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Hello and welcome to you, Coffee House Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast.

I'm Isabel Harbman and I'm joined by James Forsyth and Katie Balls.

Well, we've got a cheery Christmas message from two of the leading health

magazines, James. Tell us what they're urging us all to do over Christmas. So the Health

Service Journal and the British Medical Journal have written a joint editorial today, only the second

joint editorial for the two publications in 100 years, calling on the government to scrap the Christmas

easing entirely

and to ban all household mixing at Christmas, essentially warning that if they don't do that,

they won't be able to say that they are protecting the NHS, suggesting that the increase in

infections could be caused by this five-day period where three households can meet up,

could basically take the caseload to a

level which the NHS cannot cope with. Now, I think in realistic practical terms, it is not

feasible for the government to scrap the Christmas easing entirely. Matt Hancock was talking last

night in the press conference that you wrote about on coffee houses about a lot about personal

responsibility that people should be cautious about what they do and and adopting

some of that Nicholas Sturgeon style tone of just because you're allowed to do this doesn't mean you have to

I think the next question of the government is whether it goes further than that and urges people not to

travel West Christmas for example you know I mean there is a particular question

raised by Matt Hancock was suggesting the Commons yesterday, but there might be this new

mutation of the virus, which is, which I don't mean you're anything particularly to worry about,

because everyone seems to think that the vaccine will still work with it, and it's no more potent.

...