Michael Simmons

Never before have English and Welsh mothers produced so few babies. New data, released by the ONS yesterday, shows the number of babies expected to be born per woman last year fell to 1.44 – down from 1.49 the year before and the lowest recorded level since these things began to be officially tracked in 1938. For a population to ‘naturally’ sustain itself (e.g. without immigration) an average fertility rate of 2.1 is needed. Looking at the raw numbers, fewer babies were born than at any time since the late 1970s. Last year just 591,072 births were registered in England and Wales and the fertility rate has been falling consistently for the past 14 years.

Politicians’ popularity only tends to go in one direction: down. John Major entered office in 1990 with a net satisfaction rating of +15 and left it having lost 42 points. Tony Blair moved into Downing Street in 1997 with an approval rating of +60 points. When he handed over to Gordon Brown in 2007, he’d fallen to -27. Where you start can make all the difference. If things are only going to go one way, you want as handsome a starting margin as possible.  Bad news for Keir Starmer then, who has seen his popularity drop at the fastest rate of any Prime Minister other than Liz Truss.

The most important stories from the Covid Inquiry are found in the written evidence and submitted statements. However, the Cabinet Office is refusing to release vital evidence that the Inquiry isn’t interested in, in case it ‘excessively focused’ the public’s attention on lockdown-decision making. If neither side change their position, the British people will be left in the dark. Last November, I reported in the magazine that the witness statement of Ben Warner – who had been brought into No. 10 as Head of Data by Dominic Cummings – revealed that not only was an erroneous graph used to justify the second lockdown but that senior figures, possibly including the Prime Minister, knew that the graph was wrong but decided to broadcast it to the nation anyway.

Counting is nearly complete across England and Wales and the picture in the local elections is clear: Tory losses and a red wave. Thursday saw 103 English councils go to the polls with ten mayoral races and dozens of police and crime commissioner positions up for grabs too. The by-election in Blackpool saw a huge swing to Labour but the real story of the night is Reform coming within 100 votes of the Conservatives. Here's the national picture so far: It's notoriously difficult to extrapolate a national result from local elections but Professor John Curtice has had a go for the BBC. They estimate that had the whole country gone to the polls Labour would win with a nine point margin. That's a record equalling low for the Tories but with Labour not extending their lead on a year ago.

Humza Yousaf has announced his resignation as First Minister and leader of the Scottish National Party. His time was short, but he’s overseen a dramatic change in the party he’ll now cease to lead: a discipline once revered by opponents has given way to a party in open dissent. As he prepares to leave the political stage what can Scotland remember him for? Yousaf, who became an MSP in 2011, rose quickly to the top job in Scottish politics. He first served as a minister under Alex Salmond within a year of his election. He was subsequently transport minister in 2017 when Nicola Sturgeon launched the Glen Sannox ferry onto the Clyde with no interior and painted on windows.

Children who started school in the early days of the pandemic will have worse exam results well into the next decade. That’s according to a study released this morning by the London School of Economics, the University of Exeter and the University of Strathclyde. Researchers predict that 60 per cent of pupils will achieve worse than a grade five in their English and Maths GSCEs in 2030, considerably more than the numbers achieving poor marks today. The study, which looked at the effect of school closures on childhood development, is the first to look at both ‘cognitive’ skills as well as ‘socio-emotional’ skills, finding the latter to be just as important.