The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

The cost of living – not Covid – could bring Boris down

Two and a half years into his premiership, Boris Johnson has enjoyed no more than a month of that time unencumbered either by Brexit negotiations or the public health emergency. Once Britain is through the worst of the Omicron wave, it would be understandable if the Prime Minister wanted to pursue some kind of political vision. The danger is that, as normality returns, his premiership will be further imperilled by the cost of living. An economic crisis is expected to hit households in April. In that month, National Insurance contributions (NICs) will go up by 1.25 per cent, a direct violation of Johnson’s manifesto pledge to protect voters from tax rises. The price cap on energy bills will also be raised, possibly doubling some customers’ costs as they come off fixed rates.

The Spectator

Which prime ministers have faced the longest wait for honours?

Waiting for the gong Tony Blair was knighted, 14 years after leaving Downing Street. How long have other ex-PMs had to wait to be honoured? Edward Heath knighted in 1992, 18 years after leaving office. Harold Wilson awarded peerage on leaving Commons in 1983, 7 years after resigning as PM. Jim Callaghan awarded peerage on leaving House of Commons in 1987, 8 years after leaving office. Margaret Thatcher awarded peerage in 1992 on leaving House of Commons. John Major knighted in 2005, 8 years after leaving office. Said to have rejected peerage on leaving Commons in 2001. Gordon Brown, David Cameron, and Theresa May are still waiting. Unjabbed nations How have the world’s least-vaccinated countries fared in terms of Covid deaths?

The Spectator

Letters: Afghan interpreters deserve better from Britain

Welcome changes Sir: Lloyd Evans’s sympathetic piece on the fate of Afghans once they arrive in the UK made for sobering reading (‘New arrivals’, 18 December). In the Sulha Alliance we are endeavouring to support those Afghans and their families who served with and alongside British forces in Afghanistan. That is not the totality of Afghan migrants, but of the former interpreters and their families it can be truly said ‘they are here because we were there’ — and we owe them. I will not go over the whole sorry saga of the UK’s mistreatment of this group, but we really need a step change in how they are looked after.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Face masks in schools, vegan nuggets in Burger King and Big Ben bongs again

Home The warmest New Year’s Day on record saw a temperature of 16.3˚C (61.3˚F) in St James’s Park, London. A restored Big Ben rang in the new year for the first time in four years. Boris Johnson,the Prime Minister, announced he would soldier on with Plan B against coronavirus. The government, he said, had identified 100,000 critical workers to receive daily lateral flow tests. Some people would be treated at home in 2,500 ‘virtual beds’. Covid was widespread, thanks to the Omicron variant. In the seven days up to the beginning of this week, 911 people had died with coronavirus (compared with 858 in a week a month earlier), bringing total deaths (within 28 days of testing positive) to 148,778.

The Spectator

2535: Triplets – solution

Each unclued lights include one letter three times. The wording of the preamble precludes ALLYLS (2D which would be the second plural) and IRITIC (an adjective). 29D can be either TANNIN or NANKIN.

Friday

The Spectator

Most-read 2021: It’s time for NHS GPs to stop hiding behind their telephones

We’re ending the year by republishing our ten most popular pieces from 2021. Here's number eight: a Spectator editorial written in September about the need for GPs to resume face-to-face appointments. Nye Bevan famously said that he was only able to persuade family doctors to support the creation of the NHS because he ‘stuffed their mouths with gold’. But at least he obtained good service from them — including home visits. Until Tony Blair awarded GPs hefty pay rises while allowing them simultaneously to opt out of night-time and weekend work, they were responsible for their patients’ care 24 hours a day, seven days a week — with practices often pooling resources to provide continuous cover.

Thursday

The Spectator

Did the psychics’ predictions for 2021 come true?

Centenaries 2022 will see the 100th anniversary of: the BBC; Reader’s Digest; Ulysses by James Joyce; insulin treatment for diabetes; canned baby food; Fascist government (Mussolini’s arrival as Italian prime minister); the first female barrister; ski slalom race; Test matches between England and New Zealand; water skiing; football pools; discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb; … but not, interestingly, the 1922 Committee, which wasn’t set up until April 1923. Talking shop How much Christmas shopping did we manage to do before last year’s ‘cancelled’ Christmas? Volume of sales in December 2020 relative to December 2019: Department stores –5.

The Spectator

Portrait of the year: Lockdown, protests, parties and Matt Hancock’s kiss

January The United Kingdom found itself in possession of a trade agreement with the EU. Coronavirus restrictions were tightened. The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was administered with authorisation for the first time; retired doctors could not vaccinate before undergoing ‘diversity’ training. To prevent vaccines being exported from the EU to Northern Ireland, the EU prepared to invoke Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol, but soon changed its mind. The Capitol in Washington, DC was overrun by weird people, one with horns, supporting President Donald Trump, despite his electoral defeat. Joe Biden was inaugurated as President a week later. February The government promised to legalise the drinking of coffee by two people on a park bench.

The Spectator

The best children’s books: a Spectator Christmas survey

J.K. Rowling Poignant, funny and genuinely scary, The Hundred and One Dalmatians was one of my favourite books as a child and the story has lingered in my imagination ever since. Blue iced cakes always put me in mind of Cruella de Vil’s experimental food colourings, and whenever our dogs whine to get out at dusk I imagine them joining the canine news network, the twilight barking. There’s simply no resisting a book containing the lines ‘There are some people who always find beauty makes them feel sadder, which is a very mysterious thing’, and ‘Mr Dearly was a highly skilled dog-puncher’.

The Spectator

How to cure what ails the NHS

Wrong cure Sir: In referring to the UK as the highest-spending European nation in healthcare proportionate to GDP (‘Hospital pass’, 4 December), Kate Andrews paints an exaggerated picture which is based upon additional expenditure in the NHS during the Covid pandemic, partly accounted for by £38 billion spent on test and trace. The figures are further inflated by the UK suffering a relatively greater fall in GDP. In reality, the NHS has been woefully under-resourced compared to its European counterparts over the past decade, leaving it with approximately 50,000 fewer doctors compared to OECD averages, the second-lowest numbers of hospital beds per capita, and the lowest numbers of MRI scanners.

The Spectator

2534: Off-pitch – solution

The unclued lights are cricket fielding positions. The clues contain the names of 12 present and former England cricketers: Old, Such, Onions, Grace, Jones, Crawley, May, Prior, Wood, Stokes, Cook, Anderson.

The Spectator

It’s not too late for Boris Johnson

It is two years since Boris Johnson achieved one of the most remarkable election victories in modern history. The large Tory majority gave him personal power to a degree rarely seen in British politics, a chance to reshape his country and party. Having stood for office as a ‘liberal Conservative’, he would be able to govern as one. What has he done with that authority? He ends the year with dozens of ‘red wall’ Tory MPs in open rebellion against him, rejecting his vaccine passports. During Tony Blair’s premiership, Johnson crusaded against the principle of identity cards, saying they were not just intrusive and pointless but represented a huge and unacceptable shift in the relationship between the state and the individual.

The Spectator

2021 Christmas quiz – the answers

Rather odd Mars Michael JordanTower Bridge Moscow’sLightningWinston ChurchillRussiaJennersSri LankaEl Salvador Don’t quote me Angela Rayner, the Labour deputy leader, commenting on the ConservativesThe Queen, in a video message to COP26Piers Morgan, on Good Morning BritainBoris Johnson, on lifting coronavirus restrictionsDominic Cummings, of Boris JohnsonAlok Sharma, the president of COP26Michael Gove (quoting Sir Malcolm Rifkind)Greta Thunberg, in a speech to the Youth4Climate summit in MilanDonald Trump, in a speech at the Ellipse, Washington DC, on 6 JanuaryPresident Joe Biden, on 26 August, after the fall of Kabul Beastliness Black bearCovid-19Tasmanian devilSpider crabGiant pandaGerman Shepherd (Alsatian) Corgi and dachshund (dorgi)An elk Squi.

Thursday

The Spectator

Boris’s Covid rules are coming back to bite him

In normal circumstances, no one would care if staff in No. 10 held a Christmas party. But last year, Boris Johnson made parties illegal. Throughout most of December, London was under Tier 3 or 4 restrictions. Social gatherings were strictly forbidden and anyone who broke the rules was at risk of a £10,000 fine. The Prime Minister could have issued guidance and asked people to use their judgment. Instead, he criminalised non-compliance and sent the police after those who didn’t follow his rules. This is why it matters very much if a party was held in Downing Street last December. Despite multiple denials from No. 10 that any such event took place, a leaked video clip has revealed aides joking about the alleged party four days later.

The Spectator

Letters: the army should be used as an emergency service

Flood relief Sir: In my lifetime there have been at least two major flood emergencies when the armed forces have played a key role: the 1947 floods, and the East Coast storm surge in 1953 (Leading article, 4 December). Both of these major catastrophes required large inputs of manpower and machinery. We should remember that National Service was in operation then, and because the second world war was so recent there was an innate sense of collective responsibility and discipline which extended to the many volunteers who came forward to help. Disaster and emergency response and relief is a highly interconnected activity, requiring many different roles and responsibilities.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: No. 10 parties, a ten-year drugs strategy and Burmese arrest

Home Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, said that the Omicron variant of coronavirus was spreading by community transmission in ‘multiple regions of England’. He gave the number of cases detected as 336 by 6 December, and the next day another 101 were found. Anyone coming from a foreign country would have to pass a coronavirus test within two days of catching a plane to Britain. A newlywed couple who had to pay £2,285 to stay in a quarantine hotel published photos of food such as a slice of quiche covered with sliced carrots in a plastic container. Sainsbury’s asked workers to postpone Christmas parties until the new year. Despite setbacks, more than 20 million booster vaccinations had been given.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Boris’s lockdown rules are coming back to bite him

In normal circumstances, no one would care if staff in No. 10 held a Christmas party. But last year, Boris Johnson made parties illegal. Throughout most of December, London was under Tier 3 or 4 restrictions. Social gatherings were strictly forbidden and anyone who broke the rules was at risk of a £10,000 fine. The Prime Minister could have issued guidance and asked people to use their judgment. Instead, he criminalised non-compliance and sent the police after those who didn’t follow his rules. This is why it matters very much if a party was held in Downing Street last December. Despite multiple denials from No. 10 that any such event took place, a leaked video clip has revealed aides joking about the alleged party four days later.

The Spectator

The decay at the heart of the civil service

That Britain no longer has the capability to maintain peace in Afghanistan other than as an appendage of the United States has been clear for decades. When President Biden made his decision to hurriedly withdraw from the country, then, Britain never had an option to do anything other than to join a messy evacuation. But at the very least we owed it to those Afghans who helped us during two decades of occupation to save as many as we could from the murderous clutches of the advancing Taliban. The testimony of a 25-year-old former junior officer in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) shows just how far short we failed.

Thursday

The Spectator

What effect did a year of lockdowns have on gun crime?

Thirsty work Sixty-one pub-goers on a night out in the Tan Hill Inn, 1,500 feet up in the Pennines in West Yorkshire, were snowed in for three nights with an Oasis tribute band. Manager Nicola Townsend said everyone was in good spirits and that some people did not want to leave. Some other pubs with a tricky journey home: — Berney Arms in Norfolk is inaccessible by public road and can only be visited by boot, by boat, or, bizarrely, by train, as it has one of the country’s least-used railway stations. The pub has been closed since 2015, although there have been attempts to reopen it.