coronavirus
Keep the change
Covid is fuelling the anti-cash crusade
Across the board
How chess got cool
Diary
We weren’t long into Bruce Castor’s opening speech defending Donald Trump in his impeachment trial before we knew it was…
Hancock launches his quarantine crackdown
The search for the right balance on border policy continues, as Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced this afternoon a host…
Calling the shots
How the Vaccine Taskforce did it
Grim
‘Thus I refute Bishop Berkeley,’ said my husband, multitasking by kicking the stone and slightly misquoting Samuel Johnson at the…
The year of living contagiously
We have reached Covid-19’s first anniversary in the UK — and I really think we should do something fitting to…
Smokescreen
The Fire Brigades Union’s pandemic response has been a disgrace
Portrait of the week
Home About 80,000 people in eight places in Surrey, London, Kent, Hertfordshire, Southport and Walsall were asked in door-to-door visits…
The death of Mid-Atlantic Man
As an ambitious journalist making my way in Fleet Street, I dreamed of becoming a Mid-Atlantic Man. Tom Wolfe came…
Portrait of the week
Home Supplies of the Pfizer vaccine (made in Belgium) were feared to be at risk from a declaration by the…
Barometer
New normal Why have so many people started saying ‘normalcy’ rather than ‘normality’? — Normalcy has been traced back to…
A salute to the ‘inessential’
A common sight across Britain these past ten months has been those rainbow flags fluttering in urban and village streets:…
Pilgrim’s Notebook
A few of the hip young things sitting along the Lisbon quayside turned their heads my way as my walking…
Capital punishment
Why wealth taxes don’t work
Lessons learned
Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner, on why schools must reopen
Aussie rules
Closing the borders worked Down Under. Could it work here?
Shots fired
The vaccine wars are turning nasty
Diary
I start the week with someone throwing faeces at me. I thought people were supposed to clap for doctors these…
The freedom paradox
Who would have thought, this time last year, that the British government would be planning to detain British nationals at…
The EU’s vaccine catastrophe is a crisis of its own making
As news emerges that both Pfizer and AstraZeneca are cutting supplies of their Covid-19 vaccines to the EU by up…
The Spectator’s Notes
‘Postcode lottery!’ people scream when one area feels less well treated than another in a public service — in this…
My vaccine approval process
Has the coup happened yet? You have the advantage over me. It was supposed to have taken place on Sunday.…
Portrait of the week
Home The government undertook to offer a first dose of vaccine to the adult population of the UK by September.…
The long road to normality
The government’s most important economic policy is its vaccination programme. The speed at which people are immunised will determine when…
