Lockdown

Thursday

Douglas Murray

X days to save the economy!

I wonder what the Labour party will use as its scare slogan at the next election? After all, the usual one of ‘[Insert number] weeks/days/minutes to save the NHS’ may not work next time. Not that it worked every time before. But it has long been the favourite attack line of a British left that likes to portray the Conservative party as so ravenously right-wing that whenever it comes to power it wastes not a moment in dismantling Attlee’s post-war creation. And yet, although the Conservative party has been in power fairly often since 1945, not once has it managed to dismantle, privatise, or otherwise sell off the NHS. Its

Jeremy Clarke

Rules for a deconfinement dinner party

The most visible local landmark is a solitary two-headed Jurassic mountain called Le Bessillon, six miles long and 800 metres tall at the highest peak. These are unimpressive vital statistics for a mountain perhaps, but the Bessillon exerts a tremendous, almost uncanny presence on us all. The foreign correspondent and his wife have bought an 800-tree olive farm on a nearby hillside. From their outside dining table this great primeval slab and its forested sides can be seen in profile, like a finely drawn illustration in a Victorian encyclopedia. Between the dining table and the mountain is nothing but oak forest and pylons, and beyond it more oak forest until

Professor Paul Dolan

Lockdowns are as contagious as Covid

Schools might never have closed in the first place had the coronavirus not started in China. Imagine it had started in Sweden. Whoever responded first was going to set the tone for the nations that followed. When we are uncertain about what to do, we look to the behaviour of others to guide us. Imagine walking down a street with a new restaurant on either side (you remember restaurants, right?), and that you do not know anything about either of them. One has some customers inside, the other has none. Assuming you can get a table, you would choose the one with people in it because, in the absence of

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Are you a lockdown eel or a pygmy goat?

I identify strongly with the garden eels in the Tokyo aquarium. Pre-corona, they were perfectly sociable. Come opening hour, when visitors’ faces began to squash against their glass, they’d happily stare back. Every week that goes by without visitors, the eels become more fearful and these days, the aquarium reports, when the keeper arrives to check on them, the eels vanish into the sand. Me too. Much as I long to get out and about, at the same time I can feel myself losing the knack of sociability. I jump when the man from Amazon knocks; slither quickly back into my basement kitchen after the daily outing. There are psychologists

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Rico Back’s departure is a first-class opportunity for Royal Mail

The Royal Mail worker who rang my bell to deliver an Amazon package on Friday was wearing a glittery ball gown because she and her colleagues were fundraising for local hospitals: ‘Two thousand quid so far,’ she said cheerily as she accepted my donation and thanks. But if I had asked her what she thought of the performance of her ultimate boss Rico Back — chief executive of Royal Mail until his sudden departure after less than two years in the job — I suspect she might not even have recognised his name, so remote has this German-born, Swiss-resident big shot been from the front line of his organisation’s role

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Did the behavioural scientists have a point?

For all the abuse heaped on the Behavioural Insights Team early in the crisis, let’s not forget that the only three immediate solutions proposed by the combined ranks of the scientific establishment were, um, behavioural. People were encouraged to wash their hands with soap for 20 seconds, to stay home where possible and to keep two metres away from those outside their household. And we adopted this advice in our millions, long before any mandate had been issued. It would be wrong, when modelling the spread of this disease, to overlook the effect of voluntary preemptive action. My last visit to London was on 12 March, 11 days before we

Susan Hill Susan Hill

The lost world of lockdown

It started when, the day after the announcement of some lockdown easing, I drove five miles along the coast road. For seven weeks there had been barely another car, and now it was like a normal pre-pandemic morning. Our little town was no longer deserted, and there were queues for newsagent and bank. Many holiday and second homes are apparently occupied, though no one is actually allowed to be here of course. Nevertheless, agencies are merrily advertising: ‘Come and lock down in beautiful, safe North Norfolk.’ The paths to the beaches are open again, and if the wind had not swung round to blow a vicious north-easterly they would have

Joanna Rossiter Joanna Rossiter

Coromance is blossoming

It’s heartening to hear that while it’s curtains for the economy, our domestic lives are on the up. In Wuhan there was a spike in divorce rates, and in Japan, wives have been sending their husbands away to hostels. But here in Britain, there’s love in lockdown. Sales of engagement rings have risen significantly since we were all told to stay at home and couples have found creative ways to pop the question in their living rooms and local parks. For those who have been married for longer, working, eating and sleeping at home together 24/7 for weeks on end has been a strange novelty — an odd throwback to

Tuesday

Jonathan Sumption

Jonathan Sumption: a response to my critics on lockdown

Jonathan Compton criticises my views on lockdown on two grounds. First, I suggested that it is up to us to decide what risks to run with our own bodies, not the state, and that those who did not want to run the risk of meeting infected persons could voluntarily self-isolate. For this, I am accused of ignoring the ‘societal risk’ that infection levels will rise to the point where supply chains break down, the NHS is overwhelmed and the fabric of society is at risk. Secondly, he says that my views, even if correct, should not be expressed by a former senior judge. I recognise the first argument in principle,

Friday

Steerpike

Serco CEO’s lockdown breaking family trip

Some unwelcome publicity this week for Rupert Soames, Churchill’s grandson and brother of the former Conservative MP Nicholas – once known as ‘Fatty’ – Soames. Rupert posted a curious tweet on Tuesday extolling the virtues of the Caledonian Sleeper train, run by the company he heads, Serco. The sleeper service from London to Scotland has had what Soames himself admits is a ‘blizzard of bad publicity’ over delays, faults and dirty cabins recently. But this particular tweet was because Soames was about to be outed for breaking the coronavirus lockdown, travelling from London to Inverness on the sleeper. His staff are members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union (RMT),

Thursday

The Spectator

Reopening schools must be our first priority

It would be a tragedy if one of the legacies of Covid-19 — a disease which hardly affects children physically — was a widening of the already broad gap in educational attainment between rich and poor. But sadly, the damage is already well under way. Back in March, Britain was the European country most keen to keep its schools open in the face of the then-burgeoning number of Covid-19 cases. Now it is the other way around. In Denmark, primary schools have been open for a month. This week, children began to return to class in Germany, France and the Netherlands. Next week, schools will start to reopen in Belgium.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Europe’s lockdowns ease, England stays alert and Broadway stays shut

Home The government changed its slogan from ‘Stay home, protect the NHS, save lives’ to ‘Stay alert, control the virus, save lives’. Authorities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland refused to adopt it. The day after a 13-minute televised speech to the nation by Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, the government published a 50-page Recovery Strategy. A 14-day quarantine would bind anyone entering the country (with exceptions, such as people from France). Everyone should continue to work from home if possible, but workplaces ‘should be open’, apart from those required to be closed. People returning to workplaces were to walk, cycle, drive or use electric scooters, because the capacity of

Joan Collins

The revenge of the oldies

Entering my 54th day of quarantine, I recall how much I was looking forward to this spring in England. There were so many exciting events and celebrations planned. Several friends were throwing big birthday bashes; I was picking up a couple of awards, performing my one-woman show, going to Cannes, and most exciting of all, participating in a plethora of events surrounding the VE Day celebrations. All of the above have gone with the proverbial wind, except for, in a small way, the latter. The Queen’s Pageant Master, Bruno Peek, asked me if I could lead the nation’s toast to our heroes and heroines of the second world war. VE

Jeremy Clarke

My first post-lockdown party

France is divided into a red zone and a green zone. We’re green. Green for go. From this morning we no longer need a signed and dated permit to leave the house; we can socialise with up to ten other people at a time; and we can travel up to 60 miles in any direction. In theory we could fill a minibus and go on a beano down to the coast tomorrow. And in spite of the government ordering bars and restaurants to remain closed, the village beer bar unexpectedly opened for business last Saturday, and the lights were on in the poshest village restaurant where people inside could be

Toby Young Toby Young

This lockdown may kill me

I have a new job, which is maintaining a website called Lockdown Sceptics (lockdownsceptics.org). It’s a compendium of evidence that the lockdown is a needless act of self-harm that will almost certainly cause a greater loss of life than it prevents. I set it up myself, so I can’t complain, but trying to stay on top of all the news about coronavirus, moderating the comments and writing the daily update is taking up almost all my time. On Sunday, for instance, it took me about nine hours to summarise the latest data — and leaven the mix with jokes, memes and anecdotes —and by the time the clock struck midnight

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

This is not a natural disaster, but a manmade one

Should our future permit an occupation so frivolous, historians years from now will make a big mistake if they blame the nauseating plummet of global GDP in 2020 directly on a novel coronavirus. After all — forgive the repetition, but certain figures bear revisiting — Covid’s roughly 290,000 deaths wouldn’t raise a blip on a graph of worldwide mortality (reminder: 58 million global deaths in 2019). Covid deaths will barely register in the big picture even if their total multiplies by several times. For maintaining a precious sense of proportion, check out some other annual global fatalities: influenza, up to 650,000. Typhoid fever, up to 160,000. Cholera, up to 140,000.

Jayanta Bhattacharya & Mikko Packalen

Lives vs lives – the global cost of lockdown

‘There have been as many plagues in history as there have been wars,’ wrote Albert Camus in The Plague, ‘yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.’ So it was this time. The arrival of a new coronavirus blindsided governments of most advanced nations as they reached for a tool that few had ever really considered before: lockdown. It all happened too fast for a proper discussion about the implications. The biggest question — the extent to which lockdown will claim lives as well as save them — is one you can ask at a global level. We know the national costs. In the United States, there is

Robin Oakley

How to get your racing fix under lockdown

There is racing elsewhere in the world. It restarted in France on Monday, la course de chevaux being classed in that fine country as an agricultural activity. My friend the form guru, who combs back six races in search of clues, has even cast his net to include somewhere called Morphettville in Australia where last week he succeeded in backing a 65-1 winner. When, over the phone, he sensed my raised eyebrow at a horse with truly believable form being allowed to start at such odds, he explained that the animal had won two previous races: ‘The horse wasn’t to know they were lower-class events. He still got the same

Friday

John Lee

Ten reasons to end the lockdown now

Writing in this magazine a month ago, I applauded the government’s stated aim of trying to follow the science in dealing with Covid. Such promises are easier made than kept. Following science means understanding science. It means engaging with rival interpretations of the limited data in order to tease out what is most important in what we don’t know. Instead, the government in the UK (and many other places) seems uninterested in alternative viewpoints. The chosen narrative – that lockdown has saved countless lives – has been doggedly followed by all spokespeople. No doubt is allowed. We have been seeing the groupthink response to a perceived external threat that Jonathan

Thursday

James Kirkup

Keeping schools closed until September would hammer poor kids

Schools should stay closed until September, according to a big teaching union: In view of the continued and pressing public health challenges and the considerable task that will be required to ensure that every school is ready to admit increased numbers of children and adults into safe learning and working environments, the NASUWT urges ministers to act to end speculation on the reopening of schools beyond the current restrictions prior to September 2020. That’s the latest from Patrick Roach, head of the NASUWT. This is a hardening of the line from teaching unions, and one that I think has the potential to cause significant tensions with the government. It’s worth noting