The Good Union
The Union needs a cultural case to walk in step with the material one – Project Love, not Project Fear. Which means looking to the future.
Iain Dale: Johnson can say all the right words. But not in a way that people relate to, as Blair and Cameron could.
Plus: Sturgeon is ridiculous to criticise the PM’s trip to Scotland. And: Now’s not the time for a Coronavirus inquiry.
Paul Ratner: My obsessive compulsive disorder story. The £100 billion plus cost of poor mental health. And what Ministers should do.
Lockdown has heightened OCD sufferers’ symptoms and hampered their treatment. There is a fierce urgency for innovation.
Vaccines. The United Kingdom v a “rules-based organisation”.
The Government acted promptly, the EU didn’t – and Brussels’ furious response suggests competition could get ugly.
Sam Hall: The Government must secure tougher emission-reduction commitments at this year’s COP26
The third piece in a mini-series on climate change, COP26 and the environment on ConservativeHome this week.
Garvan Walshe: Navalny’s given Putin a splitting headache. Here’s how to make it worse.
The prominence of Russians in the UK means that the UK can play an outside role in making the migraine even worse.
100,000 dead
It’s a terrible milestone and Ministers throughout the UK will be blamed. How could our governments and administrations do better next time?
Robert Halfon: I’m not a lockdown sceptic. But I am a “school-down” sceptic – and fear the impact of these closures.
The Government needs to provide an educational route map out of Coronavirus for schools and colleges – so that they can prepare.
Clive Moffatt: Going green with the lights off. We need a more realistic approach to climate change.
The second piece in a mini-series on climate change, COP26 and the environment on ConservativeHome this week.
How Johnson thinks. One can’t “let in daylight upon magic”.
The Prime Minister seems to be mulling some school re-openings pre-Easter. But how long will it last and who can really be sure?
Profile: Ben Wallace, one of Johnson’s Long Marchers, and a traditional but also irreverent Defence Secretary
Here is a politician educated at Sandhurst and on active service with the Scots Guards in Northern Ireland, not by reading PPE at Oxford.
The Moggcast: Neil O’Brien is “to the Coronavirus as Bill Cash was to Brexit”
He’s doing a “fantastic job”; timetables for ending lockdown are “not particularly realistic”; claims that Johnson relishes it are “ridiculous”.
Benedict McAleenan: COP26’s challenge for Johnson. Will measures be agreed that will keep temperature rises limited to 1.5°C?
The first piece in a mini-series on climate change, COP26 and the environment on ConservativeHome this week.
The cynical politics of emissions targets and COP26. How government is poised to declare success while delivering failure.
Our five year electoral cycle is driving MPs to compete for short-term green subsidies without questioning the medium-term consequences.
Neil O’Brien: Five lessons from the pandemic
It’s striking that the countries that did best during Covid are those, like Taiwan and South Korea, which live under threat of annihilation by their neighbours.