Covid-19

What Tory MPs fear most about a lockdown delay

As Boris Johnson prepares to announce a four-week delay to the final stage out of lockdown, he faces a mixed reaction. Labour plans to back the delay but make clear that it was avoidable and is down to bad leadership. The public is seen to be more forgiving — with a Times/YouGov poll over the weekend finding that 53 per cent think that restrictions should remain beyond 21 June, compared with 34 per cent who say they should end. Many Tory MPs, meanwhile, are opposed to the delay on the grounds that they are losing faith all restrictions will be lifted this year. ‘If you can’t lift restrictions at the height of summer

The risky business of delaying 21 June

It seems almost certain that ‘freedom day’ will be delayed. So now we consider the details. On the latest episode of Coffee House Shots, we debate the implications of extending restrictions and what that would mean – not just for the summer – but for the rest of the year. Fraser Nelson makes the case for caution on the podcast (and on Coffee House here), arguing that the Delta variant has changed the equation and the PM should be given the benefit of the doubt, as well as a little more time to get a ‘reasonable grasp of the risks and trade-offs.’ There was broad agreement between us that the issue isn’t so much the

The case for delaying 21 June

Word is that Boris Johnson will delay the 21 June re-opening by two weeks, possibly even a month — an announcement that has caused some division of opinion in the offices of The Spectator. In the circumstances (the Indian variant growing exponentially) I can see the case for waiting another week or so until we have more data. That’s not say that I want delay, just that the rise of the Indian variant in the UK has made me see the abolition of remaining restrictions as a finely-balanced argument. Whereas, a few weeks ago, I thought the facts heavily favoured going ahead with a full reopening.  I discuss this with Kate Andrews, Katy

The manhunt dividing Belgium

Belgium’s leading virologist is in hiding, holed up with his family in a government safe house. The reason? A right-wing Flemish soldier. Jürgen Conings disappeared from his home on 17 May, leaving behind a booby-trapped car and a series of letters laying out his grievances against ‘the regime’. In a goodbye letter to his partner, Conings wrote: The so-called political elite, joined now by the virologists, are deciding how you and I should live… I don’t care whether I die or not, but I will live my last days the way I want. The muscular 5ft 9in former corporal is now officially a grade-4 terror risk. But that hasn’t stopped

How Starmer can beat Boris

How should Keir Starmer deal with a problem like Boris Johnson? Despite the Prime Minister’s mistakes in the handling of the pandemic – and a string of embarrassing stories about his private life and finances – Boris seems unassailable. Johnson is seen as best suited to be Prime Minister by 40 per cent of voters compared to just 23 per cent for Starmer; most surveys give the Tories a double digit lead over Labour. Party leaders receive much unsolicited and often useless advice. Starmer is not alone in that. Over the years, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War has been scoured for helpful aphorisms, while Machiavelli’s The Prince is still

How serious is Britain’s third wave?

The link between Covid cases and hospitalisations has been broken, we keep being told – vaccination having reduced the severity of infections, especially among more vulnerable older groups. It is a point reinforced this morning by Public Health England which reveals that the number of cases of the delta (formerly Indian) variant have increased from 12,431 to 42,323 in a week, but without a corresponding rise in hospitalisations. But how true is it that what looks like a third wave in new infections will not be accompanied by a large wave of hospitalisations? Previous experience with Covid – using PHE data – suggests there is not a very long lag between

Boris’s three unlocking options for 21 June

What will Boris Johnson announce on Monday? The Prime Minister is due to update the nation on whether the final stage of the roadmap out of lockdown can proceed on 21 June as planned. However, with cases on the rise and the Indian variant spreading, various government advisers have spent the past few weeks taking to the airwaves to warn of calamity ahead should Johnson lift all restrictions. There is also a push from some in the Cabinet to either delay the roadmap or opt for a more limited easing. In truth, no final decision will be made until Sunday. The Prime Minister is currently busy in Cornwall attempting to woo

Does the data justify a delay to lifting lockdown?

There are still six days to go before the Prime Minister has to decide whether or not to go ahead with the full reopening of the economy and society on 21 June. But there seems little doubt in which way the government is travelling.  It is reported this morning that, following a pessimistic presentation by Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance the likelihood is that the reopening will be delayed by a fortnight, the lifting of some measures perhaps a little longer than that. Is this yet another shifting of the goalposts? It is true that there has been an increase in cases over the past couple of weeks –

Should the NHS mix Pfizer and AstraZeneca Covid jabs?

Should the NHS be mixing vaccines for better effect, or at least offering people who have had one dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine the choice of having the Pfizer vaccine for their second shot?  The question arises because that is exactly the regime which has been followed in Germany since the risk of clotting from the AstraZeneca vaccine became evident. When the German authorities made the decision to administer the Pfizer vaccine in place of a second shot of AstraZeneca there was not much evidence as to whether this would be an effective strategy.  But a study from a group of hospitals in Berlin suggests that a shot of AstraZeneca

Why won’t Boris put the Covid-free Cayman Islands on the ‘green list’?

Has Boris Johnson forgotten about the Cayman Islands? While the weather here is distinctly un-British, the overwhelming majority of the 65,000 or so inhabitants are British citizens. We are, after all, a British Overseas Territory, with a governor appointed by London. Next week, we’ll be enjoying a bank holiday to celebrate the Queen’s birthday. But during the pandemic, the British government has turned a blind eye to our Caribbean paradise by refusing to relax travel restrictions.  It’s hard to think of anywhere on Earth from which arrivals would represent a lower risk of bringing Covid into the UK. Since last summer, we have not had a single case of Covid transmission in the community.

Prepare for China’s nationalist turn

In recent days, it has been striking how many people in Westminster and Whitehall now think the lab leak theory is the most plausible explanation of Covid’s origins. China’s apparent success last year at stamping out the virus at home — with technological competence and sheer brutality — while cases spiked in the West, created a fear that the future belonged to Beijing.  But, as I say in the magazine this week, the growing plausibility that the virus leaked from a lab highlights the Achilles’ heel of the Chinese system: its lack of a mechanism for error correction. It is not that a lab leak couldn’t have happened in the

Fraser Nelson

What happens next? Gauging the fallout from the pandemic

What just happened? Some 15 months after the pandemic first struck, it’s still horribly unclear, which is perhaps why there have been no decent books making sense of Covid-19. This is not just about a virus but a collision of politics, panic, digital media, human behaviour and incompetence. Niall Ferguson’s Doom looks at each of these aspects, putting them into historical perspective in a book of dazzling range and rigour. He offers several answers — and none of them is comforting. For most of human history, viruses were unexceptional — hard to research, because no one thought them remarkable. When plagues struck in the Middle Ages, we’d rush into quarantine,

Has Covid accelerated the cashless society?

Time is, I fear, running out. Running out, that is, to avoid handing to a small number of multinational corporations our right to buy and sell things. Running out to prevent governments and central banks helping themselves to our savings, by means of negative interest rates. The payments industry is closing in on its target of driving cash out of circulation and instigating cashless payments as the only way of doing business. That, at least, is the conclusion one might reach from reading a report by Worldpay: the Global Payments Report 2021. It claims that cash payments in UK shops in 2020 made up 13.4 per cent of total payments,

Susanne Mundschenk

France’s latest fiscal trade-off

France’s deficit is set to reach 9.4 per cent of GDP this year, more than last year, even though France’s first lockdown was more severe and lasted for a longer time. This may relate to accounting issues, as some spending is only reported this year even if it is related to last year. But these are details – the main issue is something else entirely. The journalist Dominique Seux wonders whether France has maxed out its spending capacity at the moment when environmental challenges require extraordinary efforts. Were France’s spending choices last year done with full awareness of how they would compromise future fiscal room for manoeuvre? France was always amongst the

Israel scraps its redundant vaccine passports

So farewell, then, to Israel’s vaccine passport, the green pass. Less than three months after coming into effect, the Covid vaccination certification scheme was scrapped today, along with almost all of the remaining Covid-19 restrictions in public places. Israel was the first country to introduce a vaccine passport back in March. Cafes, bars, restaurants, gyms and plays were allowed to reopen to the public after months of lockdown, provided they only admitted vaccinated (and recovered) people. The pass took the form of a QR code downloaded from the health ministry or stored in a phone app. The scheme was vocally opposed by a small and passionate minority, but most Israelis

France is paying a heavy price for Macron’s vaccine catastrophe

The United States is growing at such a blistering pace the Federal Reserve may have to raise interest rates. In Britain, retail sales grew by nine per cent this month, the fastest pace on record, as the economy opened up again. Around the world, economies are starting to bounce back strongly from the Covid-19 crisis. Except for one: France. We learned today that the country is now officially in a double-dip recession. The explanation? That is easy. It made a complete hash of its vaccination programme. In the first-quarter of this year, revised figures showed that France’s output shrank by 0.1 per cent. That followed a 1.5 per cent contraction

James Forsyth

Could 21 June be delayed?

There are two key questions ahead of the 21 June reopening. First, as I say in the magazine this week, there is the issue of how much more transmissible the Indian variant is than the Kent one. According to papers published by Sage, it is a ‘realistic possibility’ that it is up to 50 per cent more transmissible. If the true figure is at the top of this range, then a full reopening would likely lead to another big wave of cases and put pressure on hospitals. But the view in Whitehall is that if it is only 30 per cent more transmissible, then it should be safe to proceed

Covid deaths in context

What would have been your overall chances of dying in the first 19 weeks of 2021 compared with recent years? According to a measure called ‘standardised mortality’ your overall chances of dying so far in 2021 have been just 1 per cent over the average of the past ten years — that is in spite of January’s peak in Covid deaths. We have been fed a daily diet of Covid deaths for over a year now. As Professor Gordon Wishart argues elsewhere on Coffee House, this daily bulletin has become pretty pointless now that deaths and hospitalisations are so low; a monthly total would be better.  Yet even at the height of

Is the daily drip of Covid statistics still helpful?

It is hard to remember a time when the daily drip of Covid statistics was not part of our lives. Since March 2020, we have been greeted every afternoon with a stream of government released data filling us in on the number of infections, hospitalisations and deaths. But how necessary is it today? With a current seven-day average of only seven Covid deaths a day, the lowest level since 15 March 2020, what do we stand to gain by continuing with this current approach? It is becoming increasingly apparent that the Indian variant is not going to swamp hospitals – and that concerns about fully unlocking on 21 June are over-egged. Even

‘I was treated like a traitor’: An interview with WHO whistleblower Francesco Zambon

Francesco Zambon is calling the World Health Organisation (WHO) to account. Zambon, who was based at the WHO’s Venice bureau, claims that the WHO suppressed critical information about the pandemic to serve the political interests of member countries. There are conflicts of interest at the highest levels of the institution, he says. As a result, according to Zambon, the world lost valuable time in mounting effective defences against the pandemic. Back in May 2020, Zambon and his team wrote a report for the WHO called: ‘An unprecedented challenge: Italy’s first response to Covid-19’. The report, drafted in a time of emergency, was meant to help other nations still untouched by the