Stephen Daisley

It was all going so well for Sir Keir Starmer. He won the Labour leadership handsomely, appointed a fresh shadow cabinet, and was riding a wave of blessed non-scrutiny thanks to Covid-19. He had begun to make amends to the Jewish community for his party’s racist vendetta against them and there was a solid chance that political correspondents would learn how to spell his name. Then, it leaked. An 860-page dossier prepared in the final months of Corbyn’s tenure which, going by the reports of those who have seen it, essentially exculpates the party of mishandling anti-Semitism charges. It says these complaints were not treated differently, a central allegation made by whistleblowers who spoke to Panorama.

Coronavirus is bringing out the best in some public services and the worst in others. I’m still being a snob about clapping for the NHS — it’s not British and you can’t make me think it is — but there’s no doubt health service staff have put in an absolute shift and their unhesitating dart in the direction of danger has been admirable. The police, though, are a more complicated story. The vast majority are doing a fine job under tense circumstances. They are an unarmed constabulary enforcing an open-ended lockdown in the middle of a pandemic. Still, there have been a number of incidents now that risk chipping away at public support for the lockdown and the police themselves.

Here’s something Brexiteers might want to keep an eye on. While the country’s attention is welded to the Tesco delivery website, there are moves afoot to delay the Brexit negotiations. Fabian Zuleeg, chief executive of the European Policy Centre, has called an extension of the transition period ‘an absolute must’ given the Covid-19 outbreak. He contends: ‘There will simply not be any bandwidth to focus on the negotiations, which require a delicate balance of give and take. In a situation with major healthcare challenges in the short- and long-term and economic challenges already requiring urgent action, there will not be enough political time and attention to successfully conclude this EU-UK agreement.

The Scottish Government may have overreached for the first time in its response to Covid-19. Today MSPs will vote on the Coronavirus (Scotland) Bill, which grants Scottish Ministers emergency powers to tackle the outbreak and suspends or amends the legal status quo in some important areas. Physical attendance in court will no longer be required unless a judge specifically instructs it; instead, appearances will be made ‘by electronic means’. Ministers will be able to permit the release of prison inmates in the event of custodial transmission (lifers and those convicted of sex crimes will not be eligible).

What will we do without Jeremy Corbyn? We may never find out given how long it’s taking him to leave the stage. Even Sinatra’s farewell tour didn’t last this long. The problem is that Corbyn wants to be useful. While that would certainly be a change of pace, it places the onus on others to find a use for him. His disciples propose that he be kept on the front bench, perhaps as shadow foreign secretary, marking their progression through all six stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance and Richard Burgon. There is a cruelty to all this. No one who has watched the video of Corbyn ambling around in the street encouraging his neighbours to applaud the NHS will have failed to feel some pang of pity for the man.

Alex Salmond has been cleared of sexual assault following a trial at the High Court in Edinburgh. The jury returned this afternoon and found the former First Minister not guilty of 12 charges and resorted to Scotland’s special not proven verdict on a 13th allegation. Salmond’s twin defences were that the claims against him were ‘exaggerations’ (he wasn’t perfect but he had never done anything criminal) or ‘deliberate fabrications for a political purpose’ (he was the victim of a conspiracy). In private, much of the Scottish political and media class already had him hanged, drawn and quartered and so this verdict is being met with a mixture of shock, horror and contempt. But the law is the law and the law says he didn’t do it.

The hashtag #torygenocide was trending on Twitter all day Sunday. This is because seemingly rational people have got it into their heads that Boris Johnson is using the Covid-19 outbreak to orchestrate a social cull in the UK. There is a debate over the wisdom of the strategy the government has been advised to take by the chief scientific adviser. Robert Peston asks a question about testing that, if I’m honest, makes me wonder about the wisdom of how we’re going about this. Still, I am not a scientist. I don’t know whether Downing Street has taken the right or the wrong approach. I’m happy for others to have that debate. This is not that. This is not a scholarly exchange on the merits of ‘herd immunity’ or social distancing.

In the past week, the Boris Bridge between Northern Ireland and Scotland has changed into a Tory Tunnel and been ridiculed by a leading think tank. The Prime Minister’s plans for the bridge may have morphed but they have not disappeared, as the Fraser of Allander Institute would like to see. The respected policy shop looked at the tunnel's growth potential, climate impact, connectivity and opportunity costs and concluded: ‘It won’t deliver the economic boost some claim, it isn’t a priority, it would go to the wrong location, it wouldn’t be consistent with climate change objectives, and the money could be better spent on other things. Apart from that, it’s a cracking idea.

As Pete Buttigieg ‘suspends’ (read: ends) his campaign for the Democrat nomination, a few words are in order about the first openly gay presidential candidate from a major party. One of the most remarkable aspects of Buttigieg’s run — unthinkable even a decade ago — is that his homosexuality was more of an issue in the gay press than in the mainstream media. He was somewhat caricatured as a Leave It to Beaver gay: he and his husband Chasten look for all the world like your average middle-class suburban marrieds. They’re chablis and J Crew sweaters, not marching, chanting heteronormativity-smashers. This didn’t sit well with the activist gay left. (You know the sort I mean: the ones who’ve turned it into a calling).

Few ministers are tested as abruptly as Kate Forbes has been. The SNP’s junior finance minister was promoted to the Scottish cabinet ten days ago and three weeks after Derek Mackay’s resignation forced her to deliver the budget with hours’ notice. Nicola Sturgeon’s minority government can typically rely on the dutiful support of the nationalist Scottish Greens but, come budget time, the finance secretary has to crack out the national credit card and buy the swampies off. Given the circumstances of Mackay’s departure and Forbes’ sudden elevation aged just 29, the Scottish government was more vulnerable than ever. Green leader Patrick Harvie could have produced a wish list and come away with his biggest ever budget haul.

How do you save a party that doesn’t want to be saved? Tony Blair doesn’t know but it hasn’t stop him trying. He is now warning Labour against retreating into a safe space of identity politics and angry, hectoring progressivism. Specifically, he has in mind the transgender movement and its astonishingly swift march through the institutions, including the Labour party. Blair cautioned: ‘You have got to distinguish between the advocacy of things that are right — gay rights, transgender rights, whatever it is — and launching yourself politically into a culture war with the right. If you go, “Transgender rights is our big thing,” and the right goes, “Immigration controls is our big thing,” you’re going to lose that.