Kate Andrews

Tonight Donald Trump became the first president in the history of the United States to be impeached twice. He was first impeached in 2019, accused of pressuring the President of Ukraine to provide information on his political challenger Joe Biden. This evening, Trump was impeached again on the grounds of 'incitement of an insurrection' last Wednesday, when his address at a rally led to a violent mob storming the Capitol building to try to stop Biden's formal confirmation as president.  While the vote in the House of Representatives was mostly split along party lines, ten Republicans broke from the party to support Trump's impeachment, including Rep. Liz Cheney — the third-highest ranking Republican in the House.

Jessica Allen and Eliza Moore had a bad experience with the Derbyshire police last week. The two women met for a socially distanced walk roughly a five-mile drive away from their home. This resulted in the pair being ‘surrounded’ by police officers, who fined them £200 for leaving their local area and drinking takeaway coffee, which the officers classified as a ‘picnic’. Since the story broke last week, the police force has backed down significantly and are reviewing their policies as a result of the incident. Allen and Moore were not, it seems, breaking any laws (although No. 10 and other departments remain unsure about how this fits into government guidance). Claims that coffee amounted to a picnic made the debate around Scotch eggs look credible.

Facebook and Twitter's decision to suspend Donald Trump is, legally speaking, fairly clear-cut. Both are private companies which set the rules on who is – and isn't – allowed to use their sites. Even if you're the leader of the free world you have no automatic right to a Twitter account. The same logic applies to Parler – the self-described ‘unbiased’ social media platform – which has been booted off Google's app store over its refusal to remove 'egregious content'. As with Facebook and Twitter, Google Play is perfectly within its rights to select what apps it will and will not host. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be serious consequences that arise from these decisions.

The scenes in Capitol Hill tonight are the sort that many Americans thought they would never live to see.  A violent mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building, overwhelming law enforcement and firing their weapons into the Senate chamber. Four people have died - one woman shot and killed - and there are reports of police injuries. The Senate was debating (and set to certify) the results of the presidential election. Senators were evacuated just after 2pm – as was Vice President Mike Pence, who is thought to be a major target of the protestors after he announced he would not be swayed by Donald Trump's call to try to overturn the election result. Condemnation has been swift, unequivocal and from across the political spectrum.

Rishi Sunak’s latest giveaway totals £4.6 billion in grants for the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors, amounting to up to £9,000 per outlet. Alongside this comes an additional £1.1 billion for local authorities and a £600 million discretionary fund for businesses that might not qualify for the main grant. This money is meant to help businesses with their fixed costs problem: having to pay rent, utilities and upkeep despite bringing in far less income (in some cases, no income at all). The largest cost for most business owners — payroll — was addressed in December when the Chancellor extended the furlough scheme to the end of April.

From Monday, the guidance for self-isolation is changing. Previously if you were told by officials (or the NHS app) you had been in close contact with someone who tested positive for Covid-19, you were expected to self-isolate for 14 days. Starting next week, this will be reduced to 10 days, and will also apply to those returning from 'high risk' travel areas that are not on the UK's 'green list'. The update was issued as a joint statement from the UK chief medical officers, who said: 'after reviewing the evidence, we are now confident that we can reduce the number of days that contacts self-isolate from 14 days to 10.' This brings the quarantine period for close contacts in line with those who test positive for Covid-19.

Britain's economy experienced a record rebound between July and September, growing 15.5 per cent. But the vast majority of this recovery took place early on – and there are worrying signs that this slowdown has continued in the months since.  Towards the end of the summer, monthly growth figures were already starting to disappoint. Despite August being the most open month this year since the pandemic struck, with restrictions on businesses and social gatherings the most liberal they had been since mid-March, growth was only 2.2 per cent, followed by 1.1 per cent in September. This major slowdown shows that the economy can only recover so much while major Covid-19 restrictions remain in place.

Today the Wealth Tax Commission, an initiative involving the LSE, has recommended a ‘one-off’ 5 per cent levy on the assets of Britain’s wealthy residents to pay for the costs of the pandemic. Two immediate problems jump out of the proposal. First, to raise the money it would not be a one-off levy, but rather a 1 per cent tax for five years on the total wealth — property, savings, you name it — on households worth more than £1 million (the tax is estimated to hit one in six adults). Second, this five year period is estimated to raise £260 billion — close to the £280 billion the Office for Budget Responsibility says can be ‘directly attributable to the package of support’ announced since March to tackle Covid-19.

‘Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government programme,’ the free market economist Milton Friedman famously noted. So just how permanent will social distancing measures be? As more positive news about vaccines and their distribution rolls in, it will be a question that grows louder: how much longer will we be asked to live with Covid rules, and might anyone make the case for keeping them in place after the virus is under control? We caught a glimpse of the different opinions circling Whitehall tonight, when the Prime Minister and Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van-Tam clashed over the future of mask-wearing.

Britain is set for the slowest economic bounce-back in the G7 and one of the slowest recoveries among wealthy nations, according to new forecasts published today by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD has updated its forecasts for global economic recovery, showing a return to pre-Covid GDP levels by the end of next year. The central scenario estimates a 4.2 per cent fall in global GDP this year, matched by a 4.2 per cent lift next year – while suggesting that its 'upside scenario' becomes more likely if successful vaccines are rolled out at a relatively fast pace. But while these latest forecasts bode better for the global economy, the findings are a blow to the UK.

In an attempt to win tomorrow's vote on the new tier system — without relying on Labour's support — Boris Johnson promised to publish analysis of the health, social and economic impact that the new tier system would have on the nation. But potential rebels are unlikely to be satisfied with the resulting document, published earlier this afternoon.  The intention was to show sceptical MPs that the government is seriously weighing up the trade-offs between the effects of Covid and the effects of stopping its spread. But it did not include a rigorous economic analysis of the tier system: in fact, it provided no cost-benefit analysis of any specific restriction.

Today’s Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine update has raised hopes that life in Britain could start getting back to normal by spring. But cheers in Downing Street didn’t extend to AstraZeneca’s share price, which fell by nearly three per cent in response to the news. Why the dip in the wake of such good news? AstraZeneca vaccine’s effectiveness – recorded at 70 per cent – is notably lower than its Pfizer and Moderna competitors. What's more, the 70 per cent figure has been reached by averaging results from two groups who received the vaccine in different doses: a smaller group, who were given half a dose at first, recorded a 90 per cent efficiency rate, and the larger group, who were given two full doses, only a 62 per cent efficiency rate.