coronavirus
Eighteen months of inflation is not ‘transitory’
The big central banks have been insisting for months now that the rise in inflation is temporary, and will fade…
Portrait of the week
Home The Queen will not attend the COP26 meeting in Glasgow next week; she had resumed light duties after having…
Why lockdown sceptics lost the argument
I’m optimistic that the government won’t implement ‘Plan B’, let alone impose another lockdown — but not because sceptics like…
Why did we decide that Covid was over?
Look, I don’t know much epidemiology. Can’t pretend to. So what follows is, necessarily, a personal finger to the wind.…
No. 10 moves to kickstart the booster campaign
In a move that as important as any in the recent Cabinet reshuffle, Emily Lawson is returning to run the…
Wuhan clan
The price I paid for my lab leak exposé
Barometer
Drinks at the palace The Queen was reported to have given up regular drinking. What do we know about her…
Portrait of the week
Home Sir David Amess, aged 69, the Conservative MP for Southend West, was stabbed to death while taking a constituency…
Colin Powell: A great man – and a failure
My memory of Colin Powell feels personal, even though we were 6000 miles apart at the time. I was in…
Why Covid means the big state is back
History suggests that when the state expands in a crisis, it doesn’t go back to its pre-crisis level once the…
The real reason Britain failed on coronavirus
The joint health and science super-committee’s report into ‘lessons learned’ on the UK’s coronavirus response may not want to ‘point fingers…
A great reformer?
Sajid Javid has big plans for the NHS – if Covid lets him
Sometimes wrongs make a right
It is interesting to consider what would have happened if the Covid virus had emerged in 1921. Or 1821. Or…
Portrait of the week
Home To prevent a shortage of meat, which relies on carbon dioxide in its packaging, the government gave millions of…
The Covid pantomime at my father’s memorial
This last weekend I attended the memorial service for my father, who died in July. This isn’t a bid for…
Could the squeeze on living standards bring down Boris?
There is about to be a two-phase onslaught on the living standards of those on low-to-middling incomes. On 1 October…
Javid avoids Tory Covid powers fightback – for now
Tory MPs were not happy when Sajid Javid unveiled the Covid winter plan in the Commons this afternoon. They’re dissatisfied…
Is the inflation panic over? Probably not
So, is the post-Covid inflation panic over? That is how it looked last month, when the government’s preferred inflation index,…
Tories scrap mandatory vaccine passports
On BBC One’s Andrew Marr show Sajid Javid confirmed that plans for domestic vaccine passports in England were on the…
Emergency exit
For 18 months, the government has held power over us as never before in peacetime. The emergency powers granted by…
The stories that are too good to check
Last weekend, Rolling Stone ran a story about an interview an emergency room doctor had given to a local news…
Boosterism
Third jabs need to be rolled out right away
Covid pingdemic takes its toll on Britain’s economic bounce-back
The arrival of ‘freedom day’ on 19 July enabled people to return to concerts, festivals, and ditch social distancing, but…
Why didn’t Tory MPs oppose Boris’s tax hike?
Boris Johnson has just announced his plans to increase National Insurance by 1.25 per cent for both workers and employers…
Why isn’t the vaccine UK approved for 12- to 15-year-olds?
This afternoon, the JCVI has essentially passed the buck on vaccinating 12- to 15-year-olds. It has declared that the health benefits…
