The latest official data on the UK labour market were mostly reassuring, but younger workers have still borne the brunt of the job losses during the pandemic. How big a concern is this? And what, if anything, should be done about it? Let’s begin with the headline numbers. The latest increase in unemployment, to 5.1% in the […]
The route out of lockdown will, it seems, be long and winding – with Boris Johnson’s ‘roadmap’ getting us back to something like normality by the summer. Children, parents and teachers will be relieved to be returning to school in two weeks, but the rest of us will have to live under house arrest with […]
In his State of the Union address in 1903, US President Theodore Roosevelt said that in America, no man is above the law and no man is below it. We should all hope that the same principle applies in the UK in 2021 – that everyone, from the humblest citizen to the most powerful minister, […]
Do you remember the PISA study, the international league table of educational outcomes? Back in the good old days when schools were still a thing, it used to attract a lot of media coverage every three years. The British school system usually did not do brilliantly in those rankings, a fact which would prompt plenty […]
Rumours have been flying – unlike the rest of us – about whether or not the UK government is going to introduce vaccine passports. Dominic Raab has suggested individual shops and restaurants could decide for themselves whether to ask for proof of vaccination before allowing people to access their services. At the same time the […]
Making pessimistic predictions is very much a one-way street. It’s easy to attract the attention of listeners who nod with concern, impressed at your wisdom and sophistication. If vindicated you can remind everyone how right you were, and if things turn out alright, no one will be all that bothered. By contrast, the best an […]
The pandemic has taught us many things. Dreadful new terms like ‘social distancing’ have entered the lexicon, PPE is no longer just an Oxford degree for MPs, and Jonathan Van-Tam has proved there are no limits to how far you can extend a metaphor. But have we learned anything about politics? A new report by […]
Where did Covid come from? More than a year after the first cases we are still far from answering this crucial question. Frustratingly, this week’s joint press conference from the World Health Organization and the Chinese government offered more confusion than clarity. China initially opposed the inquiry altogether and blocked investigators from visiting the site of […]
You can always rely on politicians to do the right thing – once they have exhausted all other possibilities. It wasn’t all that long ago that ‘The Project’ keepers in Brussels were trying to squeeze the UK out of collaboration on vaccines. Officials, the claimed, were doing very nicely with the EU’s own vaccine procurement, […]
If we are to have anything close to a return to normality, we need to close the borders to the virus. The Government’s current policy – hotel quarantine for arrivals from a list of countries on a travel ban list – falls far short of what is needed. Failure to make a small sacrifice now […]
It’s easy to have a pop at Matt Hancock. He’s pretty dorky, and just a shade too earnest for the modern era of internet take-downs. From launching his own app and proposing to be the first Cabinet Minister to appear as a hologram, to looking like he’s been locked in the under-stair office equivalent of […]
Hubris is a terrible thing. Even contemplating what we might do with any supplies of surplus vaccines we might have once we in the UK have all had our jabs seem like tempting fate. We certainly don’t know when that point will arrive. Those of us who impatiently wait for 4pm for the “daily update” […]
In a year of sorrow and anxiety, this week has been particularly sombre. On the January 26, almost 12 months to the day since the first British nationals tested positive for Covid-19, Britain passed the grim milestone of 100,000 deaths from the virus, one of the highest death rates in the world. But though there […]
“The best advertisement for Brexit,” the major German newspaper Die Zeit proclaimed on Wednesday. In the increasingly bitter vaccine battle between AstraZeneca and the EU – which some are already describing as outright war, the European Commission has “acted slow, bureaucratic, and protectionist. And when something goes wrong, it’s always someone else’s fault”. In this […]
Quarantine is an ancient word dating from the Black Death in 1347 when Venice required arriving ships to stay offshore. It comes from the Italian quaranta, meaning 40 days. Thankfully for me it was just 14. My plane arrived into Canberra just ahead of schedule on a mild day in late November. We were taxied […]
Telling a 39-year-old woman with stage four bowel cancer that her life is “less valuable” than that of a healthier person was insensitive, ill-timed and ultimately unhelpful for sensible public debate. But those condemning Lord Sumption most loudly for his comments on the BBC’s The Big Questions must also accept their fair share of responsibility […]
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