Will Tanner: Covid and vaccines. Imagine what would have happened if we’d junked intervention – and opted instead for laissez faire.

The first piece in a ConHome mini-series this week on industrial strategy after the pandemic.

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.

Ryan Bourne: A reassuringly conservative speech from Starmer’s Shadow Chancellor. The Tories will need to up their game.

This is not to say that all of Dodds’ analysis is coherent or correct, but the days of unhinged Corbynite attacks on capitalism are over.

Ryan Bourne: Ministers must speed up the pace of vaccination. Here are some ways of doing so.

Government sometimes treats the constraints fatalistically, rather than seeing them as a problem that prices, incentives, and regulations could affect. 

Rob Sutton: Government needs advisers. But advisers need competition – not their present monopoly.

The emergency measures enacted to battle Covid have exposed the groupthink of Whitehall’s expert establishment.

Ryan Bourne: First, Covid-19 lockdowns. Next, climate change ones – rationed car use, no red meat. Coming soon to a country near you?

It might seem far-fetched that one could face jail for eating steak frites. But one could have said the same about not eating at least a scotch egg with your pint.

James Frayne: Six ways of boosting local pride and identity

The Government can do a lot in a short space of time. A key question should be: how do we make these towns nicer places to live?

WATCH: Government must show Covid plans “workable” and “sufficient” – Nandy

MPs need to see the regulations as well as economic and health impact assessments before deciding if they will support the new tiers, she says.

Caino-ho-ho

Finding a new Chief of Staff is only the start of the changes that Johnson needs to make his government work.

WATCH: Last-minute decisions are damaging business, says Phillipson

She attacks the Government for giving employers less than six hours’ notice that the furlough scheme was being extended.

WATCH: “Why should the North be treated any differently?” asks Greenhalgh

The Bolton Council leader says he knows virus rates in the North are high, but he calls for an exit package from restrictions.

WATCH: Reynolds – “The Government has lost control of Covid-19”

Further measures are needed to deal with the virus, and there must be more support for business, he says.

WATCH: “I haven’t felt anger like this towards the Government since the 80s” – Nandy

People feel the Government has not just abandoned communities [in the North], but is now actively working against them, she says.

Tim Ambler: How to replace quangos

We estimate that streamlining the quango state could mean nearly 34,000 people off the taxpayer payroll, and a saving of £3.25 billion a year.

Rachel Wolf: Net Zero risks upending our lives and livelihoods. Here’s why carbon pricing gives it a better chance of working.

It doesn’t make grand predictions about what will work or what we should do. It just prices in the ‘bad’ – in this case, emissions.