Coronavirus

Thursday

Kate Andrews

Starmer’s fundamental economic mistake

Keir Starmer’s speech on economic recovery, delivered at Labour’s Southside HQ on Thursday, was hyped as one of the most pivotal moments of his leadership so far. A Labour insider told Politico it had been ‘six months in the making with a huge amount of work going into it’. It was designed to establish a clear ‘fork in the road’ between the Conservatives’ and Labour’s economic visions, both in the short term — leading up to the Budget next month — but also in the future, as Starmer pledged to shape the economy ‘to look utterly unlike the past’. But for a speech that was supposedly months in the making,

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The unintended consequences of the Macpherson report

Sir William Macpherson of Cluny has died. His obituaries praise him for his 1998 inquiry into the Stephen Lawrence case. His report did indeed shed light on the failure of the police to catch the young man’s killers. It has had, however, a profound and bad effect on our law. The report’s recommendations redefined a racist incident: ‘A racist incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person.’ This definition means that absolutely anything in the world could be a racist incident, because it relies wholly on what a complainant ‘perceives’. The definition’s use of the word ‘victim’ also implies acceptance that

The Spectator

Do gender studies departments have a gender problem?

Target practice The government hit its target of giving a first Covid vaccine to 15 million of the most vulnerable people by the middle of February. Some other government targets which have been met (sort of): — 100,000 Covid tests a day by the end of April. The government did claim to have achieved this — but did so by counting testing kits which had been posted out and not necessarily returned. — There was a rise of 7,600 people applying for teacher training courses last year, which meant that the government hit its target for secondary school teachers to the tune of 106% and primary school teachers by 130%.

Richard Dobbs

The need for speed: can we outpace Covid?

The Spanish flu pandemic a century ago resulted in around 50 million deaths worldwide. Its second wave was over ten times more deadly than its first. History is repeating, with the global death toll from Covid-19 this second winter already three times that of the first. In the UK, the number of deaths in this second wave is close to double the number we suffered in the first wave. The death toll in the first wave, while tragic, is somewhat understandable. A deadly pandemic came out of the blue, and we had to work out the best way of responding. But we cannot use this excuse to explain the higher

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

The case for immunity passports

For more than 20 years, I’ve been raging away at pointless rules. When my blood’s up, there’s not a foam-flecked Tory backbencher that can hold a candle to me. My friends blanch when I start on again about risk aversion in the C of E, dogs banned from beaches, the pond-weed creep of health and safety. I can ruin dinner parties, easily. And yet the idea of vaccination passports, which has my freedom-loving friends fit to be tied, leaves me quite calm. Bring them on, I say, and quickly. I don’t for a moment believe that Covid immunity cards are the first step on the dismal path to a Chinese-style social credit

Douglas Murray

Will freedom always be just over the horizon?

We should talk about horizons, and the setting of desirable ones. A newspaper gave it a go the other day with the front-page news that it is possible pubs may reopen in April rather than May. Given that we read elsewhere that when pubs do reopen, they may not be allowed to serve alcohol, the thrill from this news was limited. This cannot be our best hope: that if everybody behaves themselves and everything goes according to plan then we might be allowed to drink an orange juice in public sometime after Easter. This horizon is not sufficiently motivating. And societies, like the people within them, need motivation. There can’t

Fiona Mountford

The importance of a good funeral

In ITV’s otherwise terrible drama Finding Alice, one line struck me with particular force. A funeral director is addressing our heroine, who finds herself unexpectedly having to organise last rites for her partner. Wicker coffins are particularly popular now with relatives, says the undertaker, and I found myself nodding in strong agreement. A light woven coffin, made of pleasingly biodegradable material and topped with a simple but stylish cross of early spring flowers, was exactly what we selected for my father, to be buried in one of the last remaining — and therefore highly sought-after — spots in the churchyard. ‘This might sound a very odd thing to say,’ said

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Hotel quarantine starts, Ribblehead Viaduct cracks and a royal guest for Oprah

Home The target was achieved of vaccinating, by the middle of February, about 15 million people of 70 or over, together with care home residents and workers, and the clinically extremely vulnerable. But there was concern that a substantial proportion of care home workers declined the vaccine. By 16 February, more than 20 per cent of the population had been given their first dose. At dawn on 14 February, total UK deaths (within 28 days of testing positive for the coronavirus) had stood at 116,908, including 4,861 in the past week. Over the previous week, the seven-day moving average of deaths had fallen to 688 a day from 932 a

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Where will vaccine passports take us?

Desperate to find someone to commemorate with a statue for having done great things, but who isn’t a white male, some people in Devon want to honour a couple of lesbian pirates. A statue of Anne Bonny and Mary Read has been proposed for the beauty spot of Burgh Island, to salute their important work in ‘breaking gender boundaries’ in the 18th century. Their long careers of psychotic violence and theft are easily eclipsed by the suggestion that they liked a spot of how’s your mother from time to time. A problem here is that there is no proof that they were actually lesbians. A few revisionist historians, of the

Friday

Kate Andrews

France’s vaccine volte face

France has become the first country in the world to recommend a different vaccine regime for those who have recovered from the virus. The country’s public health authority has recommended that people previously infected with Covid-19 only receive one jab, rather than two. The advice is based on preliminary data, including two studies from the United States, that show the combination of antibodies built up from having the virus, plus one jab, creates immunity that ‘is equal to or even exceeds’ having two vaccines. It wasn’t long ago that French ministers were publicly criticising the UK’s strategy It’s too early to definitively say whether France’s strategy will work. For one thing,

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: A royal baby, Boohoo buyouts and France legalises lunch al desko

Home On Sunday 7 February, as the week began, 11,465,210 people in the United Kingdom had received a first vaccination against Covid-19 and 510,057 a second. Those aged 70 or over were invited to book a vaccination online or by telephone if they had not received one. Illegal immigrants were advised to register with a GP without risking deportation. South Africa, possessing a million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, decided to suspend its use after a trial of 2,000 people (42 of whom developed Covid) seemed to indicate that it offered ‘minimal protection’ against mild and moderate cases; no one in the trial was old. Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, the deputy

Andrew Sullivan

Trump is being defended by Foghorn Leghorn

We weren’t long into Bruce Castor’s opening speech defending Donald Trump in his impeachment trial before we knew it was going to be special. ‘I don’t want to steal the thunder from the other lawyers’ thunder,’ Castor intoned to a mildly befuddled Senate. ‘But Nebraska, you’re going to hear, is quite a judicial thinking place.’ We never got around to the payoff for that one, but there were plenty of other amusements. We learned about the ‘Greek Republic’, which apparently awaits salvation from the United States Senate. We had a tech update: ‘We all know what records are, right: the thing you put the needle down on it and then

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Covid is hastening the creep towards a cashless society

If your local pub ever reopens, don’t be surprised if one thing is missing: the till. The anti-cash lobby is seeking to take advantage of the pandemic to rid us of our banknotes once and for all. When UK Finance — the trade body for the banking and payments industry — pushed the government two weeks ago to increase the limit on contactless card payments to £100 (it was raised from £30 to £45 at the beginning of the pandemic), it was a new offensive in a campaign for a cashless society which has been going on for years. Small shops might fight back — the British Retail Consortium warns

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

The stealthy rise of vaccine passports

Do you remember normality? A busy diary. Holidays, parties, pubs. Who hasn’t looked back and wondered how we can return to that life which now seems so free. Sacrifices have been inevitable. After a year in and out of lockdown, are we ready to make some more? The Covid vaccines promise freedom, or at least some version of it according to government ministers. By the end of next month, if the vaccine rollout continues at its current rate, all over-50s will have been offered their first jab. The Prime Minister has assured us that ‘things will be very different by the spring’. Matt Hancock has promised a ‘happy and free’

Bruce Anderson

My palate and the plague

Later this week, on Spectator.co.uk, I will resolve a mystery that has featured in a lot of Zoom traffic around St James’s — plus a lesser–known puzzle. The first: why has Anderson been absent from The Spectator? The second: why has he been more or less off the grog for a month? The two are related. I have had the plague, and though I am recovering, my superb doctor thinks I should stay dry for a little longer. I have no wish to become a virus bore. Those who would like more information can read Coffee House; those who are already yawning with tedium will know what to avoid. But

Luke McShane

How chess got cool

Ten years ago, comedian Matt Kirshen’s one-liner was voted the fifth-best at the Edinburgh Fringe. ‘I was playing chess with my friend and he said “Let’s make this interesting”. So we stopped playing chess.’ Not bad, as jabs go, and I’ve heard a few — as has any lifelong chess player. Well, times have changed. Late last year, Netflix TV series The Queen’s Gambit was watched by 62 million households in its first 28 days. Who’s laughing now? I suppose I can admit that the popularity of the series wasn’t entirely down to the chess. The wondrous eyes of Anya Taylor-Joy as heroine Beth Harmon surely played a part, and

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

I’m living in a country that won’t let me out

Anyone who’s been through customs Down Under isn’t surprised by the region’s OTT response to Covid. Having been X-rayed before boarding, one’s possessions are X-rayed off the plane. So shrill are the threatening posters, fine warnings and chiding announcements about importing bio-contaminants that on discovering an apple core in your pocket in the endless customs queue, you’re apt to throw up. The culture is obsessed with contagion. Yet Britain’s Labour leadership, who throughout this pandemic have interpreted ‘opposition party’ to mean ‘people who advocate government policy even more vehemently than the government itself’, now look wistfully to Down Under as a Valhalla where they really do Covid right. Near-total border

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The cashless lobby is cashing in on Covid-19

Coronavirus, we have been warned many times, has brought scammers out in force. But lobbyists are not far behind. Their activities may not be illegal, but they are pretty disgraceful nonetheless. Hardly had the coronavirus outbreak begun in January than my email inbox began to fill up with press releases claiming that the contagion was being spread by banknotes and coins – coming, er, from businesses with a vested interest in cashless payments. In Britain, the payments industry seized the moment to lobby the government – successfully – for the limit on payments via contactless cards to be raised from £30 to £45. The new limit duly came into effect

Tuesday

Kate Andrews

Hancock launches his quarantine crackdown

The search for the right balance on border policy continues, as Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced this afternoon a host of new measures that travellers coming to the UK will face. From Monday, all arrivals will need to take two PCR tests: one on day two and another on day eight of self-isolation. This will apply to everyone, regardless of where they are travelling in from or whether they are quarantining in a hotel or in their home. This means anyone arriving in the UK will now be taking a total of three Covid-19 tests, as a negative test within 72 hours of travel is also required. Hancock announced that any

Thursday

Dot Wordsworth

The dark roots of ‘grim’

‘Thus I refute Bishop Berkeley,’ said my husband, multitasking by kicking the stone and slightly misquoting Samuel Johnson at the same time. It was his (my husband’s) notion of a little joke. Dr Johnson had demonstrated with his own kick the falsehood of thinking that all things are merely ideal, not material. The stone my husband kicked was a milestone outside the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington Gore. It said ‘To Hounslow 9 miles’ and ‘To London (Hyde Park Corner) 1 mile’. Helpfully, a manicule pointed out which way was which. I’m still unsure where Bishop Berkeley comes into this, but milestones have been everywhere recently, all of them grim.