admitted with persistent symptoms of coronavirus. Over the course of this afternoon, the condition of the Prime Minister has worsened and, on the advice of his medical team, he has been moved to the Intensive Care Unit at the hospital. The PM has asked

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Can Boris really run the country from his hospital bed?

Despite many of his colleagues urging him to take a step back and rest now that he is in hospital, Boris Johnson is continuing to receive his red box of papers while being treated for the persistent symptoms of coronavirus. The Prime Minister’s official spokesman told journalists this lunchtime that the PM ‘remains in charge of the government’, that he has been in touch with No. 10 colleagues, and that he ‘had a comfortable night and he is in good spirits’. Given how sick patients tend to be by the time they are admitted to hospital, it sounds rather odd that the Prime Minister is really attempting to work while

Sunday

James Forsyth

Boris Johnson admitted to hospital for coronavirus tests

Boris Johnson has been admitted to hospital for tests after having a continuous temperature for 10 days since testing positive for coronavirus. Those close to him are keen to stress that he is in for ‘routine checks’ and that this is not an emergency admission, or anything like that. I am told the problem is that the symptoms are persistent and refusing to clear up. They are, I am informed, not getting worse. Number 10’s official statement tonight stresses that Boris Johnson remains in charge of the government. But someone who has been unwell enough with coronavirus to be admitted to hospital, albeit for tests, will clearly struggle to operate

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Coronavirus hits cabinet, EasyJet grounded and postman soldiers on

Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, contracted the coronavirus disease Covid-19, as did Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary. The Prince of Wales had earlier been tested in Scotland and isolated himself with the disease for a week. Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser, also isolated himself after suffering symptoms, as did Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister’s chief strategist. By Sunday 29 March, 1,228 people in the United Kingdom had died of the disease, compared with a total of 281 a week before. Two days later the total was 1,789. Two more temporary hospitals, in Birmingham and Manchester, in addition to the Nightingale Hospital in the London docks, were being

Peter Jones

Pericles would have approved of the PM’s response to the pandemic

It must be infuriating for those who see the Prime Minister as a prisoner of a rigid elitist mindset that he is reacting to the pandemic not by crushing the workers but by doing what needed to be done, however radical. Pericles, his hero, was equally pragmatic, as the historian Thucydides said — and reaped the reward. Consider Pericles’s reaction in 431 bc to Sparta’s effective declaration of war. Athens at that time had walls that ran the five miles from the harbour up round the city, and back down to the harbour again. This made Athens impregnable by land, and since its triremes controlled the seas and could import

The Spectator

How much are people eating during lockdown?

People power Boris Johnson said that the reaction to the coronavirus crisis showed ‘There really is such a thing as society’ — an apparent reference to an interview Mrs Thatcher gave to Woman’s Own in 1987. A reminder of what she actually said: ‘I think we have gone through a period when too many people have been given to understand “I have a problem, it is the government’s job to cope with it!”… and so they are casting their problems on society, and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people,

Friday

James Forsyth

The government needs an ‘exit strategy’ from this crisis

The economic, and social, damage being caused by coronavirus is becoming clearer by the day. In the UK, we had the news on Wednesday that 850,000 more people than usual have applied for universal credit in the past fortnight. Across the Atlantic, the number of jobs lost in the last few week is approaching 10 million – that’s more than were lost in the Great Depression. This economic news underlines the need for an ‘exit strategy’ from this crisis. The lockdown is right at the moment; it appears to be the least-worst way to keep this virus within the NHS’s capacity to deal with it and so save lives. But, equally,

Tuesday

Steerpike

Cabinet goes full Zoomer

Over the last few weeks, we’ve all been getting used to the realities of working from home. So Mr S was pleased to see the Cabinet getting stuck in with remote working earlier this morning. Yes, secretaries of state and government ministers dialled in from their London pads and constituency piles to coordinate the response to coronavirus.  Downing Street mandarins opted for the popular video conferencing app Zoom (The Spectator favourite, if you’re interested, is Houseparty). Some have questioned whether it was sensible for the PM to post a pic of his assembled team alongside the digital code for the Cabinet’s online meeting. However, one intrepid journalist went a step further and attempted to dial