Category: #report

Boris Johnson is facing a growing schism within his cabinet over how to respond to a steady rise in coronavirus cases that has triggered calls for further lockdown measures.

The “deepening split between senior ministers” sees “doves”, who want to protect the UK economy, going up against “hawks”, who are calling for tougher restrictions, says the Daily Mail.

The division is yet another headache for the prime minister, who was criticised by the Institute for Government last month for failing to act immediately to curb the initial outbreak – a delay that the think tank said cost a “significant” number of lives.

What is the current state of play?

The UK recorded 14,542 new coronavirus infections and 76 related deaths yesterday, and the number of Covid-19 patients admitted to hospital has increased steadily over the past month to a current total of 2,833, according to government figures.

Coronavirus deaths have also been increasing, with a 50% rise in a single week last month. Office for National Statistics data shows that 215 people lost their lives to the virus in England and Wales in the week ending 25 September, up from 76 the week before.

The figures remain “well below those reported in the spring”, but marked the third weekly increase in a row, says The Times.

Who are the lockdown hawks?

The most notable hawks are Minister for the Cabinet Office Michael Gove and Health Secretary Matt Hancock.

Hancock confirmed today that he will announce changes to the lockdown rules in England, amid speculation that the current system is to be replaced with a three-tier ranking. The health boss said that the government would outline a “more simplified” approach and acknowledged the need for local action to be “more consistent”.

The announcement comes just weeks after he warned that restrictions will get tougher if rules are not followed, telling the BBC‘s The Andrew Marr Show that the country was facing a “tipping point” in its battle with the pandemic.

Gove, meanwhile, has repeatedly refused to rule out further lockdown measures. Offering a “major hint” of what may be to come, according to the Daily Express, he told a conference of the Blue Collar Conservatism pressure group last week that “we need to see the rate of infection fall”.

”At the moment, we know that the infection rate is rising particularly in the North of England but not exclusively,” Gove said. “I think we need to make sure we take all the measures necessary.”

And the doves?

Lockdown “doves” are those who believe that protecting the economy by eschewing lockdown measures is the best approach. Unsurprisingly, the most prominent member of this camp is Rishi Sunak.

Indeed, the chancellor has been busy “cementing his status” as the leading cabinet dove, and last night made an “11th-hour intervention” that may delay the expected announcement later this week of the new three-tier Covid alert system, the Daily Mail reports.

Sunak is is “said to have accepted the need for the new system but is concerned about the mechanism by which the most severe restrictions are imposed”, The Telegraph adds. In a bid to tackle that issue, he is leading a push for ministers to be “given the final say over when an area is required to enter the top tier of restrictions”.

The chancellor is proposing that decisions on lockdown measures be made by Johnson, Hancock and himself.

Sunak is also pushing his anti-lockdown approach to voters, telling The Sun: “I don’t think it’s wrong for people to want to strive for normality and I don’t think it’s wrong for the government to want that for people.”

“Lockdowns obviously have a very strong economic impact, but they have an impact on many other things,” he continued, and “we have to look at this all in the round and beating coronavirus is important and minimising the harm that it causes is important”.

The chancellor has won the backing of a group of council leaders in the North who have attacked the existing local lockdown system.

The leaders of Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle city councils – Judith Blake, Richard Leese and Nick Forbes – have teamed up with Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson to send a letter to the health secretary saying that while they are “extremely concerned” about the rises in Covid cases, they will not back measures that harm their local economies.

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Ryan Heath on Politico

on the US president’s global threat

Can the world survive four more years of Donald Trump?

“A world order designed to function through slow consensus and underwhelming compromise, on a good day, has had virtually no coping mechanism for the American president’s disruption. In the name of putting America first, Trump has pulled out of one global deal after another, unpredictably reversing course on some of America’s biggest global priorities and moral commitments. He has snubbed democratic leaders and longtime allies while cozying up to Vladimir Putin and other autocrats. While the most important Western institutions – NATO, the European Union, the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization – are still standing, it’s an open question whether they will be able to survive another four years of pummeling and disinvestment by the world’s superpower.”

2. Yiannis Baboulias in The Atlantic

on Golden Dawn’s twilight

How to Beat the Nazis in 2020

“The experience of Golden Dawn – from riding high to effectively destroyed in a matter of years—offers lessons… It had openly sought to undermine democracy, yet it was largely using the tools of democracy that it was defeated – through the justice system, and at the ballot box. The party is financially broken, and in recent months has been forced to close dozens of offices across Greece. At least partly as a result, its electoral support has more than halved since it first entered Parliament, with Golden Dawn failing to meet the 3 percent support threshold required to win seats in 2019 legislative elections.”

3. John T. Bennett in The Independent

on Trump’s growing desperation

As his Fox interview this morning proved, Trump knows he’s losing and he’s panicking about it

“As he ranted and raved as the sun rose in a list of key East Coast and Rust Belt swing states, the president did not exert confidence about a November victory. Trump’s every word, tweet and action since he was airlifted to the military medical facility suggests projecting the kind of strength a high school football coach uses to fire up teenagers on Friday nights. It is the last club left in his reelection golf bag.”

4. Ann Treneman in The Times

on the sound of silence

We’re bereft of all the hubbub of normal life

“I am not sure what the auditory equivalent of ‘a sight for sore eyes’ might be called but you know what I mean. This refers to those sounds of everyday life that we no longer hear in lockdown, or semi-lockdown, or whatever this is (very hard to tell most days). Now the New York Public Library has come up with a brilliantly evocative way of reminding us what life used to sound like, with a digital album called Missing Sounds of New York. Its eight tracks, described as ‘an auditory love letter to New Yorkers’, include sounds from a baseball game, a busy restaurant and (apparently a favourite) ‘The Not-Quite-Quiet Library’.”

5. Nate Anderson on Fox News

on America’s ‘forever wars’

In Afghanistan, as we enter our 20th year, it’s time to come home

“The war in Afghanistan is officially in its twentieth year. It’s difficult to appreciate how so much time has gone by as we remember those first news clips of warplanes launching from aircraft carriers, and grainy night vision images of the first Americans on the ground bringing retribution for the September 11, 2001, attacks. Yet as someone who volunteered for service, fought in Afghanistan, and watched good friends give their lives for the mission there, it’s difficult to accept that 19 years hasn’t been enough.”

Olly Mann and The Week delve behind the headlines and debate what really matters from the past seven days.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
To get six free issues of The Week magazine and a moleskine notebook visit theweek.co.uk/offer and enter promo code: POD25
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

In this week’s episode, we discuss:

Heroic bystanders

A growing number of American police forces are signing up to the Active Bystander in Law Enforcement programme, in an attempt to prevent police brutality. The idea is that officers will be encouraged to challenge their colleagues if they see bad behaviour – speaking to them directly but non-confrontationally rather than reporting incidents to watchdogs (or staying silent).

Street art

Prints by Banksy have smashed estimates in recent auctions, and an upcoming sale of his 2005 painting Show me the Monet is tipped to top the record £9.9m paid for another of the street artist’s works last year. But is this commercialisation of urban art severing the genre’s anti-establishment roots?

Refugee art

The theatre group behind War Horse is planning to parade a giant puppet of a refugee girl across Europe in an attempt to raise awareness of the plight of asylum seekers. But is a lack of awareness really the problem, and how might their efforts be put to better use?