Robert Peston is Political Editor of ITV News and host of the weekly political discussion show Peston. His articles originally appeared on his ITV News blog.
Thursday’s meeting of the emergency Cobra committee that takes decisions on how to protect us from the ravages of Covid-19 was supposed to be a 15-minute formality, to rubber-stamp a decision, to make no decision at all on when and whether to ease these unprecedented on our freedoms. But because the telecoms connections for this
I had been puzzling about why for most of the past 12 days, until last night, the PM and his advisers had been insisting – in tweets, short videos and statements – that he was still running the show, in spite of the evidence that he was seriously and worryingly under the weather. The answer,
At the daily press briefings of senior ministers, the medical and the scientific advisers, there is a reluctance to talk about a timescale for an ‘exit strategy’ from these unprecedentedly severe restrictions on our freedom to move around and see people – and even to discuss what that strategy might look like. The understandable priority
There is some fascinating language in last night’s press release from HM Treasury that modifies the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan (CBIL) Scheme. It says lenders are ‘banned from requesting personal guarantees on loans under £250,000’. Hmmm. This is – to put it mildly – a bit disingenuous, though politically expedient, bank bashing, because it implies
I have uncovered another troubling potential roadblock to increasing the volume of tests for Covid-19. It is all quite complicated, so please bear with me. What I have learned is that just under two weeks ago, the Government paid several million pounds to purchase two million ‘rapid lateral flow diagnostic test’ kits from China, with one
In recent days, I have had more than enough upsetting conversations with doctors to last a lifetime. About how they don’t have the protective gear to protect themselves from infection or to minimise the risk of them infecting others, about shortages of critical care beds and equipment, and about what they see as the scandal
In recent years, I’ve been thinking about the right way to die, having been with my late wife Sian Busby when she was in great pain from cancer at the end of her life, and been chairman of Hospice UK, the charity which campaigns – among other things – to improve end-of-life care. In normal
My jaw slightly dropped on Friday when Michael Gove announced that the number of Covid-19 cases in the UK was now doubling every three to four days. This is significantly faster than the five days that was initially built into the government’s forecasts for the rate of increase in sufferers, and the 4.3 days that
There are still potentially lethal ambiguities in the government’s coronavirus advice about who should go to work; such is the judgement of leading employers, to whom I’ve spoken. The fundamental question is whether businesses that are not doing work considered of national importance, but which involve employees working cheek by jowl in sweaty conditions, should
Very few of us alive thought we would ever hear a prime minister of the United Kingdom, with its centuries old liberties, order us to stay in our homes, and only venture out, and never in groups, to acquire what we need to stay alive or for basic essential exercise – on pain if we
We are relying on courageous NHS staff to help us through this terrible Covid-19 crisis. So many would say we have a duty to listen to their concerns and anxieties. And as you will be aware, and as the chief executive of St George’s University Hospital’s Jac Totterdell has made explicit, lots of doctors and
My dear cousin the pioneering newspaper photographer Alan Davidson has died. It is almost impossible to believe because he has been everywhere in my life since I was a child. At party conferences, he was always at the front, getting the best picture of the PM, and pissing off the likes of Alastair Campbell. At parties, including
It’s very interesting, and important, that the Bank of England is encouraging banks to turn half a blind eye to likely coronavirus losses on loans to businesses and mortgage borrowers – in the hope that banks don’t suddenly stop lending for fear future losses will deplete their capital. After the 2008 banking crisis, this is something I
The announcement today by Boris Johnson that we are gearing up Covid-19 testing from 5,000 a day, to 10,000, to 25,000 to 250,000, and the endorsement from the government’s chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance that this could theoretically happen in weeks, was the most important Covid-19 announcement on Thursday. Many in the NHS and
There was widespread anxiety and concern that the Government was basing its measures to suppress spread of coronavirus on an assumption that the numbers infected were doubling every five days, when the evidence here and internationally suggested a doubling rate of nearer four days. I raised this concern with Neil Ferguson, the Imperial College expert
A few principles should inform how the Government – any government – responds to what is a devastating act of God that affects all of us. They are: 1) The vulnerable, those who can’t look after themselves, need more help than most. 2) If certain behaviours help to keep all of us safe, they should be
When the government announced that anyone with a cough or a temperature had to stay home for a week, it was framed by the chief medical officer and the chief scientific adviser as a policy designed to slow the peak of the coming coronavirus epidemic. And it should help to do that. But there was
People over 70 will be instructed by the government to stay in strict isolation at home or in care homes for four months, under a ‘wartime-style’ mobilisation effort by the government likely to be enforced within the next 20 days. It is part of a series of measures being prepared by the prime minister, health
I understand a bit more than I did about what the prime minister, the chief medical officer Chris Whitty and the chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance are trying to achieve with their Covid-19 policy, what that policy actually is, what they actually know about the illness and – importantly – what they don’t know.
As I have repeatedly mentioned, the view of the chief medical officer Chris Whitty, which has shaped the Government’s response to Covid-19, is that the virus is the equivalent of unstoppable bad flu. But to make policy on that basis is to impose an epidemiological judgement on what is a social, ethical and political issue.
