Boris johnson

Thursday

The Spectator

The case for trusting the public is stronger than ever

Our Plan is entirely new, comprising – 1. The whole News of the Week: selected, sifted, condensed and arranged as to be readable throughout. 2. A full and impartial exhibition of all the leading Politics of the Day. 3. A separate Discussion of Interesting Topics of a general nature, with a view to instruction and entertainment at the same time. 4. A Department devoted to Literatures… 5. Dramatic and Musical Criticism. 6. Scientific and Miscellaneous information. — R.S. Rintoul’s announcement of a new weekly, July 1828 In the history of publishing, no magazine has ever printed a 10,000th issue. Until now. The Spectator is unusual not only in that it

Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan: The strange vocabulary of coronavirus

The vocabulary of Brexit has passed into oblivion. Now there’s fresh work to be done. We all know about ‘flattening the curve’, but are you comfortable yet with ‘fomite’, a word my older son, a virologist, taught the family early on? It’s an object or surface on which an infectious agent like a coronavirus might be lying in wait — just for you. A cheque in the post, next door’s cat, the tennis balls you are about to double-fault with — all good candidates. You knew that already. Then how about ‘lipid envelope’, the outer shell of certain viruses. We learn with relief that the envelope of our coronavirus of

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Getting coronavirus does not bring clarity

I had thought that actually getting the coronavirus would bring clarity — that there would be some satisfaction in meeting the enemy, feeling its spectral hands around my lungs. No such luck. Uncertainty is the hallmark of Covid-19. Even its origins are murky: wet markets or the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control? Who knows, and who would ever believe the Chinese government anyway? When you’ve got it, the sense of medieval unknowing only deepens. Is this definitely it? Will it get worse? Will it come back? My version of the virus began with a nasty headache and a grubby feeling of unease, after which I threw up on the bathroom

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Who is in charge of the government?

Boris Johnson is still officially recuperating from coronavirus at Chequers and is ‘not doing government work’, according to No. 10. But he is starting to do some activities that sound distinctly work-related.  He will be having an audience with the Queen over the phone this week, and will also be phoning President Trump on Tuesday to thank him for his wishes when he was in the hospital and to get an update on the G7 response to the crisis. But the Downing Street line remains that ‘he isn’t doing government work but he is getting updates on the situation’. In Westminster, it’s almost as easy to find someone else to

Monday

Steerpike

Keir Starmer comes third in a two horse race

Following a weekend of negative headlines for the government over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, any cross-party truce to hold off criticism of the Prime Minister while he recovers is well and truly over. However, one group with whom Boris Johnson remains popular is the general public. In recent weeks, the Conservatives have enjoyed some of their best approval ratings since Johnson entered office. The election of Keir Starmer as Labour leader was billed as something that could change this. However, so far any Starmer effect has failed to materialise. A YouGov poll asking who out of Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer would make the best Prime Minister puts Johnson in the lead at 46 per

Saturday

Patrick O’Flynn

What the country needs most is Boris Johnson back at his desk

Boris Johnson has been out of action for almost a fortnight. His last meaningful act before going into hospital was to force frazzled Health Secretary Matt Hancock to ditch a threat to ban outdoor exercise that he’d made live on TV in response to some tweeted pictures of people sunbathing in a park. In place of that threat, Johnson’s Downing Street changed the tone by sending out a message telling the British public ‘thank you, thank you, thank you’ for their efforts. Though the Government initially claimed Mr Johnson would work on his red boxes and receive briefings while in hospital, this did not actually happen (no doubt due to

Friday

Katy Balls

When will the public accept an end to the lockdown?

In the weeks leading up to Boris Johnson announcing lockdown measures, ministers and aides wondered how in the world you could enforce a lockdown like the one seen in authoritarian China in a liberal democracy such as the UK. But following Dominic Raab confirmation on Thursday that there will be another three weeks of lockdown, public resistance is the least of ministers’ concerns. The biggest surprise about the lockdown within government has been the level of public support for it. Polling has repeatedly shown that rather than fighting the social distancing measures, Britons are embracing them more obediently than anyone in might have dared imagine. A YouGov poll prior to Raab’s announcement found

Thursday

Taki

The joy of pumping iron at 83

Gstaad So the days — and months — drift by. This once peaceful Alpine town is packed with rich refugees fleeing the you-know-what. They come from nearby cities crammed with real migrants. There isn’t an empty apartment left, and the locals are raking it in. Two good friends have died, the village is supposed to be locked down, but God awful bikers are everywhere. Yes, they are biking down the middle of narrow paths which makes it impossible to keep your distance from them. What boggles the mind is the mentality of the morons who refuse to practise social distancing. The hotels, clubs and restaurants are shut, so surely they

Allison Pearson Allison Pearson

How did the virus get past my Obsessive Compulsive Corona Disorder?

When two members of my family went down with what appears to be Covid-19, I felt concerned. What I hadn’t bargained on was the sense of wounded pride. As the patients, pale as veal, collapse into their beds for 16 hours of fretful, jagged sleep, I ask myself how the wretched virus could have penetrated my defences. Have I not for three weeks of lockdown carried out normal household tasks with the heightened vigilance of a Porton Down lab technician moving radioactive material across an infant-school playground? If an Amazon parcel came to the door, I commenced the Corona Protocol. First, don safe-cracker gloves (the indoor pair not the supermarket

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Boris recovers, flour sales soar and France and India extend lockdowns

Home The number of people with the coronavirus disease Covid-19 who had died in hospitals by the beginning of the week, Sunday 12 April, was 9,875, compared with a total of 4,313 a week earlier. Three days later it was 12,107. Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, was discharged from hospital after a week, three days of which were in intensive care. Thanking staff and nurses who saved his life ‘when things could have gone either way’, he said: ‘We will win because our NHS is the beating heart of this country. It is the best of this country. It is unconquerable. It is powered by love.’ He recuperated at Chequers

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How Covid-19 will change the Tory party

Politics is full of events that are meant to change everything but actually do little. Yet the coronavirus crisis will be one of those rare events that does have lasting political impact. This disease, and its aftermath, will change how the country works. Covid-19 has already directly affected every household, business and institution in the country in a way that not even the 2008 financial crash did. Boris Johnson’s government will now be defined by how it handles both the crisis and its aftermath. Before he went into isolation, Johnson remarked to Downing Street aides that he was keen to get back to the agenda on which he had been

Wednesday

David Patrikarakos

Keir Starmer is the conservative we need in this time of crisis

These are discombobulating times. A deadly pandemic; the United States at sea, China belligerent and the EU at war with itself. British politics was in flux before the virus hit. Now it is vertiginous. The Tory party, long seen as the guardian of the status quo, has been forced to change tack as it deals with the fallout. Keir Starmer, recently elected as Labour leader, will play a vital role in this realignment – but not one we would once have envisaged. Starmer’s election as Labour leader in the midst of coronavirus is a good thing. He is the anti-Corbyn for a Labour party looking for calm and stability after

Friday

Tom Slater

Obviously Boris doesn’t deserve coronavirus – but do those who say so deserve to lose their jobs?

Not for the first time since the coronavirus crisis began, controversy has hit Derbyshire. While the other week it was the county’s finest sending up drones to spy on and shame people walking in the Peak District, this week it’s a Labour councillor who has had the whip withdrawn and lost her job at a law firm for saying something nasty about Boris Johnson on the internet. Sheila Oakes, who is also the mayor of the Derbyshire town of Heanor, made a fool of herself the other day on Facebook. In response to another post, encouraging people to pray for the PM, she said that Johnson, who has just come

Thursday

Katy Balls

Boris Johnson moved out of intensive care

The Prime Minister was moved out of intensive care on Thursday evening but remains in hospital. After being moved on Monday night to an ICU where he received oxygen treatment, Boris Johnson’s health has slowly improved in recent days. Now, in the clearest sign he is on the road to recovery, Johnson no longer requires a bed in intensive care. A No. 10 spokesman said: The Prime Minister has been moved this evening from intensive care back to the ward, where he will receive close monitoring during the early phase of his recovery. He is in extremely good spirits. This is not to say that Johnson should be expected to return

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Queen speaks, mobile masts burn and Boris Johnson goes into hospital

Home The number of people who had died from the coronavirus disease Covid-19 in the UK by Sunday 5 April was 4,313, compared with a total of 1,228 by 29 March, and of 281 by 22 March. In the following two days the total rose to 5,373. Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, was taken to hospital after his Covid-19 symptoms had persisted for ten days, and then to intensive care. His fiancée, Carrie Symonds, roughly six months pregnant, had spent a week in bed with Covid-19 symptoms. The aim was for there to be 100,000 coronavirus tests a day in England by the end of April, Matt Hancock, the Health

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The problems of a sick prime minister

It is good of President Trump to offer Boris Johnson his best wishes and the best American pharmaceuticals (though no doubt Jeremy Corbyn would see this as a prelude to American takeover of the National Health Service). During the second world war, on Boxing Day 1941, Churchill had a minor heart attack after trying too hard to force open a window while staying at the White House. He had addressed the joint Houses of Congress earlier that day. Churchill’s doctor, Moran, did not inform President Roosevelt. In February 1943, however, when he knew Churchill had pneumonia, Roosevelt wrote to him: ‘Please, please, for the sake of the world, don’t overdo

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Dominic Raab is the constitutional choice, but a complicated one

We have never had a moment like this before in our history: a time when the Prime Minister is, in the most personal way possible, fighting the very problem his government is trying to tackle. After Boris Johnson tested positive for coronavirus, he insisted that he would keep leading the government from self-isolation in Downing Street. His determination was influenced by the fact that No. 10 believed that parts of government needed pushing to make sure they delivered; there is frustration in Downing Street about the speed of progress in testing, for instance. But those in virtual meetings with him did worry that he was often coughing, and his performance

Toby Young Toby Young

Britain needs Boris, the extraordinary man I’ve known for 35 years

As I write, Boris Johnson is in intensive care at St Thomas’ Hospital, battling with coronavirus. For someone with such an unwavering belief in his own destiny, this must be profoundly difficult. He is a man who’s beaten the odds over and over: to become mayor of London in a Labour city, to lead the Leave campaign to victory in the teeth of overwhelming opposition, to become prime minister in spite of all his personal baggage, and then to win the largest Conservative majority since 1987. Here is a man who cannot stare into the jaws of defeat without grabbing hold of victory with both hands. Yet the odds of

Tuesday

James Forsyth

Raab stands in for Boris – but he can’t take the biggest decision of all

Dominic Raab is a lawyer, not a doctor, by temperament as well as training. He is not a politician who talks about his feelings much. This made it all the more striking to hear him talking about Boris Johnson as a ‘friend’, and his hopes for his recovery. The reassuring news is that Boris Johnson’s condition is stable and he hasn’t required a ventilator. Raab faced a barrage of questions about how him deputising for Boris Johnson will actually work Understandably, Raab faced a barrage of questions about how him deputising for Boris Johnson will actually work. Raab emphasised Cabinet collective responsibility and how they were implementing the plans that

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Boris Johnson ‘stable’ and not on a ventilator, No. 10 says

Boris Johnson has been stable overnight and is breathing without mechanical assistance, his official spokesman said this afternoon. He has received standard oxygen treatment and ‘remains in good spirits’. He does not have pneumonia. There have been questions over whether Downing Street had been overly reticent about quite how unwell the Prime Minister has been, and whether it was right that the full picture wasn’t on offer. The spokesman insisted that No. 10 has been ‘fully frank’ about the Prime Minister’s condition throughout and that the change yesterday from ‘in hospital as a precaution’ to Johnson being moved to intensive care was because his symptoms worsened yesterday afternoon. Raab will