John Connolly is News Editor of The Spectator
13 min listen
Prime Minister’s Questions is becoming an increasingly heated affair. This week, Keir Starmer and Boris Johnson clashed over school closures, as well as the government’s response to the Black Lives Matter protests. John Connolly talks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls.
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Some decision-makers have already made timelines of their actions since the start of the pandemic, James Forsyth reveals in his political column for this week’s Spectator. How does the knowledge that an inquiry is coming change the way the pandemic is dealt with?
On Friday, researchers at the University of Cambridge working with Public Health England estimated that the R number – Covid’s rate of transmission – has risen above 1 in the North West, meaning the virus may be starting to spread in the region. In every other region of England, the study suggested, the R number
12 min listen
MPs are returning to parliament next week, marking an end of the hybrid model that saw most MPs Zooming into parliamentary debates. On the podcast, John Connolly talks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls about the challenges in a socially distanced House of Commons. Get a month’s free trial of The Spectator and a free
17 min listen
The Prime Minister appeared for the first time in his premiership in front of the Liaison Committee today. The group, formed of select committee chairs, grilled him on a range of issues from Dominic Cummings to pandemic support, and more.
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The latest polling shows a drastic change in the Prime Minister’s popularity because of the Cummings affair. Though the government is still sticking behind the adviser, will the sheer force of public opinion change things?
Douglas Ross, the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, has announced that he is resigning from his government position, following the controversy over the Number 10 adviser Dominic Cummings’s trip to Durham during the lockdown. In a letter outlining his reasons for resigning, Ross acknowledged that while Cummings’s decision to travel to Durham may have been
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Public Health England has approved its first mass antibody test. Roche, the supplier behind it, says that the test has an 100 per cent accuracy. So how much of a game changer is this development?
The majority of today’s PMQs face-off between Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer concerned the government’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak in care homes, after the Office for National Statistics reported yesterday that over 8,000 care home residents have died of Covid-19 – a figure that is expected to rise in the coming weeks. Boris Johnson’s
17 min listen
What is Boris Johnson going to say in his speech on Sunday? Wales’s first minister Mark Drakeford gave us a clue this morning when he announced that the Welsh lockdown will continue for at least another three weeks. Meanwhile, No. 10 has been trying to dampen speculation that the PM will announce substantial relaxations to the lockdown.
17 min listen
It’s the first head to head between Boris Johnson and the new Leader of the Opposition. Unlike more normal times, Boris couldn’t rely on a large parliamentary presence of Tory MPs to booster him from the green benches. Instead, as James Forsyth explains on the podcast with Katy Balls and John Connolly, Keir Starmer actually
Trade minister Conor Burns has resigned from the government, after a parliamentary inquiry found that he had used his position as an MP to intimidate a member of the public in February 2019. In a statement announcing his resignation, the MP said it was ‘with deep regret I have decided to resign as Minister of
16 min listen
16 min listen
As Keir Starmer settles into his second week as Labour leader, he claims to be scrutinising the government in a constructive way. At today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, we saw a little bit of what that looks like.
14 min listen
It’s Keir Starmer’s first Prime Minister’s Questions as Leader of the Opposition, but it also happened to be the first virtual session, where MPs dialled down the line via Zoom. So how did it go?
14 min listen
Over 140,000 businesses have applied for the government’s employee furlough scheme on its first day of launch. This is a far higher uptake than those in government expected, Kate Andrews says on the podcast, so for how long can the government afford to keep it going?
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Keir Starmer has written to the government to demand that they publish detailed criteria on what would be enough to lift this lockdown. It’s his first offensive as the leader of the Opposition in the current crisis, but it’s not a move that has been welcomed by all on the left. So how shrewd is his
13 min listen
Dominic Raab confirmed in today’s press conference that the lockdown is not being lifted just yet. On the podcast, Katy and James explain why.
Less than three weeks after Andy Burnham was elected mayor of Greater Manchester three years ago, the city was hit by the terrorist attack that claimed 22 lives at an Ariana Grande concert. Now Burnham is facing a very different sort of crisis as corona-virus sweeps through the north-west. Manchester is about two weeks behind
The use of facemasks in the fight against coronavirus has become a contentious topic in recent weeks, as different countries have debated how much difference they make when worn by the general public. After flirting with the idea of recommending the widespread use of masks, the WHO this week stuck with its guidance, which says
