Hello and welcome to The Edition. Each week we look at some of the most important and intriguing issues in the week's magazine with the writers behind them. I'm Narapendigast. This week, how free are we after Freedom Day? Plus, what's it like to live in Lebanon right now?

And finally, is British gardening, wilting or blooming?

First up, in our spectator cover story this week, our own Kate Andrews takes the government

to task on Freedom Day and the measures being used to pressure those who haven't yet had

their vaccine,

including requiring nightclubs to check vaccination status come September.

Kate joins me now along with Michael Kilt, the CEO of the Nighttime Industries Association.

Kate, can you start by telling me what your reaction was when you first heard that Boris Johnson was going to tell nightclubs to check vaccine status in September?

Well, I felt like time must have moved very quickly over the course of the week because it wasn't that long ago.

I mean, days before, that they had published guidance for business, saying that they wanted venues that would

be hosting a lot of people, strangers coming into contact with each other, to come up with some

kind of system, that they were going to help business to do so. And then sort of, you know,

the bottom note was, by the way, we de-reserve the right to force you in the future. And then

that came about very,

very quickly. It turned out they have no intention of working with business or seeing what can be

achieved voluntarily. They're just going to make business do it. And there are very few details.

I mean, we don't know what constitutes a mass event. We don't know which businesses they're talking

about. Boris Johnson wouldn't even rule out

vaccine passports for the pub. And, you know, there's no good faith left because ministers

told us in January and February that they weren't even considering this. Michael Gove said

he didn't know anybody thinking about vaccine passports. Vaccine minister Nadim Zawahi said

they would be discriminatory.

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