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Hello and welcome to Coffeehouse Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast.

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

We have broken yet another record that we wouldn't want to have broken in this

pandemic, which is that 2020 saw the most excess deaths in this country since the Second World

War. There were close to 697,000 deaths in the UK in 2020, which is nearly 91,000 more

than would have been expected based on the

average of the previous five years. So this is one of the worst death rates since the 2000s

and the highest excess deaths since World War II. James, this is a pretty miserable milestone to reach,

isn't it? Yes, I think it's a reminder of how bad this pandemic has been

and quite how many lives it has taken before their time.

And I think the question now is how fast in 2021 can this cycle where cases rise, hospitalisations rise, death rise,

in almost been a mechanical progress, how quickly can that be broken?

Because yes, there have been improvements on treatment, but they haven't radically cut your risk of death

if you end up in hospital

compared to where we were at the beginning of the pandemic. The situation is better, but still bad.

And so I think the question is whether the vaccination program really can succeed in breaking this

link between cases and deaths. I also think it's going to cause more questions about how the pandemic was handled.

A large number of these deaths took place in care homes could more have been done to prevent that

at the beginning. And I think if his second, third wave or second wave, whichever we're telling

you should use for it, if that bites getting care homes, I think people will ask questions like,

you know, for example, German care homes did better in the first wave. They moved their staff onto site

...