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Hello and welcome to Spectator Out Loud. Every week, a few of our favourite writers in the latest issue read out their pieces for you.

Every Christmas, the Spectator's special edition

contains more articles than usual, a triple edition, as it were. So this week we've got more

articles for you too. First up, it's Fraser Nelson, reading out our leading article in the Christmas

issue, with hopes that 2021 will be a year of renewal. Save for those old enough to have lived through the Second World War and its immediate austere aftermath,

it would be hard to remember a Christmas which felt less festive,

or a new year that brings such foreboding.

In spite of the severe restraints upon our lives, which have been in place for months now,

it looks likely that we are

going to see some kind of third wave of the virus, almost certainly with a third lockdown on its heels.

And at the same time Britain will be embarking on a Brexit adventure that many people still see as reckless and unwanted.

But if we look just a little bit into the immediate future, things

will appear brighter, not just because of the vaccine, but because of what the crisis says

about our values and expectations. We accepted these restrictions. Public opinion was always behind

them. That's because we value life more nowadays.

We all have come to expect to live longer, healthier lives.

Think back half a century to the Hong Kong flu of 1968.

That took more lives per capita and COVID has done so far.

Life expectancy in the UK back then was 71.7 years. Now it's 81.4 years. So if COVID

has struck half a century ago, there will be far fewer 80-year-olds and 90-year-olds to protect.

The fact that the average age of a COVID fatality was 82 did not one bit lessen the seriousness

...