The question isn’t whether to end the lockdown. It’s when and how to do it. Can the Government rise to the challenge?
The Prime Minister’s hospitalisation accentuates the need for a new strategic structure to support a new strategic plan.
Can Starmer surprise us?
He will have to be more than a kind of North London John Smith if he wants to do more than just profit from the Government’s misfortunes.
Sunak’s relief measures. How are they working on the ground? Some views from Conservative MPs.
It’s a mixed report, but most of those we spoke to were sanguine – which has less to with the Chancellor’s plans than with the current state of the polls.
Home abortions, sunset clauses – and the importance of votes in Parliament
Big changes to controversial social and political issues are ill suited to decisions made by Ministers and advisers behind closed doors.
Johnson as Churchill. How’s he doing?
The last word must lie with the voters, and their current answer, according to the polls, is: very well indeed.
Saving the NHS v saving the economy?
Ministers are walking the tightrope of trying to save both – which helps to put the words of the Deputy Chief Medical Officer yesterday in context.
Our survey. An emphatic vote of confidence in the Government. Though one in five activists think that it has over-reacted.
Seventy-seven per cent of those polled back the lockdown; 90 per cent think the Prime Minister and his team are handling the crisis well.
Now the Health Secretary succumbs to the virus. Argar should stand in for him if necessary.
The Minster for Health will be across a lot of the detail, and is well placed to step up to chair the relevant Cabinet committee.
Johnson’s illness: keep calm and carry on
At the moment, the most important Government action is rolling out testing, ventilators and equipment. Cabinet committees can and should deal with all that.
The virus. Why Johnson fell. Why Johnson flourished. Two first drafts of history from 2024.
Two extreme versions of what happens next in Britain. Events are more likely to end up somewhere in the middle.
More details of the new scheme and some issues arising from it
It is worth noting that face-to-face contact won’t always be necessary: those in higher-risk groups will be able to offer support by telephone.
Meanwhile, while you were distracted by other events, the Government has nationalised the railways
As for “a limited period”, well, we shall see: as Milton Friedman used to say, nothing is so permanent as a temporary Government programme.
Britain moves nearer to a full quarantine. Now watch for the moves to isolate Johnson.
The perils and volatility that the Coronavirus – that ultimate leveller-down – brings with it suddenly endanger last year’s near-landslide winner.
The rights and wrongs of the Government’s treatment of the self-employed
The Chancellor should make further provision for them. But the vast though necessary expansion of state spending will need emergency powers-type checks.
Sunak needs a big, big, bigger bazooka
So said a cross-section of Conservative MPs today – and rightly. They grasp that even the unprecedently statist package he’s announced is only a start.