Politics

It’s the question all Whitehall is asking. When will Simon Case appear before the Covid Inquiry? The Cabinet Secretary was due to give evidence prior to Christmas but was then signed off on sick leave in late October. Heather Hallett, the inquiry chair, allowed Case to skip his scheduled questioning after reviewing his medical records but promised that he would still be asked to give evidence before her at a later date. More than five months on and, happily, Case is now better, having resumed his duties at the beginning of January. Yet despite his return to work seven weeks ago, there is still no news as to when he

A new report, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, has recommended that the six-week school summer holiday should be reduced to four weeks, and the two weeks redistributed so that schools have a two-week half-term in October and February. Lee Major, professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter, said that spreading out the holidays more equally throughout the year would ‘improve the wellbeing of pupils and the working lives of teachers, balance out childcare costs for parents, and potentially boost academic results for many children’. I’m not convinced shortening the summer holidays would actually do any of those things. Firstly, I highly doubt that having extra time off in October and

When the Emirati government moved to bid for the Daily Telegraph and The Spectator, via an investment vehicle called RedBird IMI, ministers were blindsided. Since the 2008 crash, autocracies have been testing how much infrastructure they are allowed to buy in newly debt-addled democracies (as this OECD report details) but Britain had not really joined other countries in setting limits. The idea of a national newspaper (and magazine) being controlled by any government, let alone an autocratic foreign government allied to Putin, is plainly absurd. But no laws exist to prevent it happening, because no one thought a foreign government would ever attempt it. The House of Lords could be about