Katy Balls is The Spectator’s former political editor.
This week was meant to mark the moment the whole of the United Kingdom began to ease lockdown. Instead, it’s England that has become an outlier – moving to the slogan ‘Stay Alert’ while Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland stick with ‘Stay Home’. With the devolved governments adopting different approaches to easing lockdown, Downing Street is facing a
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Public Health England has approved its first mass antibody test. Roche, the supplier behind it, says that the test has an 100 per cent accuracy. So how much of a game changer is this development?
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Today the Chancellor announced that the furlough scheme will be extended until October. Along with a raft of other tweaks, just how generous is this extension?
After Boris Johnson was accused by opposition leaders of providing mixed messages over his roadmap for easing lockdown, the Prime Minister attempted for the third time in 24 hours to explain what the new government guidelines mean in practice. Johnson used the daily press conference – alongside chief medical officer Chris Whitty and chief scientific
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Following 24 hours of confusion over the government’s advice on the next phase of lockdown, Keir Starmer is making his debut as Labour leader with a statement to be broadcast on the BBC. On the podcast, Katy Balls and James Forsyth analyse his approach of constructive criticism.
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It’s been six weeks since the Prime Minister first sat down to give the statement to the British public that began lockdown. Today, as James Forsyth first reported in The Spectator two weeks ago, Boris Johnson announced that the lockdown isn’t over yet. From Wednesday onwards, the one form of exercise a day rule will be removed
Boris Johnson used his address to the nation on Sunday night to confirm that there will be no immediate end to lockdown. The Prime Minister described coronavirus as the ‘most vicious threat this country has faced’ in his lifetime and praised the public for adhering to social distancing – describing such measures as the only
When Boris Johnson addresses the nation on Sunday night to unveil his roadmap for easing lockdown in the coming weeks and months, it isn’t just the public he needs to bring with him – he also needs to convince his parliamentary party. Over the past week there has been a shift in mood in the
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What is Boris Johnson going to say in his speech on Sunday? Wales’s first minister Mark Drakeford gave us a clue this morning when he announced that the Welsh lockdown will continue for at least another three weeks. Meanwhile, No. 10 has been trying to dampen speculation that the PM will announce substantial relaxations to the lockdown.
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The economic impact of coronavirus is already felt keenly by many people. A large chunk of the population is having to dig into its savings to cover for lost income. But what if you don’t have much in the piggy bank in the first place? Often, the discipline to save gets overtaken by events. With
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In his evidence given to MPs today, Professor John Edmonds, one of the government’s scientists on Sage, said he thought that the ‘R’ number had gone up in recent days. So why has this happened, despite the last three weeks of lockdown?
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It’s the first head to head between Boris Johnson and the new Leader of the Opposition. Unlike more normal times, Boris couldn’t rely on a large parliamentary presence of Tory MPs to booster him from the green benches. Instead, as James Forsyth explains on the podcast with Katy Balls and John Connolly, Keir Starmer actually
It’s a grim news week for the government with Dominic Raab announcing in Tuesday’s press conference that the UK coronavirus death toll is now at 29,427 (ONS figures suggest the number of deaths is as high as 32,313). This means that according to official figures from each country, the UK has overtaken Italy in fatalities and currently has the highest
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The leading epidemiologist from Imperial College London, who has been influential in the government’s decision to impose a lockdown, has resigned. The Telegraph broke the story on Tuesday evening that Neil Ferguson had been visited at least twice by his lover. On the podcast, Cindy Yu discusses with James Forsyth and Katy Balls whether he
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The British coronavirus death toll exceeds 30,000, which is the worst in Europe. But is it too soon to tell whether the UK has really been the worst hit on the continent?
Is the only route back to normality through a coronavirus vaccine? That’s what the Prime Minister will suggest today when he addresses the virtual Coronavirus Global Response International Pledging Conference. With the conference aimed at driving forward a collective global effort for a vaccine, Boris Johnson will say only a mass-produced vaccine will truly defeat
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The Prime Minister will say today that ‘the route back to full normality requires a vaccine’. But given that most estimates put this at a year or two away (if possible at all), does that mean we will be under lockdown until then?
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