Coronavirus

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Vaccine battles, illegal haircuts and Biden’s chat with Boris

Home Supplies of the Pfizer vaccine (made in Belgium) were feared to be at risk from a declaration by the European Union health commissioner, Stella Kyriakides, that EU companies would have to ‘provide early notification whenever they want to export vaccines to third countries’. This came after AstraZeneca was said to be able to deliver by the end of March only 31 million of 80 million doses ordered by the EU. The company, with a factory in England, had undertaken to deliver two million doses a week to the UK. Nadhim Zahawi, the minister for vaccination, said that supplies were ‘tight’ but the mid-February target of 15 million vaccinations would

The Spectator

Are we returning to ‘normalcy’ or ‘normality’?

New normal Why have so many people started saying ‘normalcy’ rather than ‘normality’? — Normalcy has been traced back to 1857 when it was used in geometry to denote a state where lines were perpendicular to each other. It was rarely used outside mathematics until 1920, when the then US presidential candidate Warren Harding made a speech in Boston referring to a ‘return to normalcy’ following the Great War. He said: ‘America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy.’ He was ridiculed for what was regarded by many as a malapropism. Although ‘normalcy’ is now in common use in the US, it was still the lesser-used

The Spectator

Quarantine and the freedom paradox

Who would have thought, this time last year, that the British government would be planning to detain British nationals at the airport and keep them under guard in a hotel room for a ten-day quarantine? It’s quite a departure for a country whose values have always been defined by the defence of liberty. But we’re living in exceptional times, with the Covid death count at more than 100,000 — a bigger hit, as a proportion of population, than almost anywhere else in the world. This requires deep reflection about the mistakes made and the changes needed. When the sick are still dying — at a rate of more than 1,000

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Capital punishment: why wealth taxes don’t work

No new year would be complete without the traditional Oxfam survey showing that a few of the richest people on the planet own more assets than the poorest 50 per cent of the world’s population combined. The figures change, but the gist is the same. January is usually a slow month, and it makes for startling headlines, intended to get us thinking about capitalism’s shortcomings. It’s also been tradition, for those of us more positive about free markets, to offer a retort: before Covid, global poverty was falling at the fastest rate in history. Global inequality was narrowing because of capitalism, not despite it. Oxfam arrives at its figures by

Matthew Lynn

Vaccine wars: the global battle for a precious resource

Armed guards are patrolling the perimeter fence of a sleek factory. Software experts are fending off hackers. Border officials are checking trucks and ferries, not for weapons or illegal immigrants, but for a mysterious biochemical soup, while spies and spin doctors are feeding social media with scare stories flaming one national champion or another. Welcome to the first great geopolitical battle of the 21st century. It may sound like something ripped from the pages of a dystopian sci-fi novel, but in truth we’re seeing the opening salvos in the vaccine wars. Rather than co-operating with one another to roll out a global vaccination campaign to rid the world of Covid-19,

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The true cost of school closures – an interview with the Children’s Commissioner

Teaching unions have spent much of the past year campaigning with the social media hashtag #CloseTheSchools. It’s a reminder of the imbalance in debate over education. Unions represent the adults, MPs represent their constituents, but who in Westminster speaks for children? In 2005 the Blair government sought to answer this question by creating a Children’s Commissioner, who would promote and protect the rights of children in decisions affecting their lives. Anne Longfield, the third to hold the job, is in the final few weeks of her six-year stint. She is spending those weeks campaigning for schools to re-open as soon as possible after the February half-term. She believes she has

Terry Barnes

Australian border closures could work for Britain. Here’s why

Melbourne Australia has been a rare success story during the pandemic. There have been around 29,000 cases of Covid, 908 of which have proved fatal. There are currently just 125 active cases in the entire country, a mere 25 of which have required hospitalisation. For a population of 25 million, this is a vastly different experience to that of Covid-beleaguered Europe and North America. No wonder the British government is considering whether it might be time to copy Australia’s approach, to help save an economy and society battered to a degree Australians can scarcely comprehend. Australia benefits from being a remote island continent with no international land borders. When it

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

‘Inessential’ workers have helped keep the country afloat

A common sight across Britain these past ten months has been those rainbow flags fluttering in urban and village streets: ‘Thank you NHS.’ Many add an afterthought: ‘And other key workers.’ And who would dispute either sentiment? To these expressions of gratitude are added ministers’ and their medical advisers’ thanks to everyone who just ‘stays home’. We are saving granny. We are, if only by inaction, doing our bit in a great national effort, pulling together with the team. We join the ranks of the public-spirited, the selfless, the just. And again, who would cavil? Prudence, caution, carefulness… in a pandemic these are needed qualities. But there’s a group of

James Jeffrey

My taste of lockdown freedom on the Camino pilgrimage

A few of the hip young things sitting along the Lisbon quayside turned their heads my way as my walking sticks scraped along the pavement. I didn’t slow down, though, because I was self-conscious about how I looked. Hiking 2,000km along an extended Camino pilgrimage from the French-Spanish border through northern Spain then down through Portugal will do that to you. My beard had gone feral, my greying hair was out of control. The gaze of my eyes was increasingly unhinged; one friend cautioned similarities to King Lear. Nevertheless, I tried to hold my head high. Little do you know (I silently said to the quayside beauty pageant), but this

Wednesday

Joanna Rossiter

The EU is blaming everyone but itself for its vaccine debacle

Something has gone badly wrong with the EU’s rollout of the Covid vaccine. Yet in its response to this debacle, Brussels seems determined to double down, engaging in behaviour of the pettiest kind as it blames everyone but itself for what has happened. ‘The companies must deliver’, Ursula von der Leyen, the EU commission’s president said this week, as she announced the launch of a ‘vaccine export transparency mechanism’. In reality, this plan to oblige companies to notify the commission when vaccines leave the EU (into Britain, for example) is an attempt to pile pressure on the pharmaceutical firms who have given us the only way out of the situation we find ourselves in.

Tuesday

Kate Andrews

When will unemployment peak?

Unemployment continues to rise. Today’s update from the Office for National Statistics estimates that unemployment in the three months to November hit 5 per cent — that’s an estimated 1.7 million people out of work, a 0.6 per cent rise on the previous quarter.    Not every figure is as positive as the surface data would suggest The gradual climb suggests that the furlough scheme continues to hold off mass redundancies and provides further evidence that England’s second national lockdown didn’t hit as hard as the first. But the unemployment rate is set to worsen before it improves, with more optimistic forecasts estimating a peak of around 6 per cent

Sunday

Matthew Lynn

The EU’s vaccine catastrophe is a crisis of its own making

As news emerges that both Pfizer and AstraZeneca are cutting supplies of their Covid-19 vaccines to the EU by up to 60 per cent, EU officials are turning on the drug companies, threatening fines and lawsuits if they don’t speed up deliveries. The Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has blasted the delays as unacceptable and threatened to take the companies to court. While the European Council President Charles Michel is threatening to use ‘all the legal means at our disposal’ to make the drugs companies ‘respect the contracts’ signed with the EU. But hold on, because on closer inspection it turns out that much of the unfolding vaccine catastrophe in

Thursday

Uri Shalit

How effective has the Covid vaccine been in Israel?

The world’s eyes are on Israel at the moment, as the country continues its phenomenally fast roll-out of the Pfizer vaccine. As of yesterday, the country had vaccinated a third of its population with at least one dose, which means we are starting to find out vital information about the vaccine’s effectiveness and how it works in the real world. So what have he learned about the vaccine so far? First some statistics: as of yesterday, 78 per cent of people over the age of 60 in Israel will have received at least one dose of the Pfizer vaccine. 58 per cent of the over-60s are over 14 days from

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The truth about the vaccine ‘postcode lottery’

‘Postcode lottery!’ people scream when one area feels less well treated than another in a public service — in this case, the rollout of the Covid vaccines. It is a silly phrase, if you believe in the devolution of power and the importance of locality. The point of local health trusts, councils and so on is to let local people run most of the things that matter to them. The logical result is that — even within a national set-up like the NHS — there will be differences. If there were no differences, it would not follow that everyone was getting the same high-quality service. It would much more likely

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Vaccination, inauguration and a food box denunciation

Home The government undertook to offer a first dose of vaccine to the adult population of the UK by September. More than four million had now been vaccinated. The campaign was on target to vaccinate 15 million by mid-February. A ten-day trial would see some hospitals open for vaccinations 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Racecourses, sports arenas and even cathedrals such as Salisbury, Lichfield and Blackburn became vaccination centres. St Paul’s Cathedral in London suspended public worship because of the danger of coronavirus, as did more than half of Church of England churches. At the beginning of the week, Sunday 17 January, total deaths (within 28 days

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Could the Australian approach to Covid work in Britain?

The government’s most important economic policy is its vaccination programme. The speed at which people are immunised will determine when — and how quickly — the economy can reopen. If all goes to plan, Britain will be the first country in Europe to get rid of restrictions and start the job of social repair. Three factors give grounds for hope. First, there is remarkably little ‘anti-vax’ sentiment in the UK. More than 70 per cent of the population ‘would definitely get’ a Covid vaccine if it were made available to them this week. In Germany, it’s just 41 per cent; in France, 30 per cent. The willingness of the British

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

How cults crumble

There’s something creepy about the way we call Donald Trump fans a cult, then watch them hungrily, hoping they’ll do something colourful, though not actually threatening — like self-immolate, perhaps. Lockdown is boring and we’ve watched everything on Netflix. So, MSNBC and chill. But not all MAGA fans are cultish, and not all political cults are on the right. 2020 acted like a cult accelerator, and now there are half-brainwashed people everywhere, on every part of the political spectrum, in your family, among your friends. How can you tell? It’s all in the eyes. It’s famously hard to define a cult. However obviously nutty a group may seem — aliens,

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

What makes us think they’ll release lockdown after vaccines?

Has the coup happened yet? You have the advantage over me. It was supposed to have taken place on Sunday. Then it slipped back to Monday morning. When Monday morning came and went in a markedly coup-less state the date was revised to Wednesday. Anyway, there was to be a worldwide media blackout after which President Donald Trump — for it is he — would announce to the world that he was still in control and that Joe Biden and a whole bunch of others had been arrested for their various roles in covering up election fraud. The rapidly shifting date of this coup reminds me a little of my

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Gavin Williamson licks his wounds in the Commons

Of all the government ministries grappling with the impact of the pandemic, the Department for Education has probably had the most torrid – and least impressive – time. There is currently no sign that things are improving, either: in the past week, ministers have had to deal with a highly politically-toxic row over the quality of free school meals for children during lockdown. That row formed the backdrop to today’s education questions in the Commons, where Gavin Williamson and his colleagues were very visibly licking their wounds. Williamson was accused – as he is every time he appears in the Chamber – of being ‘incompetent’, with Labour’s Kate Green complaining that

Friday

Patrick O’Flynn

Boris can’t afford to move slowly on lifting Covid restrictions

At 3.48pm on Thursday the Sun’s political editor tweeted out an explosive story that Steve Baker, the co-convenor of the Covid Recovery Group of Tory MPs, had warned that Boris Johnson’s party leadership would soon be under threat if restrictions were not lifted soon. Less than 100 minutes later, Baker put out his own tweet as follows: ‘What this country needs is the complete success of Boris Johnson… I am clear Boris is the only person to lead us out of these difficulties and I support him in that endeavour.’ In short, Baker had overplayed his hand to an embarrassing extent – much to the delight of those parliamentary colleagues