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

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

And we've just had the news, news that I think many had expected.

And this is that schools are not

going to return immediately after the February half term. Instead, the new date the government

is looking at is the beginning of March, looking at the 8th of March that Monday is when

you could start to get pupils back in the classroom. James, this won't come as much of a surprise to

head teachers. I think there was a sense that this wasn't going to be something immediate for next

month. But in terms of what Boris Johnson said, do you think this is faster than people expected

or actually we still don't really know what's going on because he didn't quite commit to that

much date? So it's slower than I think people fought when this lockdown started. I think when

people thought when this lockdown started that schools will be back after the February

half term. So it's slower in that respect. But it is a little bit faster than than some of the

speculations had it in recent weeks.

So there's been talk of schools not going back until after Easter. Under this case, they would go

back before Easter. I thought it was also interesting what he indicated about the easing up of

a lockdown more broadly. He said that when Parliament returned in that week of the 22nd of February, if the government

hit its target of vaccinating the top four groups, so he's first and a half million people

by the middle of February, they would then set out a roadmap for easing up. Now, he also was very

clear that schools would be the first thing to go back. So I don't think we should

think that because schools are returning on March the 8th, we should think that public houses

...