Politics

The mandatory introduction of face masks in shops and a ban on families and friends from different households meeting in parts of northern England at a time when death rates and critical care admissions with Covid-19 are low, appears, on the surface at least, hard to explain. The original reason for lockdown – to protect the NHS – seems to have been replaced by weaker reasons to impose recurrent restrictions. This is worrying, not least because of the possibility that the Government could broaden out this approach of introducing policies based on low-grade evidence. Could it do the same in mandating vaccinations before their effectiveness and safety profiles have been definitively determined?

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has shown an increasing willingness to venture into political debates lately. In June, during the Black Lives Matter protests, he suggested that portrayals of Jesus as white should be reconsidered in English churches. And ahead of the December election last year he accused Boris Johnson of pouring petrol on a divided Britain. Clearly not content with the controversy about his new role as a political consultant, Welby decided to go a step further this evening, when he willingly joined the most hellish fight in politics: Labour’s eternal civil war.

The Crown Prosecution Service’s latest grim statistics show that, despite the increasing number of police recorded rapes over the past five years, the prosecution rate has reduced. This state of affairs, has been branded as the 'decriminalisation of rape' by the Victim’s Commissioner Dame Vera Baird QC. And the data's fine print also reveals a heart-breaking truth: the victims suffering from the worst outcomes are children. Just 16 per cent of victims aged 10-13 saw their abuser charged for the abuse they inflicted, with 55 per cent then seeing no prosecution take place. By contrast, the charge rate in the 25-59 victim bracket was 46 per cent, while the no prosecution rate was 30 per cent.

Rishi Sunak is contemplating a 2 per cent tax on goods sold online, possibly combined with a ‘green’ levy on delivery vans and a radical review of business rates, all designed to improve the survival chances of high-street retailers while harvesting more revenue from online sellers who have boomed during lockdown.  About time too — but the question is whether the likes of Amazon are so smart at tax minimisation that they will simply outflank new measures and pass costs to consumers.

It is remarkable to think that just 15 days ago, Boris Johnson was setting out a plan to end all social distancing by November. But, as I say in The Times this morning, the mood in government has become much more pessimistic in the last week or so. This winter the government could be dealing with flu, Covid, flooding, mass unemployment and all the issues arising from the end of the Brexit transition period. What most worries ministers, though, is what the uptick in Covid cases now means for the winter. August should be the most straightforward month for dealing with this virus. People are happy to socialise outdoors, the NHS isn’t under pressure from flu and there aren’t hundreds of thousands of people with a cough and a fever as there will be come November.