Day: 14 May 2020

Today's Guardian leads on the care home scandal, which Keir Starmer succeeded in moving to the top of the news agenda by grilling Boris about it in yesterday's Prime Minister's Questions. It didn't help that Boris fluffed his response. Starmer picked up on the fact that Public Health England (PHE) had advised in March that care home residents were “very unlikely” to become infected by COVID-19. Boris denied PHE had ever said this, only for him to be confronted with irrefutable evidence, at which point he accused Starmer of taking the quote out of context. He is clearly rattled by this attack line because yesterday the Government announced a £600 million cash injection for care homes to help control infection. How many have died in care homes to date? The latest assessment of fatalities in care settings in England and Wales by academics at the London School of Economics finds that more than half of all “excess deaths” up to 1st May – those above the five-year average for the period from 28th December to 1st May – have happened in care homes. The researchers say that from 13th March to 1st May, care homes accounted for 19,938 excess deaths – a figure corroborated by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). According to the ONS's data, there have been just ...

by Alexis FitzGerald George Orwell: "In every one of those little stucco boxes there’s some poor bastard who’s never free except when he’s fast asleep and dreaming." I consider myself to be left-wing on virtually every political topic: I am a socially-liberal social democrat who believes in a strong social safety net, high-quality public healthcare for all, robust environmental protections (including shifting to renewable energy sources immediately and protecting half of the globe for nature), restorative justice, legal abortion and reducing inequality and corporate influence over politics. I despise Donald Trump and believe Brexit was a huge mistake. I am firstly presenting my political biases in order to dispel the caricature that has emerged of lockdown sceptics as being all right-wing, Trumpian Brexiteers. I think this labelling has been very unfortunate and misguided, as I too believe that the lockdown policy in response to Covid-19 has been an utter and complete disaster, and that most of the left have gotten this issue completely wrong. I will argue that the position of the lockdown sceptic really should be a more naturally left-wing cause to adopt, and those on the left should not be distracted by the reflexive partisan politics and virtue signalling that has taken over so much of the debate around lockdowns. The left should be interested in protecting working ...