The Week

Leading article

It’s time for the PM to take back control from the scientists

There is a grim inevitability to the trickle of round-robin letters from scientists who feel aggrieved at the government’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis. Right from the beginning, the Prime Minister gave scientific advisers a very public platform at the heart of government. He realised that if it became necessary to impose the most severe

Portrait of the week

Diary

Social distancing destroys our lives as social beings

A lockdown diary is an oddly negative thing. At the dinner parties that we aren’t going to, we aren’t discussing all the interesting things that we aren’t doing. This week, I am not heading for the Austrian Alps to walk in some of the finest mountain scenery in Europe and enjoy a week of Schubert,

Barometer

Who is most likely to be killed by police in the US?

The Colston chronicles Who, exactly, was Sir Edward Colston? Colston was born into a family of merchants and spent the first years of his career working for his father, trading cloth, wine, sherry and port around the western Mediterranean and North Africa. In 1680 he joined the Royal African Company which had been set up

Letters

Letters: What Hong Kong really needs from Britain

Hong Kong’s future Sir: So we have a moral duty to protect the people of Hong Kong and guide them back to the golden world which existed before 1997 under British rule (‘Let them come’, 6 June)? Come off it. It is true that the hope behind the 1984 Joint Declaration was for HK to