Has England dodged lockdown?

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

News, Politics, Government, Daily News

4.4 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 3 January 2022

⏱️ 15 minutes

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Summary

The government has delayed making any announcements about further Covid restrictions in the face of Omicron for weeks. But with more data coming in every day about this new variant, seemingly showing it leads to a lot less hospitalisations than previous waves, will there even be any new measures at all?

'The science and the vaccines have created the situation where Britain doesn't have to lockdown.' - Fraser Nelson

Cindy Yu talks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth about the UK's response to Covid at the beginning of 2022.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This podcast is sponsored by Canacord Genuity Wealth Management, award-winning wealth managers who go above and beyond to support and guide you.
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0:26.1	Hello and welcome back to Coffee House Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Cindy Yu and I'm joined by James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson. So it's Monday the 3rd of January
0:31.6	and it's the third week in a row when the government was meant to be making some kind of
0:35.7	decision on upcoming COVID restrictions.
0:38.7	But as you can see from the Spectator Data Hub, England now has the lowest seven-day rate of
0:43.7	COVID across the devolved nations. So what does this mean for any upcoming restrictions? And
0:49.0	has Boris Johnson actually called it right this time in delaying a decision on restrictions?
0:55.2	James, maybe you can start by just setting the background on what's been going on in government over the last couple of
0:58.8	weeks. So I think that before Christmas there was a big debate about whether there were going to be
1:03.4	more restrictions put in place or not. I think it is fair to say that at the beginning of that debate,
1:08.6	Boris Johnson seemed to be in what one might call alas mode.
1:12.4	Alas, there is a need for more restrictions.
1:14.7	But then there was kind of considerable pushback from the cabinet, from Tory MPs, and the data began to look a little bit better.
1:23.6	There became more and more signs that Omicron, in a heavily vaccinated population, was not as bad as previous waves of COVID had been.
1:33.9	And so no restrictions were in place.
1:35.5	And you now have ministers saying on their media rounds yesterday that they don't see anything in the data to suggest new restrictions are necessary.
1:43.1	And I mean, that does suggest that we're unlikely to get more restrictions are necessary. And I think that does suggest that we're unlikely to get
1:46.2	more restrictions this week. And I think the kind of question now becomes, if the data
1:52.1	continues to look as it is, I think that that will stay the case. And I think that will then
1:56.8	become what Boris Johnson argues for. And when he attempts to kind of get to repair relations with his party,
2:03.4	his big part of his argument will be,
	...

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