Portrait of the week: Tiers, Scotch eggs and a devastated high street

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The Commons voted by 291 votes to 78 for new coronavirus regulations putting 55 million people in England into the restrictive Tier 3 or the little less restrictive Tier 2, apart from the 700,000 or so folk of Cornwall, the Isle of Wight and the Scilly Isles. There were 55 Tory rebels, whom the government had attempted to placate by publishing a 48-page dossier, generally regarded as thin stuff. There would, they were also assured, be a review on 16 December of the areas put into tiers. ‘We do want to be as granular as possible,’ Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, told the Commons encouragingly. Labour let the regulations go through by abstaining, though 15 Labour MPs voted against. Wales prohibited pubs from selling strong drink and made them close at 6 p.m. In England, pubs in Tier 2 could sell drink if it was with a ‘substantial meal’.