Lockdown

Thursday

Aidan Hartley

The many good things to come out of lockdown

Laikipia I was drinking in the fresh air on the high earth wall of my farm dam last week, when I saw a low white cloud coming straight at me from the northwest. The distances you can see up here are immense, across tawny savannah towards blue hills on the horizon, an unfenced land stretching for days and days of travel to the Ethiopian frontier. As I was standing there, filling my lungs and feeling free and happy, the white mist got ever closer and began to resemble confetti. The low, fluttering cloud was entirely silent. And then I saw it was a multitude of white butterflies, all flying on

Cressida Bonas

Cressida Bonas: My perfectly imperfect lockdown wedding

I had a lockdown wedding. A 30-person, socially-distanced, sanitised church service was organised in under two weeks. Restrictions meant no hymns, no wind instruments and no speaking too loudly. A disappointment for a musical family. Not what we’d envisaged, but a more intimate and special day than we could ever have imagined. Imperfect yet perfect — a day we will never forget. Four days before the big day, I marched up and down Oxford Street on the hunt for a wedding dress. Finding nothing, I remembered an old Whistles dress I once wore for a James Arthur music video. I went home and found the dusty frock at the back

Joan Collins

Joan Collins: The politics of Christmas trees

To say that the past nine months have been tough is like saying a hurricane felt like a spring shower. For many people it must have been utter hell, particularly those who own hospitality businesses. I simply cannot imagine how they could plan and manage ahead when our government refused to give anyone a clue whether either of the lockdowns was genuinely going to end. It all reminds me of the silly children’s game Grandmother’s Footsteps, in which players attempt to creep up behind ‘Grandmother’. If she turns and catches them moving, they must return to the beginning. We always seem to be returning to the beginning. Lockdown all over

Thursday

Taki

My escape to a simpler way of life

Harbour Island, Bahamas A singer named Shawn Mendes recently announced to millions of his fans: ‘The truth is, it’s so hard to be human.’ Gee whiz, poor Mendes, and I thought I had drawn the short straw in life. Depressed as I was about how hard it is to be human, friends such as Prince Pavlos of Greece and Arki Busson came to my rescue. They picked me up from my hovel at 720 Park Avenue and whisked me to a private airport in White Plains, where Bob Miller, Prince Pavlos’s father-in-law, had a magnificent Gulfstream G650 waiting to transport the three of us to a place where it’s less

Melissa Kite

Why it pays to be rude to ramblers

If the novelty of going for a walk doesn’t wear thin for the marauding masses soon, I am going to have to buy a laminator. I’ve bought so many warning signs off the internet telling townies what they can’t do around livestock, I might have to learn how to make signs myself. A bulk order of ‘Dogs Must Be on a Lead at All Times’ had to be placed during lockdown as we started to attract people who would rather be at Westfield shopping centre. I affixed them along the fence line inside my field, along with traffic cones and stripy roadworks barriers, because although walkers should not be in

Thursday

Melissa Kite

Was endorsing Boris one of my worst misjudgments ever?

Now that our social lives are a Venn diagram that only mathematicians can understand I am officially becoming a recluse. I’ve been getting to this point for years, but since the latest Covid rules mean that what we can and can’t do until ‘vaccine freedom day’ can only be understood if you have a head for shaded charts, I am resigning from polite society, in so far as I was ever in it. Boris may as well have announced 375 tiers and a rule saying anyone who wants to celebrate Christmas needs to sit inside an actual bubble and roll themselves along the floor. I have no idea what the

Tuesday

The Spectator

Full list: the Tory tier rebels

This evening, the House of Commons voted to enact the new tiered system, which will come into force when the national lockdown ends this week. Boris Johnson did not emerge unscathed though, with 78 MPs voting against his proposals, including 55 MPs from his own party. Labour leader Keir Starmer instructed his MPs to abstain on the vote, but 15 decided to vote against the government’s plans. Below is the full list of MPs who voted against thetier restrictions: Conservatives Steve Baker Robert Syms Adam Afriyie Imran Ahmad Khan Graham Brady Andrew Bridgen Paul Bristow Christopher Chope Greg Clark James Daly Philip Davies David Davis Jonathan Djanogly Jackie Doyle-Price Richard

The Cabinet Office

A response to Steerpike's review of Michael Gove’s lockdown claims

Steerpike ran the rule over Michael Gove’s article in the Times in which he argued ‘lockdown was the only way to stop the NHS being broken’. Here, the Cabinet Office responds to Steerpike: 1. Claim: Steerpike claims Michael Gove, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, used his essay in the Times on 28 November to set out ‘his new argument: the only strategy for stopping the NHS from being overwhelmed now is the government’s new tougher three-tier system’. Rebuttal: the argument that social distancing and non-pharmaceutical interventions are necessary for protecting the NHS is not a new argument. It has been at the heart of the UK Government’s approach since spring

Steerpike

The curious case of the Brussels 'orgy'

Belgium has had some of the toughest coronavirus restrictions in Europe during the second wave of the pandemic, with hospitality venues closed and socialising severely restricted. So Mr Steerpike was surprised to note this interesting story in the Belgian press today, which suggested that some may not be following the rules as closely as expected. According to La Dernière Heure, 25 men were arrested this weekend after their lockdown festivities were interrupted by the police. The paper writes: ‘Twenty-five men in their birthday suits were interrupted in the middle of a gang bang on Friday evening in Brussels, close to the central police station of the capital’. Even more intriguingly,

Monday

Steerpike

What can pubs serve as a 'substantial meal'?

When the new tiered restrictions come into force this week, many pubs and bars around the country will be wondering if they can keep their doors open. While Tier 3 venues have effectively been forced to close, pubs in Tier 2 (which covers around 50 per cent of England) have been told they can only serve alcohol to customers alongside a ‘substantial meal’. But what counts as substantial? Environment minister George Eustice attempted to clarify this on LBC radio this morning, when he suggested that a scotch egg would probably count, as long as it was brought over on a plate.  But Mr Steerpike has noticed that ministers seemed to

Saturday

Dr Jade Norris

Why I can no longer police the coronavirus restrictions

Earlier this month I resigned as a Special Constable, after serving for ten years as a volunteer officer in three different police forces. Policing has been an important part of my life for a long time, and I will miss serving my community and working with extremely dedicated, brave, and caring officers. But I have long been disturbed by decisions made by the government during the coronavirus crisis, and have decided that I can no longer in good conscience play any part in enforcing the restrictions. I have had concerns about the government’s coronavirus policies since the first lockdown. While I have volunteered as a Special Constable, my full-time job

Friday

Dr Chris Papadopoulos

The case against the new Christmas Covid rules

‘The first duty of the government is to keep citizens safe.’ These are the government’s own words. Yet, despite this almost sacred pledge, the four administrations of the UK have agreed to gamble on relaxing restrictions over Christmas, potentially rewarding Covid-19 with the biggest present of them all. With any gamble, there are stakes, risks and prizes. The stakes in this case are people’s lives — they could not, therefore, be any higher. As for prizes, there are several that officials seem to be eyeing up. First is the prize of perceived compassion: that citizens see a commitment to balance, moderation, and kindness after the pain of a very difficult

Thursday

Steerpike

Watch: Lindsay Hoyle blasts the online tiers

Mr Steerpike was not exactly impressed when the government launched a new website feature this morning to tell people which tier they were going to be in – and which promptly crashed, leaving people in limbo. But if you were left disappointed by the tech blunder, that was nothing compared to the Speaker of the House’s reaction, when he found out in Parliament the government had put the new tiers list online. After being told by Labour’s Valerie Vaz that the government had dropped the information online, before alerting the House, a furious Lindsay Hoyle lambasted the government for treating the Commons with disrespect. The only silver lining, according to

John Connolly

Full list: Boris Johnson’s new tiers

The government has revealed today which areas will be moved into different tiers at the end of the national lockdown on 2 December. And as expected, Boris Johnson has decided to take a hard-line approach to the new restrictions, before the regulations are relaxed over the Christmas period. Only three areas in England have been kept in the lowest Tier 1, two of which are not on the mainland. Only the Isle of Wight, the Isles of Scilly and Cornwall have been spared tighter restrictions. The vast majority of the country will be kept in Tier 2 at the beginning of December, which means that mixing between household bubbles will

Toby Young

My kids think my move into the garden shed means divorce

I’ve moved out of my home. No, Caroline and I haven’t broken up. It’s just that we’re having the house rewired, which means we have to be out of our bedroom by 8 a.m. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t matter but about eight months ago I started a blog about lockdown and I’m usually up until 4 a.m. working on it. We have almost 7,000 subscribers to our daily newsletter and I want it to be waiting for them when they wake up. And superhuman though I am, I can’t survive on four hours’ sleep a night. I haven’t gone very far. I’ve stuck a blow-up mattress in the garden shed that

James Forsyth

A vaccine won't heal the scarring of lockdown

Ever since the pandemic struck, a spectre has haunted Boris Johnson: would Britain ever escape from this? His scientific advisers had given him a terrifying vision. Only 7 per cent of the public had caught Covid in the first wave, they said, meaning 93 per cent were still susceptible. So what was to stop his premiership being a never-ending cycle of lockdowns? Now, he has his answer: not one but three vaccines, two with efficacy rates of 95 per cent. This has transformed his outlook. The war against Covid is not over, but victory looks imminent. The Prime Minister has a weakness for wartime metaphors, but this time they are

Rod Liddle

The public sector delusion

I wonder how much more money we will have to bung the teachers in order to inculcate within them an amenability towards doing a spot of teaching? They still seem terribly averse to the whole idea. During the first lockdown, 60 per cent of young children received no virtual lessons at all from teaching staff, and one in five pupils over 12 was given no work to do, according to the Children’s Commissioner. Virtual lessons shouldn’t have been terribly difficult to arrange, but most of the time there were none. My own daughter had no virtual lessons from March to July (which is why she’s no longer in the state

Rachel Johnson

I was dreaming of a cancelled Christmas

I am on the record as being, if not a convicted seasonal denier, at least insufficiently Christmassy. Last year I interviewed Noel Gallagher for the Christmas cover of a magazine and we bonded over our mutual dread of what our American friends call, dispiritingly, holidays. ‘Christmas Day’s the longest day, longer than D-Day — and more stressful,’ he moaned. ‘You’re sitting there exhausted, thinking, “And it’s only 11 o’clock”.’ For the avoidance of doubt, I love Christmas trees, holly, mistletoe, church services, chestnut stuffing and mince pies. I do not love schlepping round the shops, all playing Slade on a loop, in the sleet buying things people don’t want, and

Lionel Shriver

We need a dose of vaccine realism

One of my geniuses as both a commentator and a character is to confront what for most normal people amounts to unqualified good news and immediately spot the downside. I’m a professional party-pooper. Hence, as promising early results from three major Covid vaccine trials inspire a flurry of jubilant metaphors about tunnels and cavalry, your downer columnist glowers — for the New York Times didn’t tag Shriver ‘the Cassandra of American letters’ for nothing. Beware, warns this killjoy crank, allowing your minders to keep you in confinement ‘just a little bit longer’ and then you’ll be let out to play. Like the classic carrot dangling before a donkey’s nose, an

Tuesday

Steerpike

Watch: Tory MP defends arrested lockdown protestor

The Tory MP and former 1922 committee chair Charles Walker appears to have become involved in a lockdown protest outside Parliament today. The MP was outside the House of Commons when he witnessed an elderly woman being arrested by police. In response, Walker told the officers that their arrest was an ‘outrage’ and was not necessary: https://twitter.com/Tridg98/status/1331236485748678657?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Walker then appeared in the House of Commons to make a point of order. He said that the woman had been taking part in a peaceful protest outside Parliament before she was carried ‘spread-eagle’ to a police van. He described the arrest as a ‘disgrace, un-British’ and ‘unconstitutional’ and called on the Prime Minister