Portrait of the week

Home The government decided to offer booster vaccinations to those over 50. Children aged 12 to 15 would be offered one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccination. This followed a declaration by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation that it could not recommend vaccination for these children for their own health benefit alone; the chief

Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, announced a new tax in the Commons branded a ‘health and social care levy’. It would increase National Insurance paid by employees and employers by 1.25 percentage points from April 2022. A year later it would become a separate tax that even pensioners still earning would have to pay.

Home Britain brought its last troops home from Afghanistan, having flown out more than 15,000 people since 14 August; but the operation failed to evacuate perhaps 1,000 eligible Afghans, some of whom had worked for the government, and 100 to 150 British nationals. Pen Farthing, who runs an animal charity in Afghanistan, returned in an

Home At the virtual G7 emergency summit that he was chairing, Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, urged President Joe Biden of the United States to prolong the evacuation from Kabul of Nato forces, nationals and dependants beyond 31 August. But the Taliban said no. Britain took 8,600 people out of Afghanistan in ten days, but

Home Parliament was recalled after the rapid fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban. Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, returned from a foreign holiday on Sunday. Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, declared as Kabul fell: ‘We don’t want anybody bilaterally recognising the Taliban.’ But Mr Raab said that Britain recognised states, not governments. Britain sent an

Home With less frightening domestic data on the coronavirus pandemic to ponder, subjects such as the rivalry between Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, and Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, found time for discussion. The seven-day average of coronavirus cases detected by tests remained below 30,000. In the seven days up to the beginning

Home After the number of people ‘pinged’ (alerted by an NHS Covid-19 app) neared 700,000, the app was adjusted so that it hunted for contacts of a person testing positive for Covid only from the two previous days, not five. When no more than 68 per cent of 18- to 29-year-olds in England had yet

Home The daily number of coronavirus cases detected by tests fell from 54,674 on 17 July to 23,511 by 27 July. About 92 per cent of adults in England and Wales had coronavirus antibodies at the beginning of July, according to an estimate by the Office for National Statistics. In the seven days up to

Home On the eve of the day that most coronavirus restrictions were to be lifted, the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer had to react to having been in close contact with Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, who, despite being doubly vaccinated, had contracted Covid. At first Boris Johnson said that under a pilot

Home England expects everyone to wear masks in crowded places, Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, said in a televised address, even though the law requiring it was to be dropped on 19 July. He said: ‘We’re removing the government instruction to work from home where you can but we don’t expect that the whole country

Home A lively game of hunt the issue followed the resignation of Matt Hancock as Secretary of State for Health after the Sun published a photograph of him kissing an aide, Gina Coladangelo, in May, in contravention of the law at the time on meeting indoors. The Prime Minister had tried to declare the matter

Home The government contemplated its promised Planning Bill, blamed for contributing to the astonishing victory for the Liberal Democrat Sarah Green in the Chesham and Amersham by-election. She had gained 21,517 votes to transform the former Conservative majority of 16,223 into one of 8,028. Labour did worse than in any by-election before, securing only 622

Home The lifting of coronavirus restrictions was delayed from 21 June until 19 July, probably. The motive was to avoid a ‘significant resurgence’ in hospital admissions from the more contagious Delta variant of the virus. Public Health England declared that the Pfizer vaccine was 96 per cent effective in preventing hospitalisation, and the AstraZeneca vaccine

Home The government pondered delaying the end of coronavirus restrictions on 21 June. But Chris Hopson, the chief executive of NHS Providers, noted that ‘vaccines have broken the chain between Covid-19 infection and high levels of hospitalisations and then mortality’. Of 126 people taken to hospital with the Indian variant of coronavirus (now designated Delta),

Home Freelance scientists urged the government not to end coronavirus regulations on 21 June, for fear of a third wave. Fewer than 900 people remained in hospital with Covid, compared with 39,249 in January. Chris Hopson, the head of NHS Providers, said ‘very, very few’ Covid patients in hospital had received two coronavirus vaccinations, and

Home The BBC was engulfed in doubts after a report by Lord Dyson blamed Martin Bashir for deceiving the late Diana, Princess of Wales, before interviewing her on television in 1995 — and the BBC for failing to investigate properly. The Duke of Cambridge said: ‘It brings indescribable sadness to know that the BBC’s failures

Home The government made noises about having to delay the lifting of coronavirus restrictions on 21 June in some parts on account of the Indian variant, which appeared more transmissible. ‘The race between our vaccine programme and the virus may be about to become a great deal tighter,’ Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, said on

Home A new complexion of British politics was revealed by the capture of Hartlepool by Jill Mortimer for the Conservatives in a by-election, with 15,529 to the Labour candidate’s 8,589. Since its formation in 1974, the constituency had been Labour. Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, said his party had ‘lost the trust of working

Home ‘I think we have got a good chance of being able to dispense with the one-metre-plus from 21 June,’ Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, remarked. By the beginning of the week, 29 per cent of the adult population had received both doses of coronavirus vaccination; 65 per cent the first dose. In the seven