The Spectator

Portrait of the week: A political squall, sub-postmasters exonerated and India’s Covid crisis

issue 01 May 2021

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By the beginning of the week, 12,071,810 people had received both doses of coronavirus vaccine, and the proportion of the adult population with both soon rose to more than a quarter. In the seven days up to the beginning of the week, 159 people had died, bringing the total of deaths (within 28 days of testing positive for coronavirus) to 127,417. Fares Maatou, aged 15, was fatally stabbed at half past four in the afternoon outside a pizza shop in Newham, east London. Anthony Thwaite, the poet and editor of Philip Larkin’s letters and poems, died aged 90.

A purely political squall blew up after Downing Street put it about that Dominic Cummings had leaked text messages from Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, to Sir James Dyson saying that he would remove tax penalties preventing people coming to Britain to produce ventilators at the height of the coronavirus outbreak.

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