He’s a barrister at Civitas Law, named a “leading individual” in last year’s Legal 500, and I’ve just asked him about the tens of thousands of individuals stuck in legal limbo as their cases go unheard due to Covid-19 lockdown measures. “Unconscionable delays in criminal cases are routine,” he says.

“Routine” is not a word that has been used much over the past two months. But when it comes to the justice system, coronavirus has not only presented new challenges, but exacerbated an ongoing existential crisis that gets too little attention.

Throughout Britain’s battle with this pandemic, the public institution that has received the most media focus has quite rightly been the healthcare service, with all government efforts focused at ensuring our hospitals did not become overwhelmed. The spotlight then turned to the tragedies playing out in care homes that were not adequately protected. The challenges to other public services have been highlighted, from the financial strain on transport networks to arguments over how to reopen schools safely.

The state of the justice system under Covid-19 rules has received relatively scant attention, however. This is no surprise. Unlike schools and hospitals, most of us have little experience of the strange world of wigs and gavels (which are not even used in British courts, despite being repeatedly used to illustrate legal stories in the media), and we rarely see what goes on in a courtroom as relevant to us personally.

But while it may not be central to our everyday lives, it central to our society.

As the blogger, lawyer and author known as the Secret Barrister puts it: “The law affects us all, yet we understand so little about it. And while we may not all understand everything about other areas of public life, the point about justice – and criminal justice in particular – is that it is not merely an important public service, like health or education, but serves a key democratic function.”

With large parts of the justice system in England and Wales essentially on hold, how has the law been affected by the most draconian restrictions ever seen in peacetime? What does a socially distanced legal process look like? How long can we expect the changes of the past few months to last? And can the justice system as we know it survive in a post-Covid world?

To fully understand the impact of the Covid-19 measures, we need to consider what the court system looked like prior to the pandemic. The picture was not pretty. As part of the 2010 spending cuts, the Ministry of Justice’s budget was slashed by 40 per cent, with a devastating knock-on effect on the operation of courts and the time it takes for cases to be heard.

“Before lockdown there was a backlog of 37,400 Crown court trials due to government cuts,” says barrister (and former Conservative MP) Jerry Hayes, who specialises in criminal law. “They have been restricting sitting hours and closing courts.”

Over half of magistrates courts in England and Wales have closed since 2010, while the average crown court case takes 525 days to come to trial. Defendants, complainants and witnesses must put their lives on hold for over a year (sometimes remaining in custody or unable to return to their jobs), with many having to travel miles to attend hearings as local courts close.

“The criminal justice system was broken well before lockdown,” Hayes continues. “Filthy courts, understaffing, cuts to legal aid and CPS budgets. Covid-19 has just brought to the public attention something we have been complaining about for years.”

“The lockdown has inevitably compounded the problems that already existed in the criminal justice system,” agrees Sophie Khan, a solicitor-advocate and director of the Police Action Centre, who points out that funding cuts had left large swathes of court rooms in Crown Courts across the country empty long before anyone was using the phrase “social distancing”.

“It will now take many years before the criminal justice system can be said to be fit for purpose,” says Khan.

If that starkly outlines the problem, what are the potential solutions? The obvious one is that the justice system does what every other industry has had to do in the past two months: go virtual.

“Do people really need to gather together in buildings to settle legal disputes?” asked legal services expert Richard Susskind in an article this month for the Financial Times. “Until a few weeks ago, most judges and lawyers rejected the idea of non-physical courts, denying that remote hearings could be fair or even technically feasible. I used to think that high cultural barriers meant it would take a decade for courts to embrace technology fully. Then the virus came, courts closed, and it only took a fortnight.”

In some ways, the rapid progress has been inspiring. Who would have thought that 85 per cent of a court or tribunal hearing could be conducted remotely? Why weren’t we making use of this technology before?

“Remote hearings have been a success,” says Hayes, who calls this a “sensible way forward” in most instances. Matthew Paul agrees – up to a point.

“I expect a long-term move away from herding people pointlessly into distant courtrooms for hearings that can be dealt with online,” he says. “Apart from creaky tech, remote hearings work perfectly adequately for first appearances, plea and case preparation hearings and pre-trial reviews.” He does note, however, that a jury trial cannot be conducted remotely.

And there are other issues when it comes to hearing evidence. The existing practice of using video conferencing for questioning vulnerable witnesses, such as children, suggests that on-screen testimony can be perceived as less convincing than that which is given in person.

“During the lockdown, it has become clear that remote hearings cannot replace face-to-face court appearances, as video conferencing is not suitable for live evidence,” warns Khan. “It would only be in exceptional circumstances depending on the facts of the case, that live evidence would be given virtually, and only as a last resort.”

Another barrister, who did not wish to be named, pours cold water on the idea of “virtual justice”.

“Judges do not decide legal questions simply through written submissions, they should and must engage with counsel. Doing so creates a much more dynamic consideration of all issues in which points arise which might not have occurred to judge or counsel before the hearing. This Socratic discussion is far more difficult with the variable bandwidth and imperfect conditions of remote hearings.”

The importance of face-to-face contact in court, he argues, is not just a practical consideration, but a moral one.

“Trials are inherently unsuitable to be conducted visually. A judge has the difficult job of deciding whether a witness is lying or is otherwise unreliable and seeing and witnessing him in person is a key part of that. Courtrooms and the legal process are intended to impress upon witnesses the gravity of their evidence – which can lead to individuals being bankrupted (often the result of losing a civil case) or losing their liberty. That gravity is difficult to impress upon them in a Zoom meeting.”

As long as at least some of the justice process must take place in a physical setting, courts will be in the same situation as other workplaces, trying to figure out how to operate safely and effectively when they reopen. It will, Khan notes, be a “resource-heavy exercise” – bad news for an institution that is already struggling. So some things will have to change.

“The biggest change to the criminal justice system will be the limitations on the listing of court hearings and trials,” Khan says. “It is unlikely that block listing will be resumed anytime soon.”

Then again, necessity is the mother of invention. As Paul points out, this could be an opportunity to require the courts to co-operate more with the legal profession.

“The usual experience of the criminal bar is that listing cases for their convenience ranks somewhere between an irrelevance and an annoyance. Court listing officers expect solicitors and counsel to sit around wasting whole days at a time in physical court buildings, while a trial is ‘floating’, i.e. waiting for a spare judge and courtroom to deal with it. Cases are often listed to be heard not before 10am, when the listing office can see perfectly well that they won’t be dealt with until the afternoon.”

None of this will be possible, says Paul, if there is the need to schedule hearings and stick to remote slots.

“This might also limit some members of the judiciary in the exercise of malevolent caprice by weaponising a lengthy court list to inconvenience lawyers or defendants they dislike.”

The other big concern is, of course, technical glitches. Most of us will have experienced the frustrations of a video conference call gone wrong over the past ten weeks. In court, the stakes can be infinitely higher than a weekly team meeting, while the institutional grasp of technology has traditionally been somewhat lacking.

Last year, an IT failure caused the court’s main computer system to crash repeatedly. Some 75,000 lawyers and court staff were unable to access their communications, disrupting thousands of cases across England and Wales over several days. Internal documents from the MoJ later revealed that officials had known the computer system was “obsolete” since the previous year, and warned that “historical under-investment in ageing IT systems” posed a significant risk. This saga does not inspire much confidence for a tech-based justice system.

“A major shift to virtual justice will require some real investment in working tech,” says Paul. “Procuring this is not something which the MoJ has historically been very good at.”

None of these developments, however, are applicable to the cornerstone of the British legal system: the jury trial.

Since the twelfth century, those accused of crimes in England have had the option of being tried by a jury of their peers. The system is costly (a single jury trial costs taxpayers an average £17,500), time-consuming, and imperfect. But to paraphrase Winston Churchill’s famous adage on democracy jury trials are the worst form of justice system, except for all the others.

Their integral place at the heart of the UK justice system makes the decision on the first day of lockdown halt all new jury trials all the more remarkable. Aside from the courts set up in Northern Ireland to try terror suspects, which used judges to avoid sectarian juries reaching biased decisions, such a suspension is virtually unprecedented. For eight weeks, no new juries were sworn in at all.

From the 18th May, jury trials were allowed to restart in a few select courts, including the Old Bailey in London, albeit it with extensive social distancing strategies in place. Courtrooms have undergone a makeover – most notably with a second courtroom for the jury, and a third for journalists and observers to watch the proceedings via CCTV. The new restrictions mean that, even if all the courts reopened, the capacity to hear trials would be still dramatically reduced, with the backlog growing by up to 1,000 cases a month.

According to Caroline Goodwin QC, chair of the Criminal Bar Association: “The restrictions imposed mean the courts cannot keep pace with that backlog, no matter how innovative the thinking is.”

Is it time to move to a system that can operate more swiftly? In the words of the Conservative former justice minister Lord Faulks: “justice delayed is justice denied”. In a recent interview with The Guardian, he tentatively mooted that this might be the moment to review our national fixation with trial by jury.

“There are different ways you could do it; you could have a judge with a couple of magistrates. People may say it’s terrible, but if judges [deliver a verdict] they have to give reasons and therefore those reasons are apparent. It makes the process of making an appeal much clearer. You can see what’s under the bonnet.”

Another controversial option that falls short of abolishing juries altogether would be to allow defendants to choose to have their cases heard by a judge instead. That’s the suggestion of Geoffrey Robertson QC, who points out that this is already the system in some Australian states. As he said in a op-ed for The Guardian: “We believe sentimentally that trial by jury is a defendant’s fundamental right – but why not give them the additional right to choose instead a reasoned verdict from a judge?”

There are problems, though, with a two-tiered justice system. It is disturbing to think of defendants who have the resources to wait months or even years for their day in court (on bail rather than in custody) receiving different treatment to those whose circumstances require their case to be resolved quickly. Indeed, some legal experts argue that this is already a problem, with more criminal cases being heard by magistrates rather than in crown court jury trials.

Besides, is there really the political scope right now to tinker with one of the country’s oldest civic institutions?

“Jury trial has a Magna-Carterish Brexity resonance to it that brings liberals and traditionalists together,” says Paul. “Restricting it would be picking a fight with Keir Starmer and Jacob Rees-Mogg at the same time. I doubt the government will mount any sort of frontal attack on juries.”

If the backlog in criminal cases cannot be addressed through technology, socially distant court rooms, or a rethink of the jury system, what options are left? Paul is blunt in his assessment.

“The government can either ignore the backlog and hope the invisible hand of bureaucratic inefficiency somehow waves it away, or it could take measures that are likely to be very unpopular with a punishment-fixated public,” he says. “These could include asking the police to divert as many cases as possible from the criminal justice system, and dealing with them by caution or informal resolution.”

This could potentially help alleviate challenges in another area that have been thrown into stark relief by Covid-19. That is the state of prisons. The overcrowding that has been an open secret for years (two thirds of prisons in England and Wales are overcrowded) has become impossible to ignore in the midst of a pandemic, as safely isolating prisoners with symptoms has proved next to impossible.

“We already jail far too many people, so sentencing guidelines should be adjusted downwards,” Paul argues. Some of the 20,000 or so prisoners who are inside for being a nuisance, not a threat to the public, should be let out straight away to free up prison places for the nasty bits of work who really deserve them.

Of course, putting fewer people in prison does not exactly chime with the attitude of this government. Last year, the Home Secretary Priti Patel boasted of the government’s new policy of tougher sentences.

But maybe public attitudes to policing will have altered somewhat after Covid-19. Overnight, the British population was transformed from law-abiding citizens to potential lockdown criminals. Absurd examples of law enforcement overreach, such as Derbyshire Police filming and shaming hikers or Northamptonshire Police threatening to inspect the contents of people’s shopping trollies for “unnecessary items” have strained the relationship between people and police.

“There has already been an awakening among society that this style of policing damages community cohesion,” says Khan. “Society’s relationship with the police will change, as it’s unlikely that the police will get away with overstepping the mark in the future.”

Another barrister who wishes to remain anonymous goes further. “It is impossible to impose legislation micro-managing people’s lives (and violating their fundamental freedoms) without scarring the traditional relationship with the police force. A democratic citizen police force doesn’t question someone about a ‘suspicious’ drive to his parents or prevent them from sunbathing in a park. It is wholly incompatible with a free society for them to break up a political protest. A citizen police force is there to maintain order, not to impose behaviour.”

Of course, that isn’t the whole story. As Paul says: “For every person who thinks officers have acted like jackbooted minions of fascist oppression, there is another who fervently believes that anyone who risks people’s lives by having a picnic in the sun should be jailed and have their car crushed”. Lockdown remains immensely popular – surprisingly more so in the UK than in other countries with more authoritarianism in their histories.

Still, it’s too early to say how Britain’s short burst of draconianism will affect attitudes towards both police and criminal justice. With so much about our way of life changed beyond all recognition already, maybe an overhaul of the prison system isn’t as outlandish as it seems.

Finally, spare a thought for the lawyers themselves, a group of professionals who rarely garner much sympathy. It is worth remembering that a barrister’s livelihood relies on appearing in court. With the courts closed and hearings delayed, the majority join the ranks of the self-employed out of work due to lockdown rules.

For criminal barristers, the picture is particularly bleak – a day’s work in court prosecuting a complex case can yield as little as £46, including time spent on travel and preparation. Many junior members of the bar took out significant personal debt to qualify.

The impact of Covid-19 on lawyers was hammered home by a survey from the Bar Council of its members just after lockdown began: 56 per cent of barristers surveyed said that they could not continue for six months without financial aid, 77 per cent said they would not survive a year, and 30 per cent said they were already facing financial hardship.

As for the publicly funded bar in particular, 31 per cent of criminal barristers said they may not be in practice within three months, and 87 per cent said they will not last six months. That was in April.

“Jury trials will not be up and running in any meaningful sense until September,” says Hayes. “This will have devastating cash flow consequences on the young bar. There may not much of a bar left after lockdown.”

George Payne and Harry MacDonald, both criminal barristers, are equally concerned – and are scathing of the Treasury’s support so far.

“The closure of the courts has destroyed the income of professionals performing a specialist, challenging and essential role in society. Many are still trying – still trying to protect rights, prosecute the guilty and defend the innocent. All the while furloughed employees for private interests, ordinarily enjoying far higher salaries than a legal aid lawyer could hope to earn, are paid £2.5k a month to do and contribute nothing. It is not fair. It is not sustainable and it will lead to a mass exodus from criminal and public law work.”

Again, a sharp reduction in lawyers is hardly likely to make the front pages in the way it would were teachers or doctors quitting the profession en masse. But the implications for the future of our justice system has the potential to affect all of us, however much we might hope that it won’t. At any point, any one of us might find ourselves the victim of a crime, falsely (or not falsely) accused, or called as a witness. If and when that happens, we should all hope for a legal system – which is as much a public service as schools and hospitals – that can function adequately.

The loss of solicitors and barristers, particularly in criminal law, has the potential to ruin lives. “This will result in innocent people being kept in prison awaiting trial for an unknown length of time,” warn Payne and MacDonald. “Uncertainly is horrible not only for innocent people in prison but also the victims of crime who have no idea when the process of giving evidence will be finished.”

It may seem strange to think of criminal law in the same bracket as tourism, aviation, restaurants and retail – sectors so badly hit by Covid-19 and the long-term measures to combat it that they may never recover. But this, warns Hayes, is a very real risk.

“The criminal bar faces oblivion unless we are given help.”

The sudden and unprecedented challenges in almost every area of life prompted by the Covid-19 crisis risk blinding us to real and systemic problems that pre-existed in the justice system. Unprecedented backlogs, court closures, chronic funding shortages and a genuine existential threat to the public bar were already undermining one of the central pillars of our civic infrastructure long before March.

These have now been exacerbated on an immense scale – and listening to lawyers, it is difficult to have much hope that the situation can resolve itself once the pandemic passes.

The recent innovations are impressive, and in some areas highly welcome. But all the evidence suggests current innovations are little more than a sticking plaster over a potentially mortal wound.

The real danger is not that we face a longer-term shift to virtual justice or trial by Zoom – which could potentially offer some opportunities if the technological problems can be resolved.

It is that, when this crisis is over, we find ourselves with not much of a justice system at all.

The scandal over Dominic Cummings and his ill-advised Odyssey from London to Durham has been raging since journalists from The Mirror and The Guardian dropped the bombshell on Friday night. But Cummings is no longer even the main story. Instead, it is the eye-opening contortions from government figures – including the PM himself – to defend both the Durham journey and the subsequent excursion to Barnard Castle (now one of the UK’s must-see tourist destinations) that have taken centre stage.

From Boris Johnson’s insistence that his aide acted “responsibly, legally and with integrity”, to a coordinated Twitter campaign of Tory MPs waxing philosophical about the challenges of parenthood, to Michael Gove tying himself in knots this morning over whether he himself had ever taken a 60-mile drive to test his eyesight, the government’s strategy has been to back their man at all costs.

And costs there will be. Government allies are trying to paint this as a classic Westminster bubble row that makes journalists froth at the mouth but will be of little interest to the general public.

But this time it may be different.

According to a new YouGov poll released today, 71 per cent of the public think that, whatever the Prime Minister might say, Cummings broke lockdown rules, while 59 per cent believe he should resign. Tellingly, these numbers have got worse since Cummings addressed the nation on Monday. The debacle has hit Johnson’s approval ratings too, which have fallen 20 points in four days, and are now negative, as are the government’s.

There are many reasons why “Cummings-gate” appears to be cutting through when so many government scandals have gone virtually unnoticed. But do not underestimate the powder keg of public frustration. For nine full weeks, people have been confined to their homes, prevented from saying goodbye to their loved ones, banned from attending funerals, shamed for sitting in parks, and denied the right to have any human contact at all if they live alone. They have lost their jobs, had their weddings cancelled, seen their businesses collapse, their children’s education disrupted, their savings annihilated.

All of it, we were told, was necessary. And for the most part, the public mood has been not only compliant, but supportive. The government’s message that “we’re all in this together” resonated, especially coupled with the slogan that staying at home equalled saving lives. To see that same government retrospectively change the rules, to try to argue that the decisions Cummings made were not only legally sound but what anyone with common sense would have done, is clearly regarded as an insult to the personal sacrifices made by the vast majority of the population.

Not everyone agrees, and a study of social media suggests there is a minority view, strongly-held, that blames the media and backs Boris.

And none of this is to belittle the dilemma facing Cummings back in March when he realised he and his wife would struggle to look after their child if they became ill. Many will have sympathised with his account of his decision-making process at the Rose Garden press conference, and the PM was right when he implied that any parent in his position would have wanted to make sure their child was well cared for.

The problem that will not go away is that thousands of parents (many in far less fortunate positions than Cummings and his wife and their single child) have faced exactly that predicament over the past two months when they have fallen ill, believing that they would be breaking the law if they sought help from friends and family. Some may even have been fined for behaviour far less dramatic than a 260-mile trip across the country.

Why, they will be asking, does the “anti-elitist” Dominic Cummings get special treatment? When quizzed on this by an angry member of the public – a vicar – at today’s briefing, Matt Hancock suggested that any lockdown fines issued for childcare-related reasons would be reviewed. Never mind that this is essentially a retroactive change in the law – what about travelling to a funeral? Or to see a terminally ill relative one last time? Or to seek family support during a mental health crisis? Are lockdown fines even a viable penalty now?

The pressure on the government is not fading, as ministers hoped. Scotland Office minister Douglas Ross quit the government in protest today (a move that does not bode well for the Conservatives’ chances in next year’s Scottish Parliament elections), and some Tory backbenchers are furious.

A calmer response to the original allegations from Number 10 at the behest of Cummings on Friday might have prevented the situation from getting out of control. Cummings could either have apologised unequivocally on Friday and stepped down, on the quiet understanding that he could return to his job in a year or so when the Covid-19 crisis was a distant memory, or he could have answered the questions and defended himself politely. Instead, there was sneering and a refusal to take it seriously. Number 10 then chose to prioritise his job over its own coronavirus strategy and long-term political prospects. Why?

As the crisis-within-a-crisis unfolds, no doubt further revelations are in store. And I’ve learnt in recent years that political predictions can easily be wrong. But it’s hard this evening to see how the Johnson-Cummings duo can recover.

Due to a complicated set of circumstances, I have found myself spending large portions of my lockdown days with small children, getting acquainted with kids’ TV of the modern age. It has been quite an education – and not the kind I remember from shows like Play Days that dominated my own childhood.

Take the children’s favourite (and adults’ torment) Peppa Pig. Ignore for a moment the lurid acrylic colours and surrealist artwork reminiscent of Picasso. The world of Peppa raises some worrying questions.

For example, why do some animals wear clothes and live in houses, whereas other animals are naked and live behind bars in the zoo (a zoo which is cruelly visited by Peppa and her friends on a school trip)? Is this the bleak world of “some animals are more equal than others” envisaged by George Orwell? Come to think of it, is it a coincidence that the pigs come out on top? And let’s not even get started on the horror of the pet competition, in which an insufferable young elephant brings a poor enslaved gecko to school.

And why is so much of the action staged on a huge hill? Is the show, in fact, an allusion to the Myth of Sisyphus, who was cursed with rolling a giant stone up and down a mountain for all eternity, and has become the embodiment of existential angst – a feeling uncannily relatable to parents forced to watch Peppa?

Peppa Pig has, I have discovered, sparked the kind of online flamewar usually reserved for celebrity scandals. One psychologist has claimed it turns kids into “emotionless zombies” (but then, people have been saying that about TV in general since it was invented). Even parents who let their children watch it have concerns about Peppa’s bad behaviour towards her little brother.

Oona in Puffin Rock is another story entirely. She adores her baby brother Baba, whom she is always rescuing, and is a far more relatable heroine. In fact, the whole show is a relief after the garishness of Peppa, with proper adventures rather than hackneyed mundanity, all narrated in lyrical Irish accents.

But Puffin Rock is no bastion of equality. Puffins, shrews, rabbits, seals, and even clams get voices and narrative arcs, but the seagulls who share the island are mute, characterless templates of evil. Why the speciesism?

And then there’s the messaging, which is, shall we say, not subtle. I accept that children’s TV these days is supposed to be a good influence, but the moralistic tone of some verges on the puritanical. Cosmic Kids, the series of yoga classes that has gained worldwide popularity since lockdown began, is a brilliant way to keep children both entertained and exercised. But do all the yoga adventures have to end with an ethics lesson? Apparently, the moral of The Very Hungry Caterpillar was that things which taste nice are bad for us so we must only eat healthy food. I don’t remember that from the original – and since when is eating a hole through a watermelon and a slice of cheese such a crime?

Then again, it’s even worse when they get the message wrong. I was a fan of Ben And Holly’s Little Kingdom – it’s set in a land of elves and fairies, so at least there’s some authorial justification for all the glaring plot holes. But when Princess Holly is allowed to add a new competition to the Elf Games, what does she choose? “Looking pretty.” I’m not expecting a full cast of pint-sized feminists, but I thought we were past such overtly outdated gender stereotypes in the next generation’s entertainment.

The obvious answer to all of these objections is that adults overthink. The shows are designed to appeal to children (sometimes as young as one), and are not meant to make sense. Concepts and colour matter more than narrative integrity. And in this respect, they are probably tamer than their predecessors.

Do Peppa, Oona, or Ben and Holly really compare to the grotesque aliens of Tellytubbies, the distressing human-puppet relationships of Sesame Street, or the acid dreams of Zippy and Bungle in Rainbow?

Still, this feels different. I’m no expert, but didn’t children’s television used to be primarily about, well, entertainment – realms of bizarre fantasy that mirrored (if their stream of consciousness is anything to go by) the inside of the young minds they were intended for? Education was always in there, and the real-life presenters have always had the wide-eyed mania of people dosed up on fluoxetine and caffeine, but not every show was a civics lesson sugar-coated in hyped-up perkiness to make it palatable.

And it’s this new lack of the wonder that leads adult minds to wander down the rabbit hole, asking who funds the shadowy organisation that is Paw Patrol, and where are all the grown-up animals in Bing? When the worlds were weird and wonderful, we didn’t query the ways in which they fitted together, and were better able to suspend our disbelief. But when they look too much like reality – just a version of it skewed towards nameless authority and blatant favouritism – they risk becoming increasingly unheimlich, dystopian nightmares that Orwell and Kafka could only marvel at.

That’s my theory, anyway. But maybe I just need a few Magic Roundabout episodes to help me remember the magic of children’s TV.

I am talking, of course, of the Eurovision Song Contest.

The 65th annual extravaganza of vocal and theatric agility was due to take place in the Netherlands tonight. Alas, an arena crammed with 20,000 fanatic spectators crushed up against each other to jive in sweaty, synchronised inebriation doesn’t really jam with the spirit of social distancing. So this year, Eurovision is going virtual.

For those not yet inducted into the Eurovision cult, my obsession may seem difficult to understand. Isn’t it year after year of dated europop, tacky costumes and ear-splitting key changes, followed by a thinly-veiled political popularity contest in which the UK is inevitable punished by the rest of the continent?

To which the answer is yes – and that’s why it is so uniquely wonderful.

For Brits who are bitter that the UK last won in 1997 and have given up watching on the grounds that we never seem to rise above the bottom five, here are some of the bizarre twists and turns you have been missing over the last decade.

Let’s start with 2010, when the Spanish act was gatecrashed by an audience member. That in itself might not seem particularly note-worthy, but so surreal was Spain’s entry anyway (it featured dancers dressed as nightmarish children’s toys jerking along to the beat as if possessed by demonic forces) that the gate-crasher managed to dance along for an entire chorus before anyone realised he wasn’t meant to be there.

The year 2013 was vintage. Romania entered an opera singer dressed as what can only be described as “Disco Jafar”, belting out falsetto while mostly naked dancers writhed like apparitions from hell beneath him. Not to be outdone. Azerbaijan’s singer was accompanied by a doppelganger trapped in a “glass cage of of emotion”, mirroring his movements in anguished unison. Ukraine’s performance had a cameo from the tallest living person, playing a fantasy giant. Why? We don’t know

Ukraine upped its game the following year by boasting a human-sized hamster wheel, although the highlight of 2014 was obviously the pornographic Polish milkmaid who captured British hearts and minds by suggestively licking butter off her spoon.

And who can forget 2012’s Russian grandmothers, who seemed to have mistaken a singing contest for The Great British Bake-Off (their entry including actual biscuits)? Or Moldova’s 2017 fusion of Draco Malfoy and Gangnam Style? Or Australia’s entry last year, which featured Glinda The Good singing opera on top of a giant pogo stick? (Don’t ask why Australia is in the “Eurovision” Song Contest, it will only make you more confused.)

If this all sounds far too absurd to be taken seriously, you’re beginning to get the point. If only the British acts – wonderful and talented though they have no doubt been through the years – could get the message and ease up a little.

Eurovision is not about having a great song. It’s not about hitting number one in the charts or bringing glory to your country. It’s about getting up on stage and daring the audience to have as much fun as you clearly are – the more latex, glitter, and pyrotechnics the better.

Is there a way to bring the spirit of Eurovision into our homes even in these extraordinary times? Fortunately, salvation is at hand.

Across Europe (well, a fantasy version of Europe that encompasses Israel, Georgia, and the aforementioned Australia), public broadcasters are stepping up to fill the void. The BBC has plans for no fewer than eight Eurovision shows across various TV and radio channels, full of highlights, lowlights, and even the all important public vote. The main one, on BBC 1 from 6.30, features the great Graham Norton himself taking us through “an eclectic short list compiled by experts and celebrity super fans”.

Devoid of the pressure and pettiness that surrounds the actual competition, and with Saturday night plans on hold for the foreseeable future, let me suggest to all your Eurosceptics that tonight is the perfect opportunity to join the fold and see what the fuss is all about.

Have your beverage of choice handy, and work out some drinking rules before you start. I tend to drink for every key change, every violin, every visual nod to BDSM, and every pair of impractically tight white trousers. It helps to keep a scorecard, and write a short description of each act as you go so you can keep track. Last year’s Dutch winner, for example, was branded by my team as “My Piano Can Control The Weather”. Points should be awarded based on bravery and absurdity – never on musical merit.

In short, this night should be a celebration of enforced quirkiness. Given that the main BBC show is a compilation of highlights through the ages, there should be much to celebrate. Don’t worry about the voting (although Iceland is this year’s clear winner for the matching tracksuits alone), focus on the immersive experience. We all need a night off from sanity at the moment, and Eurovision is a trip down the rabbit hole like no other.

And if you need some help getting into the spirit of things, the 2016 interval show from Sweden will set you straight. Love, Love, Peace, Peace – featuring drums, roller-skates, and a flaming piano – is a step-by-step guide to winning the Eurovision Song Contest that tells you everything you need to know about what this night should be.

See you on the other side.

Lord Winston – made a peer in 1995, renowned for his extensive fertility research and as the host of a dozen TV documentaries, including Child Of Our Time – has caught me off-guard by returning my call. When I left a message with the assistant of the celebrity scientist, I wasn’t expecting him to just phone me back.

He is thoroughly understanding, charming, and surprisingly willing to chat about everything from lockdown measures in Israel to which ancient manuscripts could have survived had the Library of Alexandria not perished.

What follows is the most wide-ranging interview I have ever conducted. Our conversation darts from subject to subject as my pre-planned questions are cast by the wayside – which doesn’t matter, because what he’s talking about is far more interesting.

Asking about scrutiny of the government’s coronavirus strategy sparks a fervent defence of the House of Lords as a mechanism for democratic accountability, and an anecdote about how a Lords rebellion changed government policy on terrorism detention. And a question on whether we might see a post-pandemic baby boom (Professor Winston is, after all, an expert in fertility) becomes a conversation about the poor understanding the public has around IVF success and his scorn at clinics misleading hopeful couples.

But certain key themes do emerge. Winston is on a mission: to increase public engagement with the science behind this crisis by getting politicians to explain the most pressing issues in terms which normal people can understand.

“Why does it take so long to get a vaccine?” he asks, as if ticking them off an inventory. “What’s the risk of transmitting the disease if I touch somebody else’s newspaper? Do I need to wear a mask, and if so does it really protect me?”

Those are some of the practical questions, but he also wants this nationwide science lesson to go further.

“What is a virus? How do animals get infected by viruses? Why do we need to have viruses at all? Are they wholly bad?

“And to put it in context, what sort of virus is the one causing Covid-19, and why is it so threatening? What are the issues that we need to understand to make it tameable?”

That sounds like a lot of complexity for even the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) to get their heads around, let alone the members of public, some of whom (myself included) struggle to remember basic school biology. So far, the government’s messaging has been less about elucidation and more sloganeering: Stay Home, Protect The NHS, Save Lives.

In such confusing times, with a multifaceted crisis of this scale, is there really space for MPs to adopt this level of in-depth public engagement?

“It’s a mistake not to recognise that people understand much more than government is prepared to admit,” Winston warns. “Humans are by nature inquisitive and intelligent. This is the most intelligent species on the planet – and it’s not really confined to the House of Commons.”

That doesn’t mean the answers are straightforward. In a media landscape where everyone seems to think it’s obvious what the government should be doing (and even more obvious what it should have done), the Professor is refreshingly frank about the dilemmas facing our leaders.

“Boris Johnson has a difficulty, because he understands that saving the economy and saving lives are very conflicting ethically here,” he explains. “Our ethical responsibility is to save lives. The trouble is, if you don’t save the economy, do you in fact cause more deaths? These are things which politicians have to grapple with, and I don’t think it’s an easy decision.”

But while Winston is clear that it is not his job to advise on policy, he has little sympathy for the tendencies of politicians to over-simplify and refuse to acknowledge uncertainty.

“If you don’t know, say you don’t know. That’s the right thing to do. We can only understand things by not knowing things. We’re so frightened of failure to understand, but actually failure is really important because that’s how you learn – you learn how to fail, and that means how to succeed after you’ve failed.”

*****

“Failure” is not a concept that politicians like to acknowledge, especially during a crisis that is claiming tens of thousands of lives. While national responses have differed, and no government has got its pandemic response perfect, today’s politics has no time for admitting of error.

The public is therefore greeted to a series of U-turns – on lockdown, on testing, on the efficacy of masks – that can be difficult to reconcile with the official insistence that the government is doggedly following “the science”.

According to this scientist, this is a misguided and even dangerous way of looking at the world.

“There’s no such thing as scientific truth,” he tells me. “Anybody who has mingled with scientists knows that they – like anyone else – disagree with each other. That’s what we do. We have to disagree, we have to be sceptical. When somebody publishes an article in a journal, people like me are sceptical. We read it, and we say ‘well actually, what’s the problem? What have they missed?’ We’re not suggesting there’s cheating, but suggesting they might have misinterpreted what they’ve seen. That’s how science goes.”

Indeed, there has been vast variation in epidemiological modelling, from the infamous Imperial study which estimated 250,000 deaths in the UK if the virus were allowed to spread unchecked, to the Oxford research which suggested that 68 per cent of the British population had already had it.

And that’s only in the UK. Other countries (notably Sweden) are taking a radically different approach to combatting the pandemic, while scientists across the world have found conflicting evidence on all kinds of topics: whether recovered patients can be reinfected, the risk to and from children, and the efficacy of certain treatments such as hydroxychloroquine, to name just three.

These days, it’s a challenge to find much that the experts do agree on. It’s enough to shake anyone’s faith in empiricism. Winston, however, is sanguine.

“My big quarrel with Richard Dawkins is that he believes that science is the truth. It’s not. It’s a version of the truth, because the truth does change. And it changes partly because we argue and reflect and dissect it. We find out things that we didn’t know before.

“So when Neil Ferguson (who is a colleague of mine at Imperial) gives advice to Cobra, it’s his best estimate. Now, being an expert, his guess is likely to be very good, but it’s not proof. It’s an opinion based on what he knows, and his judgement.”

And so we return once more to the issue of science communication, and how much of this thorny ambiguity people can really be expected to understand. Honestly admitting “we don’t know yet, but we’re doing our best to find out and will update you when we know more” is a high-risk political strategy, and could undermine confidence in the graphs and charts presented by medical officials at the government’s daily press briefings.

But on this, Professor Winston is unequivocal: it isn’t just a matter of trusting the public, it’s about earning their trust in return.

“If you don’t trust the public, they won’t trust you,” he says. “We should treat the public as intelligent.”

*****

It is hard to recall another single issue dominating the global media for so long in the way that Covid-19 has done. Even the 9/11 terrorism attacks and Princess Diana’s death did not consume every western news front page for two straight months. We are, as we are reminded daily, living in unprecedented times.

So while Professor Winston’s perspective on the scientific developments of the coronavirus crisis are fascinating, it’s an unexpected relief to hear him zoom out and take a more holistic view of what’s going on.

“Things like Covid-19 have been going on in human affairs ever since history began,” he reminds me, before launching into an analogy about the Black Death of 1347. It’s a comparison many have made, mostly in examining morality rates, but he has a different point.

“The Black Death was the result of human ingenuity and human technology,” he explains, referring of course to shipping, which brought the Yersinia pestis bacteria to our shores via flea-ridden rats. Today’s pandemic is the result of similar ingenuity and technology, in the form of the aircraft, which “brings us into contact with pathogens we’ve never encountered before” and enabled Covid-19 to spread across the world before we even realised what it was.

The response from governments of all political stripes – from the “America First” isolationism of Donald Trump’s administration, to the “open borders” ethos of the EU – has been to turn inwards. Stop the flights, close the borders, focus on our own.

Of course, by that time, it was already too late.

Indeed, Professor Winston is scathing about the attitude of western governments towards pandemic preparation, pointing out that we’ve been here before. The first known Ebola outbreak, for example, was in 1976 in South Sudan. But western governments only started paying attention to it nearly forty years later, when an outbreak began spreading widely and rapidly enough that there was a risk of it being transmitted via aircraft to the rest of the world.

Lessons, it seems, were not learned, and we are now suffering the consequences. And now we need to look forwards as well as back. Even if Britain is able to get its own epidemic under control, there will be a continued risk of further outbreaks here if Covid-19 is allowed to run rampant across less developed parts of the world, where health systems are unable to cope.

So rather than this pandemic sparking a trend towards more isolationism, Winston believes that the key both to tackling this crisis and to future pandemic prevention is greater global cooperation.

“One of our duties at the end of this, once we’ve got our wits together, is to recognise that we’re going to have to spend a lot of time trying to help the developing world,” he warns. “Because if we don’t, we’re going to have a real problem on our hands. It’s for our own safety, as well as theirs.”

*****

Globalisation, and whether it can survive this pandemic, is just one of the topics that has been under the media microscope when we try to envisage what life after Covid-19 might look like. The list is long. Is the era of convenient long-haul air travel over? Has the idea of the “working week” fundamentally shifted now that working from home is not just commonplace but essential? What has our reaction to this pandemic taught us about how we connect with others and the fundamentals of social interaction within our communities?

Technology lies at the heart of such issues. As face-to-face contact has been eliminated from our lives, the digital realm has stepped up to fill the void of social distancing. As such, tech concepts and companies that were treated with increasing mistrust until very recently have now become our saviours.

Should we be worried about our overnight embrace of all things Silicon Valley? This time last year, remember, the World Health Organisation was issuing dire warnings about children and screen time, cautioning parents not to allow children under five more than an hour a day looking at any screen, regardless of what was on it.

Leaving aside whether this was the best use of the WHO’s energy and resources, times have certainly changed – and Professor Winston is embracing it.

“At 4 o’clock every afternoon, I will get a call from Ruby, age three, in California. It’s a fantastic technology,” he says excitedly, pointing out how unbearable lockdown would be if we didn’t have FaceTime and Skype to stay connected with friends and family.

“We are so suspicious of the wrong technologies. We think that social media is really dangerous, that our children shouldn’t touch it. But it’s obvious that there are many aspects of social media that are really useful to humanity.”

And interestingly, he sees hidden benefits to the Zoom revolution in the unlikeliest of places: medicine.

“Medicine is not about manipulating molecules,” he tells me. “For most people it’s not about very clever, difficult, complex treatments. It’s about understanding what the patient is feeling.”

The NHS, he says, has for a while now been at risk of getting too “technologically complex”, obsessing over miracle innovations like “personalised medicine” (where treatment can be tailored to individuals based on their genome) and forgetting to consider the patient as a person.

“In my view, ‘personalised medicine’ is actually impersonalised medicine, because what you’re doing as a doctor is not looking at the patient’s face, but looking at the computer screen in front of you.”

After six weeks of lockdown, with non-Covid patients avoiding physical healthcare settings, the situation looks somewhat different – at all stages of the healthcare process, but especially in General Practice. GP surgeries that have for years resisted the idea of video or phone appointments are finally embracing this technology, and have moved almost entirely online. Not only is it more convenient for patients (as evidenced by the success of the health tech firms that have offered private virtual GP appointments for years), but the lack of physical contact could, paradoxically, bring doctors and patients closer together.

“Suddenly Zoom and Microsoft Teams and the others will make a massive difference to the way we communicate with our doctor,” Winston predicts. “It could well be that doctors actually look at the face of the patient much more on a screen than they ever did before. And a patient who sees the doctor not looking at them will quite rightly feel very disturbed and will probably say so.”

It’s a counter-intuitive view, and an unexpected one from a high-profile member of the medical establishment. But I wonder whether he might have a point. As we are all experiencing now, when physical proximity isn’t an option, humans adapt to signal their engagement in other ways. You can’t text on your phone while on a Zoom conference call in the same way you might in a normal meeting. Rather than driving us into our own individual bubbles, is the shift towards virtual life actually forcing us to properly listen to each other?

I’m not sure I’m convinced, but if life does ever return to some semblance of normality, I’ll be first in line to sign up for virtual doctors appointments.

*****

So what comes next in terms of this pandemic? Trying to pin Professor Winston down on whether there is any cause for optimism proves difficult. He discusses at length the medical community’s patchy understanding of microbes and viruses, and why finding a cure for diseases is such a challenge. One just as big, he believes, as tackling climate change.

“Of all the areas of medical specialisation, the most complex by far is immunology,” he notes, before listing instances of how these microscopic enemy hordes have disrupted human civilisations, from the Plague of Athens (possibly viral – we still don’t know) to the Spanish Flu, which killed more people than the First World War.

Classics, in fact, keeps cropping up in our discussion. Like me, Winston proves to be a huge fan of the Roman poet Lucretius, who set his thoughts about the scientific origins of the universe and atomic theory into elegant didactic verse.

“Lucretius got it right so often,” he enthuses. “The idea of infinity, the idea of atoms, the idea that once we die, that’s it – you’ve got to die, so why worry about it? He comes up with the most elegant ways of expressing the basic human frailty.”

One of the key themes of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura (“On the Nature of Things”) is that death is both inevitable and final, and the key to human happiness lies in accepting this hard truth. This will not necessarily be the most comforting sentiment at a time when death counts are released each day and plastered over every news outlet.

But then, perhaps there is optimism even in inevitability. The human race has faced existential crises for as long as it has existed. And yet, 200,000 years on, here we still are.

There is so much to feel depressed about at the moment – the scale of this pandemic, the uncertainty of what comes next, and the refrain from politicians and scientists alike that there is no “going back to normal” after life has been fundamentally changed by the virus. With summer on the horizon, we are still asking “if I go for a walk in the park, what’s my risk?”, and seem as far away from a satisfactory answer as we were in March.

Still, next time I feel overwhelmed by anxiety, I will think first of Lucretius, and then of Professor Winston’s hopeful reminder of the ingenuity and resilience of the human spirit: “There’s never been an organism that humans haven’t found a strategy to deal with.”

Thousands of businesses have already collapsed since the lockdown began, from big names such as fashion retailers Oasis and Warehouse, to “one-man bands” offering services incompatible with social distancing – whether that’s cleaning, tour-guiding, or dentistry.

The Treasury and the Bank of England have been working overtime to support. business, but there have been some major gaps in their efforts. The package for the self-employed, for example, won’t come into force until June (over three months since freelance work began to dry up in certain sectors), and it offers little to owners of personal service companies.

And it wasn’t until this week that the Chancellor changed course, following mounting pressure. He offered 100 per cent government-backed credit (branded “Bounce Back Loans”) to Britain’s smallest businesses, which had been struggling to access finance from the banks at this critical time.

Depressed? There is hope. Emma Jones MBE is the founder of Enterprise Nation, a small business support provider and community that connects and nurtures Britain’s entrepreneurs. She has spent her career launching, growing, and supporting start-ups. She is co-chair of the Prime Minister’s Small Business, Scale-up and Entrepreneurs Business Council. If anyone has their finger on the pulse of Britain’s enterprise community, it’s Emma.

So what can she tell us about the reality for the UK’s 5.9 million SMEs during these challenging times, and and the way forward for Britain’s entrepreneurs?

Let’s start with the government – is support getting to those who need it?

Emma Jones: The picture is mixed. Our own research has found that the local authority grants have not yet found their way to all of those eligible in local areas. And there are still issues around firms that are based in co-working spaces, for example, that are excluded from this type of grant support. We’re in dialogue with the Small Business Minister about this.

Moreover, the self-employed are not due to hear about their acceptance for support until mid-May, and won’t receive anything until June unless they are eligible for Universal Credit. The recently announced Bounce Back Loans will offer some reassurance, although we know small firms are unlikely to want to take on more debt in times of uncertainty.

We ran a survey of our members which reported that 83 per cent were still working on a financial package to take them through the crisis. We’ve set up a support page on our website that is constantly updated, and we’ve seen a 200 per cent increase in traffic. At first, many of the queries were around eligibility to access government financial support. That initial demand for financial information has now been replaced with people looking to find ways to trade. So a certain amount of confusion remains but entrepreneurs are determined to find a way through.

How are entrepreneurs adapting to these unprecedented circumstances?

At the start, the main concern was finance, but attention is now shifting to how to make money, if that’s possible under the current rules, and how to position for the future.

A recent survey we did of our members found that 63 per cent are now intending to boost their digital presence, as well as looking at ways they can diversify in the future to mitigate risk.

We’ve seen some great examples of adapting. Didsbury Gin, for instance, switched their equipment to produce hand sanitiser. David Marr pivoted from an essential oils business to delivering grocery boxes in London – he’s turned over £90k in his first month of launching Clapham Fresh. Then there’s beauty and wellness retailer Seekology, which has moved from a shop in Richmond to being 100 per cent online, and supporting new British brands into the bargain. There are so many great examples of innovation and ingenuity out there.

What potential do you see for entrepreneurs during this crisis, and if the world is going to change as much as we think it will, where are the business opportunities?

Around half of all small firms are still not online, and this crisis could be a catalyst for changing that. We’re already seeing so many people moving quickly to take their business online – whether that’s offering services remotely, engaging more with social media, or looking for new online marketplaces such as Etsy and Amazon and building a customer base there.

We’re obviously seeing a lot of small hospitality retailers, such as bars and street food outlets, start to do deliveries for the first time. This may well continue.

And now that they’ve got a taste for it, many employers are getting comfortable allowing staff to be home-based more often. We expect we’ll see continued innovation in online meeting services and cloud-based organisational platforms. The British are already some of the world’s keenest early adopters of online shopping, so expect to see yet more innovation there too.

How can government policy help lay the groundwork for our entrepreneurial scene to bounce back as quickly as possible?

We know small business founders are using this time to think about the skills they need to take them into the future. Our recent survey showed that 53 per cent are confident they will get to point when they can focus on skills such as marketing and social media, which will continue to be crucial. In fact,19 per cent are ahead of the game and working on this right now.

After the initial crisis response, the government should turn to bringing in help to support firms to increase those skills and prepare for what’s next. We’re already working with BEIS to increase the availability of expert advice in all areas, including finding new markets, selling on new online platforms, and exporting, as well as increasing digital skills.

Finally, what advice do you have for those struggling with their start-ups or considering launching their own business now?

The crisis may turn out to be a leveller. For some, it will be an opportunity to grasp with both hands. For others it will be discouraging, potentially putting an end to that particular avenue.

But history tells us that economic crises create more entrepreneurs, not fewer. They can be the mother of invention. So there is hope, for all entrepreneurs both existing and potential.

Depending on what your idea is, it might be worth delaying for a while as even the businesses least affected are bracing themselves for what’s to come. But that doesn’t mean it won’t work in the long run. We’d recommend taking some advice and really honing those skills in the meantime. Remember, Britain has always been a nation of entrepreneurs.

Last week, an outraged Guardian reported that Cummings was “on the secret scientific group advising the government on the coronavirus pandemic”. Panic and fury ensued. MPs, journalists, and scientific officials alike demanded to know why Cummings had been there, what role he had played, and whether he was responsible for the UK dragging its heels over implementing the Covid-19 lockdown measures seen in other countries.

A strongly-worded government statement denied that Cummings was “on” Sage and called the whole story “ludicrous”.

But that isn’t the full story. In an unexpected plot twist, sources involved in Sage have revealed to Bloomberg that Cummings did indeed exert pressure on the scientists… to move to lockdown sooner.

Assuming it is accurate, and it seems to be, this latest development doesn’t fit anyone’s narrative. The government’s insistence that Cummings attended only to “listen” and occasionally “ask questions or offer help” has been undermined by reports that he made his own views clear and “swayed the discussion toward faster action”.

But the revelations are a blow for die-hard critics of Cummings too. Up until now, the popular attitude has been that Boris Johnson’s chief aide was a fierce opponent of lockdown measures, pushing a much derailed (and misunderstood) “herd immunity” strategy that would let the virus tear through the population, to hell with the death toll. This new leak suggests the exact opposite.

Cummings, who appears to purposefully style himself in the manner of an evil scientist out of a James Bond film, is used to being cast as the villain. Indeed, he seems to revel in it.

While friends insist that he is very nice in person, he has a history of picking unnecessary fights and has caused drama and division in virtually every political job he has ever had. His alienating behaviour as Michael Gove’s spad in the Department for Education led to his boss getting a swift demotion, while his abrasive approach on the Vote Leave campaign (depicted by Benedict Cumberbatch in the Channel 4 drama) almost got him fired.

Since moving to Downing Street as the Prime Minister’s top adviser, Cummings has been a lightning rod for critics of both Johnson and Brexit to vent their ire. They accuse him of wielding undue and unaccountable influence, of riding roughshod through convention and protocol, of being a power-hungry maniac determined to tear down the entire British system of government, driven by deluded dreams of Silicon Valley-esque “creative destruction”.

Some of this is no doubt unfair, but Cummings has hardly helped himself by attacking the judiciary, going to war with the BBC, and promising a full-scale assault on the civil service immediately after the election last December. And the scandal at the start of the year when he hired an adviser with dubious credentials and a stated sympathy towards eugenics will have crystallised the public perception as a reckless maverick itching to play god with people’s lives.

If the shoe fits, wear it – and in the minds of many critics, Cummings wears the shoes of a crazed pseudoscientist, paired with a silly t-shirt emblazoned with a mad slogan suggesting a callous attitude to risk, topped off with a stupid hat.

A government that has used the mantra “guided by the science” since the start of this crisis to justify its response (and outcomes that look increasingly unfavourable compared to other countries) has a problem on its hands when it turns out that “science” may have been influenced by a political appointee with his own experimental agenda.

And yet, the facts don’t fit. However much those on the left might want to blame Cummings for the UK’s hesitation in following other countries’ coronavirus response, it seems they may have him to thank for the restrictions coming in when they did.

As the Bloomberg report outlines, the government’s decision to close pubs and then enter full lockdown three days later came directly after Cummings’ interventions. And far from challenging the scientists, one Sage attendee reveals that there was “relief that Cummings had pushed for a lockdown because there were concerns that politicians had not fully understood how serious the coronavirus emergency had become”.

That does not make Cummings’ alleged conduct in these meetings any more appropriate. As others, most notably former government chief scientific adviser Sir David King, have pointed out, the scientific advice given to the government “should be free of any political bias”, with no place for political aides to provide their own interpretation.

Moreover, if Sage’s role was to purely to offer scientific advice, then it is unclear why it was discussing policy – such as lockdowns – at all. The blurring of these two fields, epitomised by the presence of Cummings, presents the government with some difficult questions.

But in terms of what actually happened, the logical conclusion from the evidence so far is that the Sage scientists were arguing over the best course of action, and Cummings (with characteristic impatience) urged them to stop dithering and make a decision, then communicated their advice back to Number 10 in terms that the Prime Minister would take seriously.

That still suggests an unelected adviser wielding disproportionate influence, perhaps for his own political ends. But with the general consensus that Britain moved too late on implementing strict measures, the government’s pro-lockdown critics are left with the incongruent thought that Cummings’ unsanctioned presence at the Sage meetings may have saved hundreds of lives.

The biggest takeaway from these revelations should be in puncturing the comforting fiction pushed by the government and parts of the media that “the science” of Covid-19 is a single objective truth on which scientists are united, rather than a messy debate between various experts that leaders must absorb before making political decisions.

That isn’t nearly so satisfying a conclusion as a sensationalist story about the Prime Minister’s rogue adviser and his Blofeld-cat-stroking schemes.

“I want to thank you, the people of this country, for the sheer grit and guts you have shown and are continuing to show,” he said, speaking from outside Number 10 in a throwback to the age of political normalcy.

When the PM was first admitted to hospital, public spirits were still high. Barely two weeks into lockdown, with schools scheduled to be off anyway for the Easter break, these strange circumstances could have been viewed as some kind of odd extended holiday.

Since then, it seems fatigue has set in. After five weeks of being unable to see friends and family, stuck in an endless cycle of Netflix and Zoom calls in a confined space with the same people (or, for some, utterly alone), with trips to the supermarket the only permitted way to break up the monotony, the government knows that Pollyanna-esque Blitz spirit could be giving way to frustration.

This will be exacerbated as other countries – from Hong Kong to Denmark to even the disaster zone that was Italy two months ago – have begun relaxing restrictions, or at least announcing guidance as to when and how they might be lifted. In contrast, the UK government has refused to even hint at the outline of a plan, putting up a rotation of ministers at the daily press briefings who echo the refrain of “light at the end of the tunnel”.

Johnson’s mission today, therefore, was twofold: make it clear to the public that he is well and truly back in charge, and give the nation’s spirits a much-needed boost.

“I in no way minimise the continuing problems we face, and yet it is also true that we are making progress,” he declared, crediting “our collective national resolve” for the success in preventing the health service from being overwhelmed.

“If this virus were a physical assailant, an unexpected and invisible mugger – which I can tell you from personal experience it is – then this is the moment when we have begun together to wrestle it to the floor.”

We have grown used to less colourful variants on the theme of British grit and resilience over the last few weeks – from Dominic Raab, Matt Hancock, Michael Gove and others. But as Prime Minister, elected less than five months ago with a sensational 80-seat majority, Johnson alone had the authority and the mandate to go further, and voice sentiment that his ministers have not dared to acknowledge: how much these lockdown measures are costing us, both economically and in terms of fundamental civil liberties.

“I know how hard and how stressful it has been to give up, even temporarily, those ancient and basic freedoms – not seeing friends, not seeing loved ones, working from home, managing the kids, worrying about your job and your firm,” he said, addressing head-on, with his usual rhetorical bombast, concerns which other ministers have tried to skirt around.

“So let me say directly also to British business, to the shopkeepers, to the entrepreneurs, to the hospitality sector, to everyone on whom our economy depends: I understand your impatience.”

That sense of impatience is both real and justified. When Johnson was admitted to hospital, there were warnings about some of the inevitable unintended consequences of the lockdown. Today, those warnings are reality. Since the crisis began, 1.5 million people have applied for Universal Credit on losing their jobs. One million employees were signed up to the government’s Job Retention Scheme on the first day of applications, with eight million more expected to follow – at an estimated cost of £40bn this quarter. Tens of thousands of businesses have already collapsed since March. Entire sectors are at risk of annihilation.

Calls to the national domestic violence hotline are up 49 per cent, and there have been 14 domestic abuse killings in less than a month. Calls to mental health hotlines have increased too. Referrals for suspected cancer cases, meanwhile, are down 80 per cent, with similar decreases for other medical referrals. There are fears that people with health conditions unrelated to Covid-19 are not getting the diagnoses and treatment they need, leading to avoidable deaths.

On the other side of the equation is the necessity of avoiding a second peak, of controlling the spread to ensure that the health service can cope, and – to be blunt – of saving as many lives as possible. As someone who was himself almost a victim of coronavirus, Johnson will be all too aware of the risks of moving too fast.

His performance, then, was a delicate balancing act: urge continued restraint and endurance, re-inspire the public’s trust in the government, while communicating a sense of progress, hope, and of real progress of weeks of stagnation.

There was language in the speech that we have not heard before and that indicates a shift in the bunker-mentality that has endured since Johnson was hospitalised. While the Prime Minister refused to spell out the next steps, he was bold enough to admit that “difficult judgments will be made”, and promised “maximum possible transparency” in doing so.

Perhaps Downing Street has been too pront to drip-feeding the public withsimplistic messaging, not trusting them to understand the trade-offs of decision making, Johnson struck a different tone. “I want to share all our working and our thinking, my thinking, with you the British people,” he insisted.

And for the first time, there was the acknowledgement that working out a way forward is not just about “the science” (as though that were one unified and specific thing). It requires rigorous and open debate.

“We will also be reaching out to build the biggest possible consensus,” he said. Johnson promised “across business, across industry, across all parts of our United Kingdom, across party lines, bringing in opposition parties as far as we possibly can.” Labour’s new leader Sir Keir Starmer, who faced Dominic Raab at PMQs last week, will be reassured, as will those in the business and medical communities who might have felt shut out.

Johnson has aspired to the rhetorical and political brilliance of Churchill throughout his career. And while coronavirus is a very different type of crisis to the Second World War, his words today had echoes of that Churchillian adage: “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

“I ask you to contain your impatience,” Johnson urged, “because I believe we are coming now to the end of the first phase of this conflict.”

What the next phase will look like is still anyone’s guess, though there were hints that we will start to hear more over the coming days. But while Boris Johnson may not scale the lofty heights of Churchill, it is a relief in itself that Britain has its Prime Minister back at the helm.

Still, Starmer made the best of it, and will be satisfied with his performance. His polite but probing style (exactly what you’d expect from a career barrister) was note-worthy only because it differed so dramatically from the shambolic performances we have all grown accustomed to from Jeremy Corbyn.

The only nod to his predecessor’s approach was in reading out an account from care worker about being “terrified” and having to wear “homemade masks” due to the lack of personal protective equipment. But whereas Corbyn would have played up the outrage, Starmer remained calm and cordial throughout.

Whether pointing out the discrepancy between the government’s stated testing capabilities and the actual number carried out or highlighting reports of British firms now supplying PPE abroad after their offers to the UK government were ignored, Starmer’s strategy was cooly forensic. When he said he was “disappointed” that the government didn’t have a figure on care worker deaths and promised “I put the First Secretary on notice that I’ll be asking the same question next week, and hopefully we can have a better answer”, it was clear this wasn’t going to slip his mind. Dominic Raab was left with little space for the bluster and misdirection of a normal boisterous PMQs session.

But then, there was nothing normal about this occasion. The deafening braying that is usually such a feature of this weekly rigamarole was replaced by the same refrain from both Starmer and Raab about “paying tribute” to NHS and care workers.

Indeed, Raab’s understated performance also proved well suited to this new pared-down format. True, he looked as worn out as you would expect of someone thrust into a leadership role three weeks ago who hasn’t slept since. That said, he has clearly grown in confidence since assuming responsibility, and his answers were succinct and self-assured. He has had practice – Starmer’s questions on testing, care homes, and PPE were mostly repeats of questions raised daily at the government press briefings. And if his tone occasionally sounded a tad frenzied, who can blame him – it’s how we all feel.

Overall, the mood of this virtual PMQs started out somewhat flat, and there was an inevitable technical glitch when former Scottish Secretary David Mundell was unable to connect (a standard feature of all video conferences ever), but the questions from MPs via Zoom actually worked surprisingly well.

It was refreshing – not to mention desperately necessary after weeks of democratic neglect – to see MPs raising issues pertinent to their local areas and constituents: council funding, writing off hospital debt, repatriating stranded British nationals, domestic tourism, and even the prognosis for British zoos. These subject may not be high-profile enough to always make it into the daily Downing Street press briefings, but it is vital that MPs continue to represent the interests of their constituents, and that the government knows it cannot overlook them forever.

When Tory Peter Bone demanded to know “What on earth is going on? When are banks going to act in the national interest?” and Labour’s Lucy Powell asked about the plight of the hospitality and retail sector it was a relief to see that someone has been paying attention.

It was also intriguing to get a glimpse into MPs’ home offices. Viewers may have noticed Ian Blackford’s small collection of footballs in the background, Nicholas Fletcher’s brave choice of wallpaper, Ruth Cadbury’s colourful art collection, and the well-stocked bookshelves of Liz Saville Roberts and Angela Eagle. Proof, then, that our MPs may in fact be human after all. Labour’s Barry Gardiner appeared to be being beamed in from a Travel Lodge.

A final special shout-out must go to House of Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle – not because he stole the show, but because he very adamantly did not. His brisk, non-nonsense attitude delivered a dose of normality to this extraordinary set-up. He switched smoothly between MPs present in the chamber and those participating by video-link, and ensured that the session wrapped up promptly.

Imagine if former Speaker John Bercow had been in charge, playing to the crowd at home and amplifying his bellows of “Ooorrrddeerrr!” to carry across the nation, never mind the broken laptop speakers? Thankfully, Bercow belongs to another era.

The report at the weekend by Sunday Times journalists Jonathan Calvert, George Arbuthnott and Jonathan Leake has reignited a bitter war between Boris Johnson’s government and the tribe of politicians, journalists and commentators who have been hell-bent on tearing him down ever since he switched to lead the Vote Leave campaign in 2016.

The Sunday Times report makes damning reading. It catalogues a litany of alleged errors in healthcare planning, logistics, procurement and government response that may prove devastating to the UK’s eventual Covid-19 death toll, not to mention the hit to the economy.

These issues demand proper scrutiny. But they are not what has whipped up the ire of those most audibly outraged. The focus over the last 24 hours has been on the Prime Minister’s personal failings: his absence at Cobra meetings, his holiday plans, his reluctance to read briefing documents, and his tendency to delegate key decisions to those working beneath him.

This, it is claimed – both implicitly by the tone of the report and explicitly by Johnson’s critics, who point to graphs of rising fatalities – is why the UK is due to suffer far more than our European neighbours.

A dash of perspective is desperately needed. This narrative on the part of Johnson’s angriest critics is not only simplistic and unfair – it is a dangerous distraction from the very real ways that the government has botched and continues to botch crucial decisions.

There are clearly some areas in which Britain was especially poorly prepared for this crisis. Three years of Brexit infighting had sucked the political oxygen out of virtually every other policy area, pandemic preparedness included. It is a stroke of desperate bad luck that Covid-19 began to spread just as the government was finally succeeding in leaving the EU, with all eyes in Westminster fixed on the issue that has dominated our national debate for so long.

There are disturbing revelations about pandemic planning over the last decade, long before Johnson got hold of the keys to Downing Street. The Sunday Times report stresses the impact of austerity on the NHS post-2010, a policy implemented by a government that did not involve the current Prime Minister. And details about Exercise Cygnus, the UK’s 2016 pandemic rehearsal simulation, reveal gaping holes in the contingency planning – particularly on the lack of PPE and ventilators – that were not rectified by the time the real virus struck.

It seems likely too that our national obsession with the annual NHS winter crisis, which pits ministers against health service officials in a perennial blame game over funding and beds, has drawn attention and resources away from long-term pandemic investment for years.

This is not to excuse government mistakes since January. One major point that the Sunday Times piece gets spot on is the inevitability of a public inquiry in the handling of Covid-19. And there are questions to answer that cannot be cast back to previous administrations.

In particular, what did the scientific advice indicate, and when? Were the contrasting views of different scientific teams taken into account? How much was policy led “by the science” (at the government likes to insist), and how much by the panic over scenes of crowded Italian hospitals and the media demands to “do something”? Were the economic, social, and indeed health consequences of an extended lockdown taken into account when decisions were made? How did the speed at which Britain moved compare to other European countries, and what impact did this have on the eventual outcomes?

On logistics, exactly whose job was it to ensure adequate supplies of test kits and PPE, and why has every step in the chain – NHS trusts, Public Health England, the Department for Health, the cabinet – been able to bounce the blame back and forth? Why wasn’t there an adequate plan for care homes, given the obvious risk of outbreaks there? And most crucially, why did it take so long to start implementing the plans drawn up for precisely this purpose?

These questions go beyond who chaired Cobra meetings or where the Prime Minister went on his holidays. And the country deserves proper answers. Unfortunately, we are not likely to get them while the focus remains so heavily on the personality battles of the past.

In newspapers, TV interviews, social media posts, the lines are being drawn. The Sunday Times report has become a rallying point for the old political camps to coalesce around.

On one side, Team Boris: the usual suspects, many of them vocal Brexiteers or Tory heavyweights, stubbornly insisting that now is not the time to question a government acting under extremely challenging circumstances, however high the stakes and obvious the failings. On the other: embittered Remainiacs and lifelong critics of the Prime Minister, screaming that it has always been obvious that Johnson is not fit to be anywhere near Downing Street.

The former group are dangerously misguided. Scrutiny of the government has never been more vital. The latter have let their obsession with Johnson’s perceived laziness – a charge suggested repeatedly in the Sunday Times – distort their reason. The idea that Britain could have avoided this crisis had Johnson turned up to more Cobra meetings is farcical.

What may be true is that Johnson’s leadership style – delegating responsibility to ministers and officials, and trusting them to run their department – was not suited to an all-encompassing national crisis of this scale. Some previous Prime Ministers – Margaret Thatcher, perhaps – would most likely have been inclined to interrogate scientists and department heads more thoroughly throughout January and February, asking difficult questions when Johnson appears to have accepted the consensus.

But lest we forget, such an iron grip on government was repeatedly cited as one of Theresa May’s major flaws during her time in office. Flexibility and delegation, which seems to be what Johnson was attempting in those early months, were back then considered key prime ministerial qualities. This is possibly one reason why, despite the list of errors, the government is still riding high in the polls – a YouGov poll on Friday put public support for the government’s handling of the crisis at 66 per cent.

Regardless, while it is undoubtedly true that Britain’s coronavirus experience would have looked very different under another Prime Minister, we won’t be able to determine exactly how until long after this is over, when we can compare the UK data with other countries which acted differently. At the moment, the focus on the government needs to be on what’s happening right now: the continued farce over testing, PPE, business support, and a strategy for exiting the lockdown.

Those questions are much easier to dismiss in an atmosphere of tribal polarisation. Accusing the Prime Minister of being lazy and absent, when he is currently recovering from what looked a lot like a near-death experience, hands the government a perfect excuse to dismiss valid and necessary criticism as a partisan attack. Similarly, demanding apologies and explanations for decisions taken years back under a completely different administration detracts attention from the mistakes that are still being made now.

And presenting charts of infections and death rates without context (such as showing them relative to population sizes) whips up panic and makes it impossible to properly scrutinise how the government is actually doing, and where it must improve.

Clearly, there have been errors – from this Prime Minister, from his government, from its predecessors, from the WHO, and from institutions like Public Health England and NHS trusts. But turning coronavirus into the latest instalment of the Brexit Wars won’t help us fix them or save lives. It will simply prevent us from asking the questions that could.

Professor Sikora is a leading voice in the medical profession, and while not an epidemiologist, has been outspoken about the UK health service’s response to the Covid-19.

His comments, particularly on Twitter, have gained traction since this crisis began and at times gone against the grain of the mainstream medical community. He has, for example, been one of few public voices to focus attention not on Covid-19 cases, but on the hidden impact of this pandemic and subsequent lockdown measures to other patients.

And that isn’t the only view that sets him apart. A quick glance at Professor Sikora’s Twitter profile reveals words that we have heard little in the last month: “encouraging”, positive”, “great news”, “progress”.

In contrast to the daily press conferences which play down the deceleration in the spread of this virus, he strikes an optimistic tone. He has posited over the last few days that we have reached the plateau of cases and hospital admissions – with the plateau in fatalities not far behind. Just today he tweeted: “More encouraging figures today – both infections and fatalities down.The lag over the weekend makes it difficult to draw firm conclusions, but it does look like we could be on the plateau of mortalities now. The numbers will bounce around, but the trend is good.”

And there’s other good news too this week. Rutherford Health, the private cancer therapy provider where Professor Sikora is chief medical officer, has begun antibody testing for its staff and patients, using testing kits from South Korea. The company hopes that the results of its testing regime could help the government roll out antibody testing across the UK to determine how many people have already had the virus – one crucial route out of lockdown.

When I chatted to him, all that was still on the horizon, but he had a lot to say about other aspects of this crisis. His underlying message was that, while the NHS has made impressive strides in preparing for the peak in cases, it is crucial to get back to normal as quickly as we can after that – for both patients and for society.

How do you think the NHS has been coping with Covid-19 so far?

There’s been fantastic organisation. Britain is very good at this. The health service management and professionals – doctors, nurses, estates management, procurement, all the rest of it – is working as a single team, because it has a central purpose. Hospitals have been transformed over the last four weeks.

The NHS is well prepared, as well as it can be. The extra hospitals are there. People have worked day and night to get to where we are. And I think we’re better organised than some other countries.

Do you have any concerns?

The reason I think we have to steady on a bit is that cancer patients and cardio patients are being thrown under the bus at the moment. In cancer treatment, a three-week delay is neither here nor there. But if you delay it more than a month or six weeks, you are going to affect the outcomes for those patients.

And the same applies to those people waiting for things like valve replacements. We need to get those patients through the system. And we need the testing, to make sure we can keep certain parts of the hospital completely Covid-free, and therefore get on with routine care.

We’ve just got to keep the whole system moving. We can put off people who need, for example, a hip replacement or a knee replacement – it’s a bit harsh on them, but they can wait until the autumn. But if you’ve got cancer, we can’t wait until the autumn.

This is going to come to an end, and if we’ve got a cohort of cancer patients who for the next six months don’t get proper treatment, that would be terribly sad.

Do you think the government understands that?

Sort of. I don’t think they did to start with. “Get everything out that’s not Covid, everything” – that was the impression one got.

That’s now been rectified. Priority lists have been drawn up, and patients are being treated.

We’ve got to get a balance. When this started off four weeks ago, it looked as though we were going to lose that sense of balance. Now, it’s there. And I think using the private sector to build up capacity is great – for cancer and for other things.

It is going to be a bumpy ride, but we’re going to get through it in the next few weeks.

What about balancing the impact on people’s mental health

I feel so sorry for people living in small flats with their teenaged kids or small children, for example – no garden, the weather’s getting warmer, and what are they going to do? There’s only so much daytime TV you can take. People will have serious mental health issues and take it out on each other. And people living on their own are particularly adversely affected.

The most important thing is getting everyone back to a semblance of normal. Not the medically vulnerable and the elderly, but gets everyone else back to normal as soon as we pass the bulge in NHS usage.

And what about an exit strategy?

Allowing small businesses and shops to open is the first thing. You could do it in two weeks’ time, three weeks’ time. And then see what happens. Measure the incidence, but still keep the older people and the people with illnesses semi-secluded. And then gradually open it up. Follow the rate of infection in the community.

Depending on what happens, you can reduce social distancing. You let the virus circulate and look at the incidence.

If it’s true that lots of people have actually already been infected, then we’ll get to herd immunity. When 60 per cent of the population has been infected, the virus has nowhere to go.

Testing the whole population for antibodies is just unrealistic. You might be able to do it in South Korea but you’re not going to be able to do it here, we’re not that disciplined. But you can certainly test 50,000 people. Look at it, work out how many have had symptoms, how many haven’t, and then you know the patter for what’s going happen.

This has brought society together. But the quicker we can get out of the, the better.

But the Seder, which takes place tonight, is a family institution. It is a ritual meal that marks the start of Pesach. It celebrates Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt, as told in Exodus, it is a festival about history, about liberation, and about hope.

The story is well-known, thanks to the Prince of Egypt film. The Jews were slaves under Pharaoh in Egypt, who decreed that every Jewish baby boy should be murdered, to prevent an uprising. To save her son’s life, Moses’ mother sent him down the Nile in a basket, where he washed up at Pharaoh’s palace and was adopted into the royal family.

Years later, the adult Moses finally discovers who he is, flees, and is sent a message by God that it is his destiny to liberate his people. He returns, demanding that Pharaoh “let my people go”. When Pharaoh refuses, God inflicts ten plagues upon the Egyptians via Moses, the last of which is the death of every Egyptian first-born son. Pharaoh finally relents, and the Jews flee their oppressors.

This story, and the centuries of scholarship that surround it, is recounted every year at the Seder. For non-Jews, think of the Seder as a kind of Christmas dinner crossed with the Easter Sunday Church service, only in your own home.

There are strange foods that must be eaten: matzoh to symbolise the unleavened bread that didn’t have time to rise when the Jews fled Egypt in a hurry; bitter herbs, to symbolise their suffering as slaves; salt water, to symbolise their tears; a sweet paste of chopped apples and nuts, to symbolise the mortar used to build the Pharaoh’s pyramids. Drinking at least four glasses of wine is obligatory.

It’s a religious service, conducted without a religious leader, with all family members chipping in (often in Hebrew as well as English) to tell parts of the story. Children have a central role, asking certain key questions: namely, why is this night different from all other nights?

Some of my earliest childhood memories are of drifting off on someone’s lap as the Seder continued late into the night, lulled to sleep by songs in a language I didn’t understand but grew to absorb.

Every family has its own Seder traditions. In ours, the general theme is go big or go home. Guests are invited from across our network of extended family and friends, meaning we usually have at around 30 people to dinner. We don’t scour our house and get rid of all wheat products, as observant Jews do, but preparations begin a week in advance, and involve peeling what feels like hundreds of potatoes and rolling endless knaidlach (matzoh dumplings) to go in the chicken soup.

The menu, beyond the foods prescribed in the holy texts, has barely changed in three decades and is eight courses long. Small children run around the table playing with toy frogs and locusts – two of the ten plagues visited on the Egyptians.

Someone always spills red wine on the white tablecloth that is hastily swamped in salt. At one point, adopting a tradition originating among Sephardic Jews in Iran and Afghanistan, we hit each other with spring onions, as a metaphor for the whips of the Egyptian slave masters.

Being introduced into the extravaganza is a rite of passage for non-Jewish partners. How a new boyfriend or girlfriend copes with the intensity of it all is taken as a sign of how long the relationship will last.

This year, of course, is different. A festival that revolves around extended families sharing a huge meal in a crowded room does not fit well with the age of social distancing. Many of the special foods aren’t available as supermarkets target their product lines towards essentials. And even if they were, cooking eight courses for just a few people doesn’t feel worth it.

But the Jewish tradition is all about adapting to circumstance. For some, this year will be a Zoom Seder, telling the story of our departure from Egypt via conference call. For others, for whom going through the motions via a screen just doesn’t feel right, Pesach will be marked by a period of quiet reflection.

I am currently staying with my parents, and we will put together a makeshift Seder Plate, switching in alternatives for the foods we can’t find. My cousin and her children are making theirs out of playdoh. We plan to check in via Zoom, including family in Australia, and pick our favourite bits. Singing will feature heavily; God, less so.

But just as every Seder follows its own rules, so every family will be adapting to lockdown in their own way. We asked some of our readers, along with familiar names from the worlds of politics, media and sport, what they would usually be doing, and how this year they were celebrating a night that is different from all other nights.

Hugo Rifkind, columnist for The Times

I love a Seder. Always have. As a child in Edinburgh we’d gather at my aunt and uncle’s house, as big a family as we could muster, and sing songs into the night, much to the confusion of the neighbours. I was always the youngest so I always had to sing Ma Nishtana, the song about why this night is different from all others.

When I first heard of the concept of “oral traditions”, I immediately understood it in the context of Pesach. We have our songs and our tunes; other families have others. Nobody ever says, everybody just knows.

One universal is the phrase – half a blessing, half a toast – that you say at the end: “L’Shana Haba’ah B’Yerushalayim”. Next year in Jerusalem. It doesn’t, literally, mean that this is where you want to be next year. It’s a prayer for better times. It’s about hope.

I’m an adult now, and irreligious. My wife isn’t Jewish and my kids haven’t decided yet. And yet, Pesach is still an umbilical link to family and faith. When we can, we spend it with Orthodox cousins up in Even More North London, touched to still be in their embrace. My kids know about Moses leading their forbears out of Egypt, and how that relates, philosophically, to every attack on the Jews there has ever been. They know why this night is different from all other nights.

As the potted description of most Jewish festivals goes, “they tried to kill us, we’re still here, let’s eat”.

This year, obviously, that’s not an option. For people who live their faith, viscerally, the loss of an extended family Seder is a hammer blow. For us, it’s just damn sad. Still, we have plans, and we have a box of matzoh which my wife got from the Sainsbury’s delivery three weeks ago. I have the ingredients for chicken soup and knaidlach, and I have an account on Skype.

My Orthodox relatives will be out of contact, because they don’t use tech on a holy day, but my dad and my sister and her boys will be dialling in. I think Ma Nishtana will be my problem again, but I’ll see if I can bully all the kids to join in. It won’t be normal, but it will be something, and best of all I only need to cook for four.

Something is still trying to kill us, we’re still here, let’s still eat. Next year in Jerusalem.

Charlotte Henry, journalist and author

“Why is this night different from all other nights?” is the refrain during a key part of the Seder service. Tonight, the answer will be clear.

Normally, I celebrate with a wonderful, noisy, rabble of sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents. We read through the story of the exodus from Egypt from the books our grandparents gave us as children. We cheer as we get to the declaration that “the meal is now served”.

Tonight, we will try and join together over Zoom to sing a song or say a prayer, but it won’t be the same.

Let us hope that this night is different from all other nights and we can once again enjoy the Seder all together.

Ivan Lewis, former cabinet minister and MP

Seder night has always been a special time in the Lewis calendar. It conjures up warm memories of family, tradition, faith and freedom. The sheer joy of listening to children saying the Ma Nishtana for the first time and the less happy rows in the teenage years when no one wants to be the youngest in the family!

This year will definitely be different than any other year. Coronavirus has made sure of that.

I will be cleaning my own flat to remove all trace of wheat type products, changing my own plates, and recounting the miraculous story of Jewish emancipation alone.

It will be sad not being with family and friends. But it provides an opportunity to connect in a spiritual way free of any distraction. An elderly lady of faith who will be alone this Seder night told a friend she was excited because this year it would just be her and God. What an uplifting way of turning an apparent negative into a positive.

As like many others I sit down alone on this unique Seder nights I will take comfort from that lady’s wisdom and faith.

Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle 

I’m not observant, but the Seder is one of the rituals that even secular Jews tend to enjoy, because it’s such a family occasion.

This year will be truly bizarre as I am “shielding” in my room. So while my wife and kids have their own sparse and Spartan Seder downstairs, I will be in my room.

Yes, we could Zoom. But in all honesty, this year none of the Pollards have much interest in Passover. We are too worried about friends and relatives with Covid-19 and mourning those we know who have died.

For some, religion and tradition are wonderful supports during times of trouble. I’ve never found that, and I find myself even less interested in it at the moment.

Joe Jacobson, professional footballer for Wycombe Wanderers and former captain of the Wales U21 team

Depending on work commitments, I would normally either go back home to Cardiff where most of my family live and we always have a big Seder night. I have cousins with young children so it’s good fun for them. When my grandpa was alive, he would always change the word “Egypt” to “egg white” for some reason for the whole evening. And Egypt gets mentioned a lot. It would be funny at first then just get annoying after a while.

If I can’t get back home, I have some family close by who always invite my wife and I round. It’s nice that these festivals give us an opportunity to be able to see people that you don’t see too often.

This year, we have been invited to a couple of Zoom Seder nights. My auntie in Cardiff always puts on a huge evening and invite everyone and anyone to come – Jewish or not. She is hosting the evening and she’s trying to get us all to join in and read part of the story.

I will be at home with my wife, and we will probably just have a normal meal but with a few of the traditions involved: the wine, matzoh, and as much of the Seder plate as I can do. There’s always a way to interact with families at this time and that’s how we will do it.

Ruth Smeeth, former MP and Parliamentary Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement

I usually host a Seder night at home for my friends and family. It’s always a little unconventional, but a lovely opportunity to feed people and catch up.

This year will be FaceTime with my mum and step-dad. I’ll be attempting to make gooey cinnamon balls (a Pesach favourite, as well as eat my weight in matzoh).

Chag Pesach Sameach (happy Passover) to you and yours this very strange Pesach.

Simon Rothstein, PR and social media consultant and former national newspaper journalist

Pesach in my family is usually a huge affair. Three generations all together in my parents’ house – telling the story in the same way, singing the same songs, and eating the same food as when my mum and her brother were little. We even make the “pluch” (where you take egg, saltwater, matzoh and whatever else you can find and mix it all together) in the way my late Granddad taught us.

This year will be different.

My children are nine and seven, so we will Zoom with the family but it’s likely to be a short affair – a catch-up, a couple of our favourite songs, and a virtual pluch. Luckily my chicken soup is as good as my mum’s – she taught me everything she knows – so the kids won’t miss out.

There was an interesting Facebook discussion on how to engage kids in the Pesach story when it’s just your household together. A common suggestion was to watch the Prince of Egypt – so we are going to do that.

At the end of the Seder, we traditionally say “next year in Jerusalem”. I’d just take next year at my mum’s.

“He had to be accompanied by two minders from Corbyn’s office, including Seumas Milne. And it was like when you see an ambassador from one of the authoritarian countries – Russia or somewhere – and they come with a minder who’s clearly taking note of what the ambassador is saying rather than what I’m saying. I always got the impression that Seumas was looking from one of us to the other and that probably in his mind, when the revolution came we were both in front of the firing squad – it was just a matter of sequence, not of principle.”

That the former shadow Brexit secretary is neither loved nor trusted by the Corbynite left of the party is well-known. But it hasn’t held him back. This weekend, Sir Keir Starmer has been elected Labour leader by a landslide, winning the leadership of a party that last won a general election in 2005.

Starmer triumphed on the first round, with 275,780 votes (56.2%) of the just over 490,000 people who voted.
Rebecca Long-Bailey won 135,218 votes (27.6%) and
Lisa Nandy 79,597 votes (16.2%). Shadow education secretary Angela Rayner was elected deputy.

Starmer said – in a recorded statement – that being elected was an “honour and a privilege.” Apologising for the “stain” of anti-Semitism that has besmirched Labour, he promised to root it out.

He assumes the leadership of party that has just suffered one of its biggest defeats in nearly a century, in the midst of a global crisis. So who is the man now tasked with leading the official opposition, and does he have any chance of leading his party one day to power?

**********

For years the most interesting rumour about Starmer outside the corridors of Westminster was the suggestion that he was the inspiration for Colin Firth’s portrayal of human rights lawyer Mark Darcy in Bridget Jones’s Diary. While it seems to be erroneous, this urban myth circulated because it seemed to fit: like Firth’s Darcy, Starmer is smart, well-spoken, somewhat wooden, and the perfect template onto which to project fantasies, whether as Bridget Jones’s of the ideal boyfriend, or Labour members’ notion of the ideal leader.

Stamer’s critics accuse him of vagueness, of flip-flopping, and of a lack of conviction. But the mirror of those same traits is Starmer’s surprising ability to appeal to all sections of his party, even with Labour at its most divided for a generation.

“In my book, that’s to his credit rather than his discredit,” says Douglas Alexander, a cabinet minister under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Alexander, along with various figures from across the political spectrum, compares Starmer to John Smith, who took on the Labour leadership at a similarly dysfunctional time and injected real opposition back into Westminster, paving the way for Blair’s 1997 landslide.

The challenge for Starmer is clear; the comparison, less so. Establishing exactly where Starmer stands is difficult.

“He praised Corbyn’s ‘radicalism’, said he backed him 100 per cent, and was campaigning to make him Prime Minister just a few months ago,” points out Ian Austin, a prominent Corbyn critic and former MP who quit the Labour party in 2019 to serve as an independent. He insists it will take “bold leadership and determined leadership to show the party has really ditched the extremism of the Corbyn years”.

Yet while Starmer has indeed served in Corbyn’s cabinet for three years and run in two elections on the most left-wing, statist platforms in a generation, Labour heavyweights from the Blair and Brown eras insist that he is no Corbynite. He may be left of Labour’s centre ground, but his politics are a far cry from the Momentum cult that has dominated the party since 2015 when Corbyn won.

The man and his statements offer few clues. He has been in the public eye for over a decade since he was appointed director of public prosecutions in 2008. He was Labour’s most prominent figure during the three-year Brexit saga, and he was the frontrunner in the race to replace Corbyn before the contest even officially opened. Despite all this, it is incredibly difficult to pin down where where he fits into Labour’s identity crisis.

Since last December’s election, he has called vaguely for Labour to “be radical”, saying the party “strayed too far from its values” under Blair, and he claims to identify as a socialist. However, he is barely associated with John McDonnell’s endeavour to shift the party dramatically leftwards on the economy, and is considered a ray of hope for those desperate to free Labour of the Corbyn curse.

But that is exactly what’s so remarkable about Starmer: his mysterious ability to evade. In an era where Labour has been defined by division and factionalism, with many long-serving MPs at odds with both the leader’s office and the Momentum activists who have taken over the party machinery, he has managed to walk a tightrope between the ardent Corbynistas and the Blairite moderates.

While never being fully endorsed by either side, he has somehow avoided the attacks suffered by MPs considered disloyal to the Labour leader, without ever being linked too closely to the Corbyn-McDonnell project. Bland he may be, but that blandness has enabled him to emerge virtually unscathed from Labour’s bitter four-year civil war. That in itself is an achievement that suggests a degree of cunning.

*****

In terms of his background, Starmer’s legal career, polished demeanour, and apparent ability to say the right thing to the right person, may make him reminiscent of Tony Blair, but he has been keen to highlight his left-wing credentials, including his time in the East Surrey Young Socialists and the fact that he was named after Labour founder Keir Hardie. Starmer is still proud of his role in the Wapping newspaper dispute in the 1980s, when thousands of pickets protested Rupert Murdoch’s modernisation of the industry.

And while his glowing trajectory – from a fee-paying grammar school, to Leeds and then Oxford University, to the bar, to silk, to director of public prosecutions, then finally into politics – suggests he is in the mould of elite Labour politicians, the working-class origins of his parents (a nurse and a toolmaker) suggest something else.

Starmer’s supporters say he been pigeon-holed as a liberal metropolitan lawyer. Voters – in focus groups, carried out before the crisis – seemed to find him quite boring and uninspiring. That’s a problem if the perception does not shift, fairly quickly. First impressions tend to stick when it comes the public view of leaders of the opposition.

While his supporters praise his strong convictions demonstrated through decades in the law, his critics can paint a more dubious picture, particularly on the issue of press freedom where he was particularly aggressive during the hacking scandal.

Starmer was director of public prosecutions when journalists were being arrested and charged in the aftermath of the phone-hacking scandal. He has since raged against the “vilification” of Corbyn and other Labour figures; and he was damning about the press following the suicide of Caroline Flack, promising action.  Yet just a week beforehand, Starmer was adopting a saintly pose and condemning Number 10’s decision to bar certain lobby journalists from government briefings, urging the Cabinet Office to investigate and calling the exclusion of reporters “damaging to democracy”. What is it he wants – a tighter grip on the media, or freedom and protections for the press?

It is hard to discern precisely where he stands on any issue other than Brexit – which he opposed vocally, having championed Britain’s links with Europe his entire life. The fact that he was instrumental in Labour’s transition to a pro-referendum stance, widely blamed as having contributed to the party’s humiliating defeat in December, appears to have been forgotten by the membership.

In conversations with friends, colleagues, and even former rivals, one word keeps cropping up: credibility. Whatever Starmer believes, there is hope across the party that he can restore Labour’s reputation as a party that could one day govern.

Is this likely?

After four years of Corbyn lurching from blunder to gaffe to scandal, the prospect of Starmer’s ruthlessness and forensic attention to detail marks a welcome change for Labour. But it is complicated, when the country is at war against an invisible enemy.

“Keir will come to the leadership at a time when, understandably, given the Covid-19 crisis, there’s a real premium on competence and authority,” Douglas Alexander says. “And Keir will start his leadership with both competence and authority.”

Lidington also recalls Starmer’s impressive ability to build relationships with counterparts in the EU during the Brexit talks. That flair for networking, he says, could serve him well – and is a marked contrast to Corbyn’s refusal to work with those he disagreed with. “If he can bring that over into domestic politics, he stands a good chance of rebuilding Labour’s credibility.”

As for his oratory skill and lawyer’s ability to think on his feet, those of course matter, as does the general perception that he just “feels” like a leader, certainly when compared to Corbyn. It is likely a major reason why party members, confronted with the option of two young, female northern candidates, opted instead for white male lawyer from London.

But even if he is competent performer, various former cabinet ministers caution that a good day at PMQs in the Commons – where he will be forensic against Boris Johnson – does not necessarily translate into public support. Probing the government is vital, of course, but having a clear strategy and being able to capture the imagination of voters counts for far more than catching the Prime Minister out.

*****

His strategy is unclear – although in his opening speech on Saturday morning, he emphasised that after the crisis workers in the NHS must come first with pay rises. The crisis, he suggested, points the way to a return to Labour.

But with the country in crisis, now is clearly not the time for a big philosophical programme setting out Labour’s vision – there simply isn’t the political bandwidth.

Nor is this the moment for a Corbyn-esque insistence that the Conservative government’s emergency measures – embarking upon the greatest state intervention ever seen in peacetime – indicate that the public has suddenly warmed to the Corbyn-McDonnell agenda in general.

And while Alexander is optimistic that Keir’s election “marks an important first step on the longer road to recovery”, right now that road for Labour appears endless. The route back to power involves winning 120 seats, rebuilding two “red walls” (in Scotland and in the north of the England), and coming up with an offering that will resonate with a country undergoing seismic economic and social shifts, just when the Conservatives have taken over the centre-ground. The latest opinion polls show the Tories scoring more than 50% of the vote.

Offering promises to “level up” the nation, a spending splurge on infrastructure and investment, and help for Labour’s former heartlands, Boris Johnson’s Conservatives appeared invincible before the coronavirus pandemic struck. It is hard to see – yet – what gap there is to fill, or whether Starmer’s “all things to all people” approach can survive contact with reality.

No wonder, then, that many in Labour are calling for Starmer to turn his focus first behind the scenes: getting the Labour house in order, particularly when it comes to the anti-semitism scandals that have dogged the party almost since Corbyn became leader. He will be judged on the promise he made this weekend to take action.

Labour figures such as John Mann and Liz Kendall have already urged Starmer to act quickly and decisively, pursuing the “zero tolerance” strategy that Corbyn could not pursue because some of the worst offenders were Corbynite ultras.

“The public will want to see tough action and a new process to tackle antisemitism,” warns Austin. “All the racists must be booted out, including those whose cases were swept under the carpet under Corbyn.”

If Starmer wants to signal a new era for Labour and disassociate himself from the failed regime he has been a part of, taking a firm line on anti-semitism from the start would show the public who he is – or, more importantly – who he isn’t.

The mood among Labour exiles is that Starmer must use his honeymoon period to ensure that he has people he trusts across the party machinery.

“Unity” was his watchword during the leadership contest, and his campaign team was staffed by representatives from across the Blairite-Corbynista spectrum. All eyes now turn to the make-up of his shadow cabinet, and whether it will include leading Corbynistas, most notably the “continuity Corbyn” candidate Rebecca Long-Bailey.

But Corbyn critics are clear that the message of “unity” cannot translate into keeping in post those who orchestrated Labour’s defeat in December, and the  grip of shadowy Momentum figures who pushed the party ever-leftwards, despite the warnings of the polls, needs to be broken. Although leftwing voices have warned against the suggestion of a “purge”, the Corbynistas’ success in assuming control of levers of power across the party, from local constituency groups to the ruling national executive committee, means that the new leader will struggle if he doesn’t establish his authority quickly.

As Blair’s former political secretary John McTernan put it, quoting an Australian Labor maxim: “Magnanimity in defeat, vengeance in victory”.

*****

Assuming the divided Labour party can be put back together, how can the new leader demonstrate that he has the ability to govern that his two most recent predecessors – Ed Miliband and Corbyn – lacked?

Starmer’s best chance at proving his worth may be the very crisis currently gripping the nation. A government that seemed invincible six weeks ago is now faced with impossible challenges, and is in clear need of both scrutiny and cross-party support.

What has been lacking since the election is any kind of opposition. Obviously, now is not the time to play politics with people’s lives, to paraphrase former Labour leader Neil Kinnock, but one former shadow cabinet minister suggests that Starmer’s role should be that of a “critical friend”, asking intelligent questions “in the spirit of supportiveness”: on the lack of testing capacity, on the difficulties individuals and businesses have had accessing financial support, on the impact of authoritarian measures as the lockdown continues. These are issues that the public desperately want clarified, and the role of the opposition leader is to nudge the government into answering.

The problem with Corbyn, even before he became a lame duck leader, was that he was clearly not interested in being listened to by anyone outside his inner circle of fans. While he was quite happy to share platforms with representatives of terror groups as a backbencher, he refused to work with David Cameron on the Remain campaign in 2016, and showed precious little interest in collaborating with either May or the moderate Tory rebels during the Brexit wars that followed. This week, he warned Labour not to join in a national unity government to tackle the coronavirus crisis, threatening to oppose from the back benches if the new leader tried it.

But with parliament out of action, there is a clear argument for the opposition being involved in decision making, even if a national unity government looks unlikely. Starmer can push to join Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and London Mayor Sadiq Khan at key coronavirus Cobra meetings, taking the opportunity to demonstrate that he is everything Corbyn was not: collaborative, cool in a crisis, forensic on details, and able to adapt and show leadership at crucial moments.

And while comparisons between coronavirus and the Second World War are overblown, Starmer might do well to remember Clement Attlee’s work with Churchill. After five years serving in Churchill War Cabinet, Attlee went into the 1945 election having cemented his leadership credentials, immune to the usual accusations that opposition candidates are lightweights who lack government experience. If Starmer can help the Conservatives steer Britain through the Covid-19 pandemic, he may repair much of the damage done to Labour under Corbyn, refuting the current widely-held view that the party is not fit for government.

*****

“From the country’s point of view and from the Conservatives’ point of view, we need to have an effective opposition,” says Lidington. “The absence of an opposition means that governments can become complacent and lazy.”

Now more than ever, with decisions being made every day that will affect people’s lives and livelihoods for decades to come, complacency is a luxury that the country cannot afford.

For the past five years, Labour has been run by a career activist, more interested in ideals than results. Now, it has at the helm a human rights barrister who has spent decades challenging those in positions of power, on everything from libel to police brutality.

So far, Starmer has succeeded by striking the right balance between different factions of his party. Now he must walk a similar tightrope, holding the government to account on the toughest of issues while working with Downing Street to save lives and get us through this crisis, for the good of the nation.

“The government will be better in having an opposition that they can’t simply dismiss and that is asking sharp questions,” Lidington says.

Labour must hope Starmer is up to the task.

Fast-forward nearly five years – via one referendum, two election defeats, and the most turbulent period of constitutional debate for a generation – and the Corbyn era is finally drawing to a close. On Saturday, Corbyn’s reign of error will end and a new leader will be named, most likely shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer.

The Labour leader will leave behind a party in tatters, neither strong nor particularly determined, that in December last year manifestly failed to reach out even to communities that had voted Labour for generations. His legacy will be one of shambolic disappointment, leading his party from the heights of Corbynmania to its worst defeat since 1935.

Corbyn’s history and personality were always going to make him unsuitable for the top job. More suited to championing niche and often controversial causes abroad than focusing on the nitty-gritty realities of government at home, he never seemed to realise that his main task was holding the government to account.

Even at the most disastrous moments of Theresa May’s premiership, Corbyn’s performances at PMQs were lacklustre and off-topic. Instead of honing in on glaring government errors, he preferred to ramble through pre-prepared questions that often had little to do with the crisis at hand. He was utterly unable to adapt. And his refusal to even acknowledge, let alone apologise for, his dubious associations with terror groups and dictatorial regimes over the years (from the IRA to Hamas, Iran to Venezuela) meant that there was always another scandal ready to come to light just when the Conservative government needed to distract attention from its own failures.

And failures there were aplenty. But while May staggered from Brexit crisis to Brexit crisis, on the most important issue of the last four years (until coronavirus struck), Corbyn had virtually nothing to say. His lifelong career of euroscepticism put him at odds with the majority of his MPs, meaning that Labour never quite had a comprehensible Brexit policy. May’s numerous defeats in the Commons came at the hands of her own party, not from the official opposition, while Labour’s Brexit strategy was characterised by zigzagging and infighting between the various factions, with leadership from the top always absent.

Instead, the Corbynite movement focused inward, concentrating on infiltrating and controlling the party machinery. From local constituency parties to Labour’s national executive committee, Corbyn’s Momentum acolytes took over, dominating policy debates, pushing the party ever-leftwards, and even attempting to deselect MPs deemed at odds with the Corbyn project. On Corbyn’s watch, the aim of those at the top of Labour shifted from winning elections to purging all but the most pure.

With dissenters silenced, there was a cult-like atmosphere around the leader’s office. Criticism of the Dear Leader was consistently dismissed as a “smear campaign”, and any kind of analysis of Labour’s prospects or popularity was rejected as disloyalty. When Labour members, and sympathetic journalists or commentators, attempted to sound the alarm about the direction in which the party was headed, Corbyn’s army of keyboard warriors jeered at them to “f*** off and join the Tories”. They seemed surprised when, in December, many of Labour’s former voters opted to do just that.

This myopic insistence that criticism was not worth responding to meant that Labour was never able to recover from the repeated anti-semitism scandals. It lurched from one to the next. It meant that, when seven MPs quit Labour last year in protest at Corbyn’s leadership, the party never paused to consider who else it might be alienating. And it meant that, even after voters had robustly rejected the vision of nationalistic, high-spending, big state control laid out in the Labour’s 2019 manifesto, Corbyn had the audacity to insist that he had “won the arguments”.

Today, of course, statism and high spending are back. Corbyn has used his final days as leader to argue that the government’s reaction to the coronavirus pandemic – opening the spending taps to support business and individuals devastated by the Covid-19 impact, pouring money into public services, wracking up debt and intervening in the private sector – proves that he was right all along. It is delusional.

The fact that, even now, he cannot see the difference between an emergency response to a global crisis on the scale of a war and his template for day-to-day government demonstrates that he should never have been allowed close to a position of power.

The UK is not China. But the swift transformation we have seen since lockdown measures were introduced last week should serve as warning about where we could be headed.

This lockdown may be unavoidable – although it is worth noting that there is some dispute about that among experts. But even if it is unequivocally the most effective way to save lives, that does not mean it should be welcomed.

The most draconian crackdowns on personal liberty this country has ever seen in peacetime are at best a necessary evil. People are being asked to make phenomenal sacrifices – not just to their social lives but to their financial stability, their relationships, their mental and physical health – for the sake of the small minority who are most at risk. That is a tremendous ask in a free society, and it is to our credit that the government’s call has been answered for the most part with willingness and good grace.

But for the country’s closet authoritarians, this national crisis represents the opportunity of a lifetime.

The challenge facing police forces should not be underestimated. Drastically curtailing people’s freedom to travel may reduce some forms of crime, but it radically increases the potential for other offences. Think of the domestic violence victims trapped in abusive households, and the vulnerable self-isolators who suddenly find themselves targets for cyber-attacks, not to mention the increase in mental health breakdowns and suicide attempts as desperate people are cut off from the social contact that was their only lifeline.

This is a moment for our police to step up and show that they are on the public’s side as we all grapple with the new demands. Instead, law and order officials are flexing their newly-empowered muscles and criminalising as much behaviour as they can.

The most egregious example of overreach came from Derbyshire, where the police force used drones to film unsuspecting walkers in the Peak District, publishing the footage at the weekend with the ominous warning that such behaviour was “not essential”. In fact, the government guidelines specifically allow and indeed encourage daily exercise.

The Derbyshire force’s gripe was with people driving to remote spots to walk, which they claimed was against the rules (although no such prohibition actually exists, so far). The offenders were clearly in household groups, and were acting responsibly by walking on deserted paths, limiting social contact more than they would by exercising in highly populated residential areas.

But to the police, such nuance was irrelevant. What mattered was demonstrating their drone technology, and sending a message that any dissent – however sensible – was not to be tolerated.

Other police forces are catching up. Police in London have been telling commuters on public transport to go home, even though a significant number of workers are still permitted to travel for their jobs.

Greater Manchester Police tweeted that exercise should last no more than an hour – a limit stated nowhere in government guidelines. And Humberside even launched an online portal for people to report their neighbours for supposedly breaking the social distancing rules.

We should be extremely wary of such tendencies and the enthusiasm from some civilians to embrace them. Reporting on your neighbour for behaviour you deem unsavoury is a feature of authoritarian regimes like China, not of liberal democracies.

While there will always be some who bend or break the rules without good reason, for the most part Britons are being overwhelmingly responsible – and the police should exert similar common sense.

A dog walker who drives to a remote spot, a parent who takes a screaming baby for a walk twice a day instead of once, someone who travels by car to the nearest large town to shop instead of depleting the local small supermarket – none of these people are criminals. And the idea that they could be reported to overzealous police by sanctimonious curtain-twitching neighbours is chilling.

This lockdown is going to test our society in ways we have not yet considered. Beyond the immediate tragedy of the health crisis, we are witnessing families split apart, children pulled out of school, workers left destitute despite the promised government assistance, businesses collapsing, while the mental health of the entire nation is being put under immense strain like never before.

The government needs to recognise these extraordinary sacrifices, thank citizens for making them, and respect us by trusting people to make their own decisions about how to practise social distancing with minimal damage to themselves or others. That starts with the police.

Going full-Stasi in five days is the antithesis of the British concept of policing by consent. And if we want to return to a free society when this crisis is over, rather than sleepwalking towards China’s dystopian example, we must call out this creeping authoritarianism wherever we see it.

Rachel Cunliffe is the Comment and Features Editor at CityAM.

Tarquin thought her asking price too exorbitant, and despite the invaluable wisdom contained in the books, tried to bargain with her. She threw three of the books on the fire, and offered him the remaining six for exactly the same price. Obviously, he refused – why pay for six the same amount that he’d just refused for nine?

The Sibyl burned another three and repeated her offer. Conscious that he’d just thrown away some of the most valuable books in existence, and that this was his last chance to get even a fraction of what he wanted, Tarquin relented. He swallowed his pride and bought the last three books for the original price.

This expert lesson in sunk cost theory was attempted by Theresa May earlier this week. For five months she has tried to garner support for her withdrawal bill for the sake of delivering Brexit, but the cost of the compromise – for both Tory Brexiteers and hardline Remainers – was considered too high.

Undeterred, May took a leaf out of the Sibyl’s book, and made the offer worse. On Tuesday, she announced what she called a new “serious offer” to MPs, and implored them to vote for it. It was certainly serious, in that it managed to unite parliament against her in record time.

For Brexiteers, the chance of a second referendum was a deal-breaker. For Remainers, the promise of another vote was too hollow and vague for them to support a version of Brexit that is still far harder than they would like. May promptly lost 20 Conservatives who had voted for her deal the last time around, gaining none.

Why did May fail where the Sibyl succeeded? First, because unlike the books of wisdom, there is very little of value in her deal at all, short of the lowest bar of all in that it would finally get Britain out of the EU.

But second, because the other books have not been burned. A no-deal Brexit and another referendum with Remain on the ballot paper both look more likely than they have at any point of the last three years. Tarquin was forced to comprehend the very real possibility of walking away with nothing at all. Both of the Brexit warring factions think that they now have a chance of getting their books back.

Of course, the opposite logic now consumes the Tory party when it comes to ditching May. Forcing her out after her dismal performance in the 2017 General Election would, in retrospect, have been the best move. And while the ERG holds some responsibility for calling a vote of no confidence in her last December without being certain they would win, hence giving her another year of protected time as leader, many of the Conservative MPs who voted with her then are now wishing they hadn’t thrown away their shot.

The landscape for changing leader now, with the party utterly split and the Brexit clock still ticking now, is worse now than it’s ever been. Compromise is off the table, and a new insurgent party has emerged to push the Tories into spaces most MPs really do not want to inhabit.

Nonetheless, it is finally dawning on the party that sunk costs cannot be allowed to count. The only question that matters is whether the Conservatives (and the country, but politicians stopped worrying about that months ago) would be better off without May now.

The mood music in Westminster has been wrong before, but all the auguries indicate that they are finally coming to that conclusion. The upcoming political fall-out will be a hefty price to pay for three books when two years ago they could have nine, but it’s that or nothing. And eventually, even Tarquin came around.

The fact is, travelling to India can seem daunting. Unlike the hassle-free borders along the gap-year trail around South East Asia, India’s visa process used to be extremely stringent and bureaucratic, while the country’s vastness can make planning a trip feel overwhelming. Luckily, the new Indian e-visa was extended to British tourists in 2015, eliminating the first hurdle, and the endless but compact wonders of Goa – India’s smallest state – alleviate the second. In addition, a host of airlines now offer flights right into Goa via Mumbai or Arab Gulf countries at extremely affordable rates, making travel there swift and hassle-free. As for when to go, peak season runs from November to February, with temperatures consistently above 30 degrees. And although it can be particularly crowded around Christmas and New Year, the monsoon rains don’t start until early June, so there’s lots of scope for a more un-congested experience.

Now you’ve booked your flights, it’s time to figure out which part of the state to head for. You will hear a lot of contradictory advice about whether to visit North or South Goa. The North is for the nightlife, the clubs, the beach parties, with throngs of multinational revellers jamming to trance music or hip-hop on the sand. The South is for paradise beaches of the kind usually only found in holiday brochures – white sand, warm blue sea, uncrowded and unspoilt, with the occasional beach shack serving cocktails and cool beers.

This is all true, but what it doesn’t tell you is that, unusually in a vast country where travel between cities can take days, these two mirror-image sides of Goa are just a short taxi ride apart. You can get from the notorious party strip Baga in the North to the famously picturesque Palolem Beach in the South in just two hours. Day trips are possible, but if you really want to get the most out of the state, split your trip in two and give yourself the chance to explore both sides of this incredible region.

With the North, the temptation is to head straight to the party hubs of Baga and neighbouring Calangute. Don’t. These might be the most well-known beaches in Goa, but they are by no means the nicest, especially not to stay near. Instead, for an area that’s a bit more refined and relaxed, visit Vagator or Anjuna. Just fifteen minutes up the coast from Baga, these beaches feel a world away. Vagator is renowned for its red cliffs that jut out over the sea, and you can spend a lazy day on the sand without being hassled by touts insisting you buy their drinks or massages. Both Vagator and Anjuna have India’s wide range of holiday accommodation, from budget hostels to luxury hotel complexes. For something in between – clean, classy and fully air-conditioned, without breaking the bank – try Living Room or Jacks Resort in Vagator, or Orritel Village Square in Anjuna.  All are just a short walk from the beach. While you’ll be spending most of your time out of the hotel, a refreshing private pool can be a welcome comfort after a long day in the sun. Jacks Resort in particular is an oasis of calm in the heart of Vagator’s tangle of dusty streets.

Those who already know Goa flock to its shores for three things: the beaches, the food, and the nightlife. All are plentiful. During the day, the only reason to head to Calangute or Baga, those focal destinations of the hippie trail, is if you’re desperate for a ride on a jet ski or a parasailing trip. Otherwise avoid the hoards and skip Goa’s headline area altogether. At night it’s another matter, when the beach shacks transform into charming restaurants on the sand, serving all the Indian staples you could desire, plus a host of Goan speciality dishes. Goa is famous for its seafood, and you can’t leave without trying the fish curry and at least three different ways of cooking prawns. Prices are cheap – ₹1500 (£18) for dinner for two, including starters and drinks – and the ambience is unbeatable. But for a more upmarket dinner, head to Thalassa in Vagator. This Greek taverna (yes, a Greek restaurant in India, but stay with me) draws diners from all over India, for its delicious classic Greek food and gorgeous views, perched as it is on a clifftop overlooking the sea. The freshly-caught fish of the day is exquisite, as are their honey-wrapped feta cheese appetisers. You can also expect live performances of Greek dancing, music and cabaret shows, complete with plate-smashing. Not a restaurant to be missed.

In terms of nightlife, the host of clubs on Tito’s Road in Baga (named after the notorious Tito’s Club) are friendly and buzzing every night from 10pm. And although the authorities have tried to clamp down on unauthorised beach parties in Vagator, if you’re there in peak season there’s a high chance something will be going on. But for a night you won’t get anywhere else in the world, head to Club Cubana in Arpora. Known as “the nightclub in the sky”, Cubana is built on the side of a mountain, and is more of an immersive theatre experience than a club. Wander through an outdoor maze of hidden staircases and lush greenery with lights in the trees, enjoy fresh stone-baked pizza while looking out at the city and sea below, dip your feet in the open-air pool (yes, they have a pool) and listen to the thumping base pulsing through the stonework. Entry is ₹2000 (£24) for a couple with unlimited drinks all night. The music is a mix of hip-hop and R&B, with live performances and fire dancers. But even if partying until the small hours isn’t your thing, go for the atmosphere and the experience of dancing in the sky.

Arpora also hosts Goa’s biggest night market on Saturdays – though again this is a misnomer. A secret world of market stalls springs up out of the hillside each weekend, a treasure trail of jewellery stands, spice-sellers, and vendors hawking every type of clothing imaginable. Come ready to bargain, hard – never pay much more than half the original asking price. And once you’re tired of shopping, head to the food court in the centre for an array of tasty refreshments and cocktails. There’s an open-air stage with more live music and performances, with chairs so you can rest your feet before heading once more into the fray.

If you want to escape the seafront and explore inland India, there are a range of easily-accessible day trips on offer. Old Goa, the original Portuguese city, is a historic wonderland of Portuguese cathedrals and 16th century architecture – it was known as the “Rome of the East” for a reason. There are also a variety of wildlife sanctuaries and hiking trails where you can spot birds, deer and snakes, although be careful about the heat. But by far the most popular excursion is a visit to the Dudhsagar waterfalls – which literally translates as Sea of Milk. Countless tour operators will offer to transport you from your hotel to the Mollem National Park, arrange a jeep to ferry you to and from the falls, and then drop by a spice plantation on the way back – all for around ₹1600 per person (£20). It’s a long day (much of it spent on the road), but nothing compares to the sheer exhilaration of stripping down to swim in Goa’s iconic waterfalls. Lifejackets are essential (provided by the your companies), and watch out for monkeys on the trail, which will undoubtedly try to steal any easily-accessible food. As for the spice plantation, expect a crash-course in one of India’s key exports, from the medical properties of lemongrass to the cultural history of cinnamon. All in all, it’s an exhausting day out, but well worth it.

With Vagator beach, Club Cubana, and the Dudhsagar falls out of the way, let’s talk about the South. Goa’s most acclaimed beach is Palolem, right down South about an hour and a half from the airport. Here, the coastline’s natural curvature means the sea is always calm and offers beautiful vistas of the entire beach and lofty ridges that surround it. There’s also the opportunity to go dolphin-spotting on a boat trip, or if it’s low tide, paddle across to Monkey Island for a guided jungle trek.

Gorgeous as Palolem is, you don’t have to go that far to find the kind of picture-perfect beaches featured in travel magazines. In the middle of the state lies a strip of untouched coastline, banked by high-end resorts that offer every conceivable luxury. If you’re after a 5-star hotel right on the beach for a price that won’t break the bank, try the Kenilworth Resort or the Royal Orchid Beach Resort near the town of Majorda. For around ₹10,000 (£120) a night for a basic double room, expect swimming pools, bars, balconies, and the convenience of being able to walk from your room to the beach in five minutes. Just make sure you don’t stick to the hotel restaurants – the twin areas of Majorda and Utorda host two of Goa’s best restaurants for seafood: Martin’s Corner and Pentagon. Expect fresh crab and lobster cooked in masala, local fish caught that day, and a wide range of other authentic Indian delicacies.

But if you want more than just a beach, and are looking for something truly special, there is one hotel that outshines all the others for a true Indian experience: the Alila Diwa Goa. Located 500m inland, the sea is still easily accessible (they run a shuttle bus throughout the day), but arriving at this hotel feels like entering another universe. For one thing, it is built in the heart of a rice paddy, with an infinity pool with vistas of the Indian countryside that makes you feel like you’re floating on the edge of the world. Every care has been taken to make this a haven of calm and tranquility – far away from the bustle of Baga. But this isn’t just about luxury, it’s about India. The Alila’s unique take on high tea is served daily by the pool, and offers a gourmet selection of street food snacks more usually found on the corners of Mumbai or Delhi, accompanied by sweet masala chai tea. The spa combines Asian and Western therapeutic techniques for an immersive relaxation experience that is far more than a basic massage, with soothing traditional music, herbal oils, and the option of an Indian head massage. They also offer Ayurveda, a system of medicine originating from India – and whether or not you believe in the philosophy behind it, it’ll be sure to leave you feeling rejuvenated and relaxed.

The Alila Diwa Goa also hosts one of the best restaurants in the region: the Spice Studio. A meal here is a culinary journey across India, from the mountains of Rajasthan to the southern shores of Kerala. And of course, Goan specialities are represented in full. The head chef is something of a celebrity in the region, a local grandmother who has become famous through her expertise in traditional Goan and Indian cuisine. Try the prawns cooked fresh in coconut and kokum fruit, the locally-spiced lamb, the chicken tikka with cashews, or the signature Goan seafood curry with fish, scallops and squid. For dessert, the choice of traditional homemade ice-creams is sublime, from saffron and cardamon, to fennel and cashew, to the rose-flavoured gulkand.

And if those aren’t reason enough to splurge on this incredible hotel, here’s one more: the Alila experiences. Unlike other resorts in the area, which do their best to make sure guests want for nothing and stay within the walls, the Alila encourages travellers to see the real Goa, with a choice of bespoke excursions. These range from a trip to the fish market to help choose the catch of the day, followed by an Indian cooking class, to a tour of a newly renovated Portuguese mansion converted into a museum of Goan history, to a visit to the local baker, complete with the chance to make bread the traditional way in an oven built into the wall. All these experiences offer guests an inside view of Goan life that is inaccessible on the standard tourist trail, and are central to the Alila philosophy of providing an immersion into Indian culture, rather than just another luxury hotel. Terrace rooms start at around ₹18,000 (£220) a night if you book in advance, with the opulent Diwa Club rooms (which include access to an extra Club-only pool) offering even more exceptional comfort for ₹27,300 (£330).

Whether you throw yourself into everything the Alila Diwa Goa has to offer, stick to the relaxation of the beach resorts, or opt for hostels and home-stays, Goa has something for everyone. The locals will proudly tell you that this is not “real India” – it’s where real Indians go to experience something special. And this winter, you should join them.

And then it did. After Rudd’s interview, the New York Times published images of the aftermath of the attack that seem to show the bomber’s backpack and debris from the device, as well as a detailed map of the crime scene and information about how the bomb worked. This has caused “disbelief and astonishment”, according to a Whitehall source. Manchester mayor Andy Burnham called the leaks “arrogant, wrong and distrustful”, while the UK’s National Police Chiefs’ Council released a statement saying:

“When that trust is breached, it undermines these relationships, and undermines our investigations and the confidence of victims, witnesses and their families. This damage is even greater when it involves unauthorised disclosure of potential evidence in the middle of a major counter-terrorism investigation.”

This is crucial, because the premature publication of the information may have given associates of the suspect time to prepare and flee or destroy evidence before police could get to them. It seems fairly basic that, in an ongoing investigation, you don’t want to release anything that could help the perpetrators and get in the way of police efforts to prevent this kind of atrocity happening again.

The police and the British government are “furious”. As well they should be. This kind of betrayal breaks every rule in the book of intelligence sharing, and the fact that it happened not once but twice reeks of carelessness on the American side. Complaints have been made to the US ambassador in London, and Theresa May is expected to voice her displeasure (to put it mildly) to President Donald Trump at the NATO meeting in Brussels later today. So far there has been no public statement from US authorities.

Do not underestimate the significance of this incident, not only for the brave police and intelligence forces whose investigation into the network behind the Manchester attack may have been compromised, but for the safety of the US in the future. The decision by British law enforcement to stop sharing information with the US is well-justified, but it is also extremely radical – the US and the UK are known for their close bilateral intelligence relationship, even within the “Five Eyes” alliance. For the UK to be outraged enough by America’s behaviour to revoke decades-long sharing privileges, even temporarily, shows the extent to which trust has been destroyed.

Nor is the UK alone in its recent wariness of sharing intelligence with the US. Last week, it the news broke that Trump had revealed classified information to Russian officials without the permission of the country which gathered it. On Monday, Trump accidentally let it slip – in public – that that country had been Israel, when he responded to a question at a press conference with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying “I never mentioned the word or the name ‘Israel’. Never mentioned during that conversation”. Israeli officials are, unsurprisingly, not impressed. Israeli defence chief Avigdor Liberman announced on Wednesday that his country would be changing its intelligence sharing protocols with the US, saying “we did a spot repair”. Note that there are reports that the information leak could put at risk the life of the Israeli agent who supplied it, who is thought to be embedded with a group of IS fighters.

Unlike the unauthorised sharing of the Israeli intelligence, leaks of the Manchester information seem to have come from US law enforcement, not the White House. Nonetheless, a pattern is emerging, of a US government apparatus under such strain that protocol is being breached and mistakes are being made – mistakes that could cost lives. And not only British and Israeli lives – if other countries refuse to share intel with the US, mistrustful of where it might end up, American security agencies will find the job of preventing terror attacks suddenly gets a lot harder.

If America isn’t more careful, it may find it doesn’t have many friends left.

But read the actual policy, and you’ll find it is based on the following radical premise: wealthy people should contribute towards the cost of their own social care.

You might have thought a party dedicated to making the rich pay more would be in favour of alleviating the burden on hardworking young taxpayers by making older people with more than £100,000 worth of assets pay for themselves. It’s exactly the kind of progressive redistribution of resources anyone with a conscience should jump at. But of course, it’s a Tory policy, and therefore automatically evil in the eyes of the left.

Here’s how the Conservative manifesto plan works. Under current rules, if you have assets worth more than £23,250 you (or your family) are expected to pay for the full cost of your social care. Anything below that, and the local council pays. Crucially, this figure does not include the value of your house, meaning cash-poor pensioners living in multi-million pound mansions can potentially get free social care, then pass on their property to their descendants when they die. The new plan would eliminate that discrepancy, raising the threshold to £100,000, but including the value of houses. Since no one wants to see old people thrown out of their homes, the money would only be due after death, taken from the owner’s estate. Essentially, social care would now be paid out of the individual’s children’s future inheritance.

Labour has actually been arguing for higher inheritance tax for years (think about the “death tax” proposed in the 2010 election). This policy might have a similar effect, but it isn’t a tax – inheritance is not being taxed on death, but rather paid back to the state for care already received. Think of it as a social care loan from the state, with an extremely flexible term. As a result, the burden of social care shifts to individuals worth more than £100,000 (hardly hitting the poorest in society) instead of councils, who then have more money to spend on local services – services that benefit pensioners and other residents, like roads, social housing, libraries, education and early-years childcare. It would also leave councils better equipped to provide for older people who do not have any assets, and are therefore the most vulnerable.

There is a misguided idea that social care should be “free”, i.e. not paid for by the individual, but by taxpayers. The numbers tell a rather different story. The percentage of people aged 65 years or older is projected grow to nearly a quarter of the population by 2045. At the same time, those in that age bracket now make up one third of all home-owners – they’re the ones who have enjoyed four decades of property booms, that have resulted in skewing the housing market out out of the reach of most young people today. How can we think it’s fair to put the snowballing cost of social care on to a generation that has been priced out of ever being able to afford their own homes thanks to the advantages bestowed on their elders?

The current system is unworkable and unaffordable, and will only become more so. It is also patently unfair, allowing wealthy pensioners to shirk the responsibility of paying for their own care even if they have enjoyed skyrocketing property values, while their taxpaying grandchildren struggle to buy their first house. Like the pension triple-lock (another misguided policy thankfully axed in this Tory manifesto), it’s a regressive way of distributing wealth from a cash-strapped pool of young workers to an ever-growing number of pensioners, regardless of means or need.

Labour would exacerbate that unfairness, offering “free” social care to all, paid for by the next generation either in taxes or national debt. Theresa May’s plan isn’t perfect, but at least it is grounded in reality. She hasn’t abandoned the old – Labour has abandoned the young.

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