Lockdown

Sunday

William Atkinson

Zoomers like me don’t realise how lucky we are

For millennials like me, talkin’ ’bout our generation usually involves complaining. We Generation Zs – or zoomers – can’t seem to catch a break. Even before the pandemic, we were on track to be the first generation worse off than our parents since the Great Depression. It takes us twenty-somethings six times as long to save for a deposit as forty years ago. Having been told by Tony Blair a university education was essential, we leave, saddled with debt, to confront an over-stuffed and unwelcoming graduate market. After spending 2020 locked up against a disease that has a limited impact on young people, we face unemployment and decades of higher

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: ‘every confidence’ future lockdowns can be avoided, says Dowden

Oliver Dowden – We have ‘every confidence’ there will not be future lockdowns The Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden was in the hot seat this morning amid reports that a third wave of Covid-19 is engulfing much of continental Europe. Many of the UK’s close neighbours, including France, Germany and the Netherlands, are re-introducing or extending measures to combat the so-called ‘Kent variant’ of the disease. Andrew Marr sought to get reassurance from Dowden that the government would not end up plunging England back into a fourth nationwide lockdown: OD: [Our] aim… is to make sure this is irreversible… You can’t rule things out, but we have every confidence that we

Friday

Professor Karol Sikora

Are we ready for Britain’s looming cancer crisis?

Cancer, cardiac and countless other patients are crying out for help – but are ministers listening?  Over the last year, politicians have been adopting untried and untested policies, the consequences of which none of us can yet fully grasp. The main aim, of course, of these extraordinary lockdown measures has been to suppress Covid-19 in order to reduce pressure on our hospitals. That has been the metric on which Government approval has been judged. Whether or not you agree with every restriction, it is clear that this focus has sucked the oxygen away from other pressing health issues. Covid-19 required a response unlike anything we have seen in modern times.

Ryan Shorthouse

Kids will thank us for shortening the school summer holidays

Oh for a normal summer – so close now, but Covid remains capricious, a wave across Europe threatening to wash it all away. But just think: for some schoolchildren, and their parents, the normality of the long six-week summer break may not be such an appealing prospect. Sure, the middle-classes are able to pack it with enriching activities – exciting new skills, friendships and memories. But, for kids in families with stretched budgets, it can be isolating, impoverishing, boring. And, as quite a substantial body of evidence now shows, very bad for their emotional and cognitive development – some studies even conclude that the majority of the attainment gap between

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Does the data support renewing Covid emergency powers?

Last night MPs voted by 484 to 76 to renew the Coronavirus Act, which grants the state emergency powers to further control – and shut down – most parts of society. The Liberal Democrats voted against the extension, along with 35 Conservative MPs who rebelled and voted against the government, citing as their main concern the widening gap between these unprecedented powers and the danger Covid-19 presents in the UK. The latest iteration of the bill has been renewed until September – three months after the last date in Boris Johnson’s roadmap – and includes the toughest restrictions on international travel yet. When the Prime Minister announced his roadmap out of lockdown last month,

Thursday

Katy Balls

MPs back extending Covid powers until September

MPs have voted to extend emergency coronavirus powers for another six months by 484 to 76 against. This means the government has retained wide-ranging powers including those given to police and immigration officials when dealing with people suspected of carrying Covid. In the debate ahead of the vote, the Health Secretary insisted that the powers will stay in place ‘only as long as necessary’. Discontent is growing in the Tory party over the government’s approach However, when pressed, Matt Hancock would not rule out MPs being asked to renew them again in six months’ time. The fact that there is little substantial opposition to the plans – 35 Tory MPs and the Liberal Democrats voted against –

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Charles Walker’s ‘pint of milk’ lockdown speech

Sir Charles Walker has earned himself the reputation of being one of the most consistent and outspoken critics of the government’s lockdown policy. The 1922 Committee stalwart has previously gone viral for passionate clips lambasting Matt Hancock’s 10 year imprisonment plan for returning holidaymakers dodging quarantine rules, attacking Boris Johnson for treating MPs like ‘dogs’ and describing lockdown as ‘studied and deliberate cruelty for a nation under pressure.’  Today Walker’s ire was directed at what he considers to be Britain’s slide into authoritarianism, promising in a four minute speech to carry a pint of milk around London in the next few days as a silent protest: ‘That pint will remind me

Constantin Eckner

Merkel’s blundering lockdown U-turn

During her 16 years in office, Angela Merkel has produced a couple of memorable sentences that will be imprinted into her legacy. She added a few more on Wednesday, when she announced that the government rescinds plans of a radical Easter shutdown, saying: ‘This mistake is my mistake alone.’ Merkel’s CDU is rapidly losing the support of voters — their approval rating has dropped 9 per cent to just 26 within a week It is quite remarkable to see a leader taking the full blame for what has been perceived as a hasty and impetuous decision. Merkel and Germany’s 16 state premiers had agreed on a radical lockdown over the Easter

Tuesday

Katy Balls

Inside Boris Johnson’s Zoom call with the 1922

Boris Johnson has tonight addressed the 1922 committee of Conservative backbenchers over the government’s roadmap for ending lockdown. The Prime Minister told MPs that a third wave of coronavirus reaching the UK from Europe was ‘inevitable’. However, he insisted that the UK had built up resources to deal with any such threat and the country’s roadmap for ending the lockdown remained on track. Discussing recent criticism of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, Johnson defended the jab, pointing out that it was produced at cost. He told MPs he had ‘nothing against big Pharma’ or big farmers – this was a reference to the Chief Whip and Nottinghamshire farmer, Mark Spencer, who was sitting beside him. He also put the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Boris Johnson’s uncomfortable lockdown anniversary

There is little to celebrate in today’s first anniversary since Britain went into lockdown, but Boris Johnson did try his best to mark it with a positive message about what was to come. The Prime Minister held a press conference in Downing Street this evening where he told the public that he wanted to ‘to thank everybody for their courage, your courage, discipline and patience’, and promised that the government was on track to meet its vaccination targets. He closed by saying: ‘And cautiously but irreversibly, step by step, jab by jab, this country is on the path to reclaiming our freedoms.’ One question that clearly haunts Johnson is whether

Constantin Eckner

Merkel declares a ‘new pandemic’ as Germany locks down again

A year on from the onset of the Covid crisis, Angela Merkel had grim news for Germans this morning: our country is in the midst of a ‘new pandemic’. ‘The British mutation has become dominant,’ she warned, as she announced a strict new lockdown, which will shut almost all shops and churches over Easter.  The new lockdown rules were thrashed out in a tetchy 12-hour meeting between the chancellor and Germany’s state premiers. It used to be EU summits that prevented Merkel from catching some sleep. Not any longer. The leaders struggled to find common ground on an approach to contain the spread of coronavirus, amidst a worrying spike in infections which has seen cases

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Why did unemployment dip as Covid restrictions tightened?

Slowly but surely, forecasts for unemployment in the UK have been revised downwards. Alongside Rishi Sunak’s Budget earlier this month, the Office for Budget Responsibility significantly changed their prediction for peak unemployment: from the 11.9 per cent predicted in the July forecast down to 6.5 per cent. This was spurred on by an extension of the furlough scheme, a growing economic resilience to lockdowns and, of course, the spectacular rollout of the vaccines (over half the adult population has now been vaccinated with at least one dose). But the latest update from the Office for National Statistics, published today, has provided an early surprise. The headline unemployment figure has fallen slightly again: from 5.1

Monday

Ross Clark

Is Boris right about a third wave?

Covid deaths fell to 17 on Sunday, the lowest daily figure since 28 September and no higher than the levels being recorded throughout much of last summer. Deaths are down over 40 per cent on the week, hospitalisations down 21 per cent. Yet the better the news on vaccinations and serious illness, the longer the road seems to be out of lockdown. The latest potential roadblock seems to be the threat of a third wave in Europe. The Prime Minister said this lunchtime: ‘On the Continent right now, you can see, sadly, there is a third wave under way. And people in this country should be under no illusions that… when a

Saturday

Sam Ashworth-Hayes

Let’s call time on Britain’s gerontocracy

The boomers are eating their grandchildren. They don’t see it this way, of course, but they are doing it nonetheless. Covid, or rather the British state’s response to the pandemic, is just the latest evidence of this. Whatever you make of Boris Johnson’s handling of the pandemic, one thing is clear: the cost of lockdown will be funded by young people in taxes for years to come. But it will most of all be paid for with time. We can find ways to minimise the impact of the government debt, but we can’t give people a year of their lives back. It is a natural part of history that good

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

Can John Lewis and Waitrose really remain partners?

Historians of unforeseen crises talk about ‘chaos theory’ and the ‘butterfly effect’, in which a small perturbation far away — the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Australia, as it were — have impacts across much larger connected systems. More usually applied to weather events, the theory had its 2008 moment when the collapse of AIG, a US insurer whose name meant little over here, threatened to cripple so many banks that, without immediate bailouts, our high street ATMs (we were told) might have been switched off there and then. Let’s hope Greensill Capital, a little-known ‘shadow bank’ created by former Queensland sugar farmer Lex Greensill, doesn’t turn out to

The Spectator

Has Neil Ferguson been proved right about Covid?

Calculated risk It is a year since Neil Ferguson’s Imperial College team published the paper that inspired the government to call the first lockdown. How good were its scenarios? — It modelled four Covid-suppression measures: isolating cases for seven days, their household contacts for 14 days, social distancing to reduce household contacts by 75 per cent and the closure of schools and hospitals. It assumed these measures would be repeated for 12-18 months before a vaccine became available. — The model was run with different values for the basic reproduction number, which it estimated to lie within the range 2 to 2.6. If the government introduced none of these measures

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

The finest humous in England: Arabica food boxes reviewed

Restaurant-goers who cannot let go of restaurants — for professional or other reasons — are floating on a sea of takeaway boxes, which have none of the glamour. Which of us fell in love on a takeaway? I wish I did not have to write about them, nor you to read about them, but if this is the worst thing that happened to you this year — packaging — it is not so bad. I have already begun a small counter–revolution by shopping at the greengrocers and the cheesemongers, and I suggest you do the same. Even so, they are faintly mesmerising by volume: a box-themed version of the Rumpelstiltskin

Fiona Mountford

Awards season loses its shine when no one can go to the cinema

Here it is again, a couple of months later than usual but back nevertheless. It’s the time of the annual jamboree that is film awards season, a three-month extravaganza that predominantly revolves around three key events: the Golden Globes, the Baftas and the Oscars. All three of these celebrations of artistic excellence and mutual backslapping have been delayed due to Covid. The Globes took place — virtually — three weeks ago, Bafta revealed its shortlist last week and the Oscar nominees were announced on Monday. The starting gun has been fired — while all our cinemas remain closed. Have you seen Nomadland, The Father or Promising Young Woman? Of course

Toby Young Toby Young

My plan to kick off life after lockdown

The last time I went to a football game was on Saturday 7 March last year when my 12-year-old son and I went to see QPR play Preston North End. When we got there we were handed a certificate, signed by the manager, congratulating us on having travelled 228 miles. Pretty heroic given QPR’s record on the road is so poor the fans have a song they sing after away games, adapted from ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’: ‘We’re the Rangers, the mighty Rangers, we never win away… a win away, a win away, a win away…’ etc. But on that occasion we won 3-1, in spite of going a man

Richard Bratby

How real is the performing arts exodus?

Think back 12 months to when you first felt the pandemic. Not when you first read about Covid-19, but the moment of impact — the lurch in the stomach as it hit you that this time, it really wasn’t going to be OK. For Emma Cook, a freelance stage manager on the John Cleese farce Bang Bang!, the moment came during a rare week off. ‘I was sitting in a restaurant near the Bush Theatre in London, waiting to go and see The High Table, and I got a message from a friend who had just flown back from overseas: “Why are the theatres all closed?”. I thought, no they’re