Read about the latest political news, views and analysis
18 min listen
From the speed of easing lockdown, to quarantine for international travellers, to the return of MPs to parliament - the government is fighting battles on many fronts. Has it made things more difficult for itself?
The government’s most unpopular policy on its own benches is its plan to make almost everyone arriving in this country quarantine for 14 days. Among backbenchers and the outer cabinet this policy is disliked with an increasing intensity. ‘Colleagues absolutely hate it’, one cabinet minister tells me. Some backbenchers dislike it because it will hit their own constituencies particularly hard – airlines and airports will lay off more staff because of it. Others dislike the ‘Britain is closed for business’ message it sends out. While for a growing number of ministers it has become a focus of their resentment at how policy is made with their minimal involvement – cabinet committees are meeting far less frequently than they did.
To the question why has Germany had so many fewer deaths from Covid-19 compared with Britain, the Observer usually has only one answer. As the title to an investigation in today’s paper puts it: 'How a decade of privatisation and cuts exposed England to coronavirus'. Yet buried deep down in an interview in the very same paper, comes an alternative insight, and one which, remarkably, does not involve the Tories in any way. The paper carries an interview with Karl Friston, a neuroscientist at UCL who has been advising SAGE, the government’s scientific committee. In it, he explains how he has been using dynamic casual modelling – a mathematical technique developed to predict activity in the brain – to analyse the Covid-19 epidemic.
It has been a remarkable week. Boris Johnson’s refusal to sack Dominic Cummings for what the vast majority of Britons consider a flagrant breach of lockdown rules has caused his personal ratings to tumble. According to YouGov his party has seen a 15 per cent lead over Labour collapse to just 6 per cent in a matter of days. Johnson’s insistence that Cummings has done no wrong and that the country should move on from the issue and focus on tackling Covid suggests the Prime Minister hopes the fickle British public will eventually lose interest. Perhaps he is right: and with the next election four years away there is still much to play for.
If China imposes its proposed new draconian security law for Hong Kong on the territory, where would that leave the independent judiciary? So far, genuine independence has been maintained, and Geoffrey Ma, the Chief Justice of the Court of Final Appeal (CFA), has spoken up for proper legal values. But he retires soon, and Beijing, which has not previously interfered, has the power of appointment. The CFA has on it, at any one time, one ‘nonpermanent’ overseas judge out of an active body of ten, on a monthly annual rotation. These judges are mainly British, and always include the President of our Supreme Court (currently Lord Reed), as well as several retired Supreme Court judges. The most famous is Lady Hale, of the spider brooch.
Nicola Sturgeon – England's care home deaths are under-reported Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has argued that the reason for Scotland's relatively high rate of Covid-19 deaths in care homes could be because the figures for England and Wales are artificially low: https://twitter.com/RidgeOnSunday/status/1267004284891267072?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw NS: It's often put to me that the death rate for... care homes in Scotland is higher than it is in England and I just don't believe that that is the case... It's not for me to explain England's figures, but I think here there is, at least on the face of it, a question of under-reporting in England.
The old division of leaver and remainer will not serve the best interests of the country as we go forward. That truth might be emotionally hard to accept, but it will remain true. We need now to adapt to the real challenges the future holds. One of the most pressing is our future relationship with the EU – and that is being negotiated again on Monday. I have written on how we should support the EU given the recent judgment of the German Constitutional Court on the question of the European Central Bank bond scheme. The case is complicated and while I enjoy a good legal fight over complex financial products, I appreciate many do not. But, as is often the case in law, the reason it is important has nothing to do with its subject matter.
Two weeks ago I wrote here about a study by the La Jolla Institute for Immunology in California, which found that between 40 and 60 per cent of people who had never been exposed to SARS-CoV-2 – the virus which causes Covid 19 – nevertheless seemed to develop an immune response to the disease in their T Cells. They appeared to have a cross-reactive immunity which had been gained through exposure to other coronaviruses – those which cause the common cold. Now comes another study providing more evidence of the same phenomenon from a team at the Emerging Infectious Diseases Program from Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore.
12 min listen
MPs are returning to parliament next week, marking an end of the hybrid model that saw most MPs Zooming into parliamentary debates. On the podcast, John Connolly talks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls about the challenges in a socially distanced House of Commons.Get a month's free trial of The Spectator and a free wireless charger here.
The last week has shown that Boris Johnson’s majority of 80 isn’t as big as it first appeared, I say in the Times on Saturday. Despite Boris Johnson throwing his full political weight behind Dominic Cummings, forty plus Tories still called for the PM’s senior adviser to go. The problem for No. 10 is that a majority of 80 ain’t what it used to be. It is, roughly, equivalent to a majority of 20-odd a generation ago, which is what John Major had in 1992. That the Tory majority is smaller than it first appeared has profound implications for how Boris Johnson governs. Every policy will now need to be tested against whether it can get through the House or not.
‘This American carnage stops right here and stops right now,’ said President Donald Trump in his inauguration speech on January 20, 2017. Three and a half years later, in the early summer of 2020, a bout of heavy riots has broken out, like a virus spreading, in cities across America. Minneapolis rioted for days on end. Other cities erupted: in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, New York and Washington. A mob now menaces the White House. Maybe that American carnage is just beginning. This latest unrest, coming as it does in the middle of an ongoing global health crisis and a concomitant economic recession, feels more devastating We’ve seen plenty of riots in America in the last few decades.
It may be the ultimate Kissinger Dilemma: Donald Trump versus the platform that helped make Donald Trump president. Contemplating war between Iraq and Iran, Henry Kissinger is said to have mused: ‘It's a pity they can't both lose.’ It’s a pity Trump and Twitter can’t both lose their current skirmish. On Wednesday, the social media publisher that pretends it’s not a publisher attached a fact-check to a Trump tweet. The President had posted: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1265255835124539392?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Trump is concerned that ballot impropriety might cost him re-election, rather than his Covid-19 response or the absence of a wall on the Mexican border.
Power does not corrupt. It reveals. It was once said of Abraham Lincoln: 'Nothing discloses real character like the use of power. It is easy for the weak to be gentle. Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test. It is the glory of Lincoln that, having almost absolute power, he never abused it, except on the side of mercy.' Dominic Cummings is rarely compared to Abraham Lincoln. But in one aspect, I think that quote now has relevance to the PM’s chief adviser. After surviving this week, he now has power, real and possibly unprecedented power. It’s borrowed power, of course, lent by Boris Johnson. But it’s real.
12 min listen
Cindy Yu talks to Kate Andrews and Katy Balls about Chancellor Rishi Sunak's announcements on phasing out the furlough scheme.
A dose of economic reality was administered to the public on Friday evening when Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced how the furlough scheme will be rolled back. But far from a short or sharp shock, Sunak unveiled a plan that scales the scheme back gradually over the next five months, as the government continues to pay 80 per cent of furloughed staff salaries, capped at £2,500, over June and July. Come August, however, employers will be asked to pay National Insurance and pension contributions, 5 per cent of total employment costs. In September, employer contributions will increase to 10 per cent of their employees’ salaries which will then rise to 20 per cent in October, before the scheme comes to a close at the end of the month.
Is Durhamgate over now? It must be. Surely. With a simmering revolt in Hong Kong, riots in Minneapolis, heightened border tensions between India and China, and Twitter censuring the president of the United States, British journalists can't still be obsessing over whether Dominic Cummings stopped at a petrol station on a drive to Durham. If they are, it rather makes a fantastic irony of the fact that these are the kind of people who often refer to the rest of us at Little Englanders. If – as so many of us hope – Durhamgate is finally fading away, now might be a good time to survey the wreckage.
One of the striking things about the government’s further easing of the lockdown is that it has focused on socialising rather than further attempts to get economic activity going again. At first blush, this is a surprising move. The blow that the public finances have taken from coronavirus means that it is imperative economic activity resumes soon. But the thinking in Whitehall is that the big problem is getting people to be confident enough to resume normal life. The hope is that by allowing people to see some friends and family, they’ll make people more relaxed about sending their children to school and more prepared to go to clothes shops and the like when they re-open.
Fifty years on from the Equal Pay Act, the world looks very different for women now than it did then. Women run their own small businesses, lead corporate firms, and last December a woman wrote herself a cheque for £341m, the highest corporate executive pay pack in UK history. A gender pay gap that was once ingrained in British working culture because of gender discrimination has diminished. Women in their twenties right through to their forties earn roughly the same as men. Women in part-time work earn, on average, more than men. By no means is the world equal yet. Women in many developing countries are denied basic freedoms. Even in the UK, a glance at sexual or domestic abuse figures show we still have a long way to go.
Was Emily Maitlis right or wrong to offer her views on the Dominic Cummings's row? The BBC decided she overstepped the mark. But while the corporation's investigation was concluded within a few hours of the programme being broadcast, this isn't a debate that will go away any time soon. And the fallout from this row makes me worry about the direction in which Britain's broadcast media is heading. A constant of Europe's post-1989 'Velvet revolution', which I helped cover for ITN, was the way those rising up against communism fought so hard for control of TV and radio stations. Information is power; control of it helps secure it.
42 min listen
It's not just coronavirus, but the government is keen to have a new approach to China. We discuss what this entails and whether or not it's a good idea (00:50). Plus, what will be the lasting impact of the Cummings affair on the government? (17:16) And last, the way to deal with noisy neighbours now that people are working from home (34:00).With our Political Editor James Forsyth; former Cabinet minister Sir Oliver Letwin; our Deputy Political Editor Katy Balls; Conservative Home's Paul Goodman; Spectator columnist Melissa Kite; and our 'Dear Mary' columnist and Gogglebox star Mary Killen.
