James Kirkup

Say what you like about David Cameron, the man never stops trying to exceed expectations. I once thought that he’d never do anything sadder than giving his wife’s stylist an honour then running away from parliament like a child. Then he proved me wrong by publishing his memoirs. And now, demonstrating his unstinting commitment to the cause of his own humiliation, he has reinvented himself as a shoddy lobbyist. When he naffed off after making a horlicks of the referendum, Cameron warbled the usual shiny words about duty to the nation. It turns out he meant it: in these dark times, we all need a laugh, so we should thank him for cheering up a gloomy nation by means of his own embarrassment. Public service takes many forms.

At the time of writing, we don’t know what happened to Sarah Everard. However this story ends, it should be an important national moment of reflection, because the way it has made a lot of people feel deserves serious attention. When I say 'people', I largely mean 'women'. And that reflection should come from men. Men need to learn some lessons about the way this case makes women feel. Perhaps there is something jarring about me, a man, writing a column about women’s feelings and thoughts. Should I even be trying to describe and report the experience of a group to which I do not belong? There’s a lot of identity-based thinking and argument that would say 'No' to that question.

It was easy to miss because even at the best of times the House of Lords doesn’t grab public attention. But this week, something remarkable happened in parliament. In narrow legislative terms, peers have forced the government to accept amendments to the Ministerial and Other Maternity Allowances Bill. The Bill will make it possible for a minister who is pregnant — such as Suella Braverman, the Attorney General — to take leave from work without resigning ministerial office. That should be uncontroversial, but the language of the Bill left something to be desired. The Bill passed the Commons earlier this month using phrases such as ‘the person is pregnant’ and ‘the person has given birth to a child’.

We hear a lot these days about the need for responsible discourse around the pandemic. People who put into the public domain arguments and claims that are not fully supported by evidence and which can have harmful consequences are being called to account for their actions. Anyone with a public profile should always be willing to answer for their words. And in the midst of a public health emergency, it’s only reasonable that anyone with a voice in the public square should take care to avoid unduly eroding public trust in Covid mitigation measures by spreading baseless claims and sowing unjustified doubt. This is especially true of the Covid vaccination programme.

The pandemic has not been kind on either libertarians or people in poverty. The libertarian argument that the state should generally leave people alone to make their own choices has not often succeeded as government, largely backed by the electorate, has chosen to respond to a collective risk with collective action, even if some of that action is compelled. For people on low incomes, Covid-19 has meant more economic hardship and an increased chance of death. It has also meant that their children are more likely to go hungry. At the Social Market Foundation, we reckon 16 per cent of children – nearly two million – went short of food last year.

England’s third national lockdown is an avalanche of news, affecting just about every bit of our lives. It’s a lot for anyone to grasp, but that’s still not an excuse for the fact that, once again, young people studying for technical qualifications such as BTECs have been ignored and let down. According to the Association of Colleges, around 135,000 students are due to take assessments or sit exams in colleges this week: some exams are due today. And while the Prime Minister in his televised address last night talked about school and the need to cancel summer exams such as GCSEs and A-levels, the Government currently considers that BTEC tests should still go ahead this week. Not that the kids taking those tests would have learned that from the PM.

London will enter Tier 3 Covid restrictions on Wednesday, because people are mixing too freely and thus spreading a deadly virus. Next week, those restrictions will vanish for five days, allowing people to mix more freely, thus spreading a deadly virus. The paragraph above captures just how frankly stupid the Christmas Covid amnesty policy is. Much of 2020 has been a real-life experiment in epidemiology, proving – not that it’s necessary – that when you relax restrictions put in place to slow the spread of a disease, that disease spreads more quickly.

It is reported today that a company called Britishvolt will build a huge ‘gigaplant’ making electric car batteries in Blyth in Northumberland. There are huge numbers attached to this: £2.6 billion of investment, 3,000 people directly employed and another 5,000 jobs promised in the supply chain for the factory. I really hope that this stuff happens, even in part. That’s partly because I’d love to see more proof that the transition to a lower-carbon economy really can translate into tangible economic benefit.

Peter Mandelson's remainer credentials are impeccable. He is a former European Commissioner who helped run Britain Stronger In and then the People’s Vote (PV) campaign. He is as committed and eloquent a champion of EU membership as you’ll find. Which makes his Brexit intervention in the Guardian so important: All the new benefits from every global trade deal we could ever aspire to will not begin to equal the size of our present European trade. This is the price we will pay for the triumph of hardline Tory Brexiters over those with a stronger sense of national interest in their party.

One of the abiding flaws of British political discourse is that it overlooks the importance of organisation and institutions. The political village where I’ve spent my career talks too much about politics and personality; a bit – but not enough – about policy; and almost not at all about organisations. This creates blind-spots and surprises. Many people at Westminster were surprised by the election of Jeremy Corbyn and his resilience as leader in the face of internal challenge. That’s because they overlooked the vital importance of the Labour Party membership – which Corbyn successfully changed – and the party’s internal structures.

Vote blue for green jobs in the red wall. That’s the message we’re supposed to take from Boris Johnson’s ten point plan for reaching zero carbon emissions. The launch follows some shallow Westminster chatter about how this stuff relates to the departure of Dominic Cummings, chatter which somehow overlooks the fact that said departure has made precisely no difference to what’s being announced. Do the Tories new voters in red wall seats care about eliminating carbon emissions? My think tank, the Social Market Foundation, has been investigating this question.

Yesterday I wrote here that the shenanigans of special advisers weren’t very important and shouldn’t get so much attention. And then Dominic Cummings resigned, and the world shifted on its axis, so what sort of idiot am I, eh? It’s important that when journalists get things wrong, they say so. But this isn’t a mea culpa. I stand by my point about the importance of political advisers being overstated and over-reported. Dominic Cummings doesn’t really matter. Boris Johnson does. There is talk in many papers and places this morning about the impact of Cummings’s departure from No. 10. Will it lead to a change in approach, a shift in policy focus from the centre?

Do you know who Lee Cain is? If your answer is yes, you are unusual, an aberrant departure from the norm. If you know who he is and care a jot about him and his career, you’re a freak. Wall-to-wall coverage of Cain’s departure from Downing Street reminds me why I’m so glad I stopped being a Lobby reporter, and demonstrates everything that’s wrong with our political-media culture. It’s part of the national sickness that means so many people ignore or disdain politics as something distant and irrelevant to their lives. And actually, as far as this story is concerned, they’re right, because goings-on in No. 10 really are irrelevant.

Britain’s first lockdown hammered our kids. Being away from school for months widened the educational gap between rich and poor and harmed the prospects and wellbeing of children from low-income homes. Knowing that, what do you call people who want to close schools again? Here’s the punchline, although it’s not funny: teachers. Or more accurately, teachers’ unions. You might have missed this on a grim Saturday afternoon, but even before Boris Johnson had confirmed Lockdown 2, the National Education Union was calling for schools to be included. That would mean another month (at least) away from school for millions of kids, followed by reduced schooling.