The arts bailout: a reminder not to underestimate Dowden

The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has exceeded all expectations with his recent negotiations.

Darren Grimes: Why I’m backing this new campaign to defund the BBC

It’s single mothers like mine that are hardest hit by non-payment of the licence fee. If you ask me, that’s too high a price to pCome Dancing on free-to-view telly.

Cummings makes the weather as a hard rain falls on Sedwill

Three cheers for three reforms: of the civil service, of Ministers and of one that this Government tends to avoid – of public services.

Daniel Hannan: The police. Not institutionally racist, but institutionally woke.

Their leaders elevate race relations above what should be their core functions, such as enforcing the law impartially.

Four years on since Brexit, the media still doesn’t get the public mood

One of the biggest lessons of the referendum was that newspapers and other outlets had failed to spot widespread sentiment.

For Johnson and the Conservatives, the power of patriotism is a plus

As with Brexit, the fundamentals of the Tory position are much stronger than they may seem to be.

Julie Newcombe: Hancock must aid the pandemic’s forgotten victims. The hundreds of autistic people detained in secure units.

Is the sequestering, incarceration and forgetting of these vulnerable children and young adults any better than in Georgian and Victorian times?

Robert Halfon: The Government was wise to give way to Rashford. Now let him head up the Social Mobility Commission.

Plus: vision from the top for left-behind pupils, a National Education Broadcasting Service, and Alan Turing summer schools.

Darren Grimes: Since we must use coal, why import it all – when we could instead create jobs by mining it in the North-East?

In 2018, just to transport 4.7million tonnes of Russian coal was equivalent to a whopping 130 jumbo jets whizzing, non-stop, around the globe for a year.

Daniel Hannan: One man driving to Durham imperils the nation’s health. But lots of protesters in London don’t. Have we all gone mad?

Sitting in a park is selfish, but organising a mass demonstration in a park is wonderful, and schools should still stay closed. Seriously?

The BBC and politics. Maitlis’ Cummings intro was out of order. And so too, in its time, was Neil’s denunciation of ISIS.

As one side becomes more sensitive to perceived breaches of neutrality, the other becomes less willing or able to accept when it has erred.

Trust in the BBC hasn’t collapsed – but it can’t afford to ignore the creeping rot of polarisation

Both sides must recognise that the Corporation as a whole can be performing well whilst its political coverage alienates Conservatives.

Sarah Ingham: Memories of Wooton Bassett as we cheer NHS staff. PPE – and lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan.

How the backlash from Labour’s failure to protect our armed forces adequately led to a new Military Covenant.

The New Normal will be Very Abnormal Indeed. Here are 15 sets of questions about it.

How prepared are we for strict social distancing for the forseeable future, compulsory masks, closed leisure facilities – and a semi-functioning economy?

Robert Halfon: If we stay in this shutdown beyond the end of May, it won’t be a threat to our liberty, but the safeguarding of our lives 

If police officers are shouting at people with loudhailers and disbanding picnickers in local parks, then, good.