Covid, schools and vaccination. What importance do we really give to the prospects of the next generation?

Prioritising teachers in the queue, as more school closures and tougher lockdowns loom, offers a potential way forward.

Richard Holden: The SNP and their Strasbourg Syndrome

They screech in horror about a delay in total control of our own fisheries, but push for them to be handed back to the supertrawlers of the EU’s fishing fleets.

Neil Shastri-Hurst: Like a phoenix from the ashes of the Covid crisis, now is the time for a new social contract to arise

The present social contract was written when the number of taxpayers well outstripped the number of retirees. But times have changed.

It came, nearly vanished, and returned. We’ve had five years of a Brexity coalition of blue voters. What happens to it next?

If there’s a shift in England from the politics of culture to those of economics, don’t expect it to be mirrored in Scotland.

Ros Altmann: The end of free TV licences for older people offers a chance to boost the take-up of Pension Credit

For the past decade, four in ten of those eligible have consistently failed to apply – the lowest take-up of any income-related entitlement.

2021 and the race to normality. Post-vaccine hospitalisation and transmission data are key to reopening the economy.

The Government must speed up its vaccination programme, but until it understands the effect on transmission, tiers are here to stay.

Mario Laghos: Johnson must chuck free market ideology and double down on levelling up Britain

If Johnson wants to be a historic Prime Minister, then he needs to be brave, resist the siren call of the Conservative orthodoxy and move to spend big.

In 2021 the Union is in danger, but there is a way to ridicule and defeat the Nats

Much the best way to embarrass its members at Westminster would be to hail them as friends and fellow members of the Establishment.

Ranil Jayawardena: The trade deals keep coming. And today, as the new EU agreement takes effect, we look forward to more.

We have now secured 97 per cent of the trade value that we set out to reach agreements for first, beyond the EU. And there’s more to come.

Robert Sutton: The protection of civil liberties must be placed at the heart of a reformed Public Health Act

The dubious legal basis for lockdown restrictions should be clarified by making its scope explicit.

Farewell, Sweden

The rise in hospital admissions has hammered the last nail into the coffin of the campaign to follow that country’s strategy.

Anthony Browne: Post-Brexit Britain. Now we’ve taken back control, here’s what we can do with our new powers.

From January 1, no longer will anyone be able to say: “you can’t – EU rules”. We have jumped from the passenger seat to the pilot seat. So what should we do?

Harriet Baldwin: Cutting foreign aid is a blatant breach of our manifesto pledge – and I will not vote for it

How will we feel about cutting aid if we see the kind of shocking scenes of starvation that started Live Aid in the 1980s?

A Brexit trade deal that takes back control

Or so it really seems – which is a personal coup for Johnson. Churchill walked with destiny.  Today, the Prime Minister, in his serio-comic way, is winking at it.

Jacob Rees-Mogg: Now we will have what the British people really wanted – tariff and quota-free trade with the EU

As of Churchill, so perhaps of Johnson: “it was the nation…that had the lion’s heart …I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.”