Is Boris Johnson a convert to the nanny state?
18 min listen
James Forsyth
James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
Friday
The chasm between the UK and EU’s Brexit positions
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
Boris Johnson declares war on obesity to tackle the virus
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
Thursday
Is the Roche antibody test a gamechanger?
11 min listen
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?
Covid has exposed the weakness of Whitehall
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
The British state needs rewiring
‘Covid-19 has been perhaps the biggest test of governments worldwide since the 1940s,’ declares the government’s command paper on the virus. The fact that the following paragraph proposes ‘a rapid re-engineering of government’s structures and institutions’ is telling. It is an implicit admission that the British government machine is, in several important areas, failing this
Wednesday
Boris on the ropes over care homes
15 min listen
Tuesday
Boris’s Whitehall overhaul has just become even more ambitious
When this crisis is over, reform of Whitehall is going to become a major issue again – as the government’s command paper yesterday acknowledged. Any government reform is going to have to be driven by the Cabinet Office which has today announced an intriguing set of new non-executive directors. The four new appointments are Bernard Hogan-Howe,
Monday
Keir Starmer’s canny coronavirus critique
13 min listen
Following 24 hours of confusion over the government’s advice on the next phase of lockdown, Keir Starmer is making his debut as Labour leader with a statement to be broadcast on the BBC. On the podcast, Katy Balls and James Forsyth analyse his approach of constructive criticism.
Why Britain isn’t opting for an Apple or Google ‘test and trace’ app
The government’s decision to try and develop its own ‘test and trace’ app seems bizarre at first glance. Who is going to be better at developing an app, the UK government or Apple and Google? Even inside government, there are those who regard the decision to try and go it alone as technological hubris. But
Sunday
Boris sets out the shape of an exit strategy
18 min listen
It’s been six weeks since the Prime Minister first sat down to give the statement to the British public that began lockdown. Today, as James Forsyth first reported in The Spectator two weeks ago, Boris Johnson announced that the lockdown isn’t over yet. From Wednesday onwards, the one form of exercise a day rule will be removed
Thursday
Why is the ‘R’ number going back up?
11 min listen
In his evidence given to MPs today, Professor John Edmonds, one of the government’s scientists on Sage, said he thought that the ‘R’ number had gone up in recent days. So why has this happened, despite the last three weeks of lockdown?
Sino-scepticism is becoming a defining trait of the Tory party
Coronavirus has accelerated the deterioration in relations between the United States and China. The US Presidential election is turning into a question of who can be tougher on China and regardless of who wins in November, US policy is going to become more hawkish. As I say in the magazine this week, this has major
This pandemic has put politics on fast-forward
‘The normal grease of politics is not there,’ bemoans one sociable cabinet minister. Certainly, the whispered conversations in corridors that make up so much of Westminster life are in abeyance during this period of social distancing. The fact that the backbenches and the cabinet have deep reservations about the government’s approach matters far less than
Wednesday
Keir Starmer made life difficult for Boris Johnson at PMQs
17 min listen
It’s the first head to head between Boris Johnson and the new Leader of the Opposition. Unlike more normal times, Boris couldn’t rely on a large parliamentary presence of Tory MPs to booster him from the green benches. Instead, as James Forsyth explains on the podcast with Katy Balls and John Connolly, Keir Starmer actually
Keir Starmer made life difficult for Boris Johnson at PMQs
Keir Starmer got his first chance to take on Boris Johnson at PMQs today. There was no moment that will lead the evening news, but the new Labour leader did make Boris Johnson uncomfortable at times. When Starmer asked why the UK had moved away from contract tracing and testing in mid-March, Boris Johnson gave
Why Neil Ferguson’s position was untenable
16 min listen
The leading epidemiologist from Imperial College London, who has been influential in the government’s decision to impose a lockdown, has resigned. The Telegraph broke the story on Tuesday evening that Neil Ferguson had been visited at least twice by his lover. On the podcast, Cindy Yu discusses with James Forsyth and Katy Balls whether he
Tuesday
Is the UK really the worst hit country in Europe?
11 min listen
The British coronavirus death toll exceeds 30,000, which is the worst in Europe. But is it too soon to tell whether the UK has really been the worst hit on the continent?
Monday
Could a return to normality come before a vaccine?
18 min listen
The Prime Minister will say today that ‘the route back to full normality requires a vaccine’. But given that most estimates put this at a year or two away (if possible at all), does that mean we will be under lockdown until then?
Saturday
Is a Brexit extension inevitable?
16 min listen
