Get ready for the game-changer. The Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine for coronavirus, which was approved for use in the UK yesterday, is as close to a miracle as medicine ever gets. It’s highly effective with just a single shot, and production can be scaled up quickly. The Government’s ambition to distribute 100 million vials – enough … Read more
Tonight Britain will leave the European Union for good, as the demands of the 2016 referendum are finally met. Ever since that historic result, there have been four and a half years of relentlessly bitter rancour between opposing sides, and in the process reputations were made and lost. So, more than 1,600 days after the … Read more
For secondary pupils, the announcement yesterday that many schools may not open fully until after the February half-term holiday is a cruel and deeply unnecessary blow. I fear hundreds of thousands of young people will spend the rest of their lives paying for this disastrous decision, foisted on the Government by callous and opportunistic unions … Read more
When former trade union firebrand Tony Woodley rejected the offer of a peerage in August, it seemed like a fitting act of solidarity with the proletariat by a Left-winger who had once been a Vauxhall Motors shop steward. But within weeks the former General Secretary of Unite had had a change of heart and took … Read more
A week ago many of us looked sadly at the sky. We’d been told something miraculous was happening: Jupiter and Saturn were lining up, the closest in 800 years, appearing as one bright star — the Christmas Star of legend. Hopelessly I gazed up — at heavy cloud. That’s 2020, I thought! But it reminded … Read more
The sun is slowly sinking behind the mountain and the lights are starting to twinkle on snowy hillsides. All is snug and cosy — gemütlich, as they like to say in these parts — except for the most peculiar noise: silence. I am in Ischgl, the Austrian ski resort famous for the most boisterous apres-ski … Read more
At the weekend, as I read sentimental tributes paid to the MI6-agent-turned-Soviet-spy George Blake after his death on Boxing Day at the age of 98, my thoughts turned to his victims, people like Mr Koppel One day in 2010, I travelled to Wokingham in Berkshire to visit a retired lathe operator called Alexander Koppel. He lived … Read more
You look as fresh as a daisy for someone who’s spent the night counting fish,’ Boris Johnson joked to Ursula von der Leyen as he began the tele-conference that finally brought Britain’s Brexit purgatory to an end. The Prime Minister’s ability to strike up an unlikely rapport with the daughter of one of the EU’s … Read more
It was the worst of years. Let’s get that out of the way. Choked by coronavirus, divided by coronavirus, we have endured many months during which the most natural of human behaviours – hugging, touching, kissing, mingling in crowds, enjoying a hubbub – have been forbidden. Nor will it finish quickly. Historians have a habit … Read more
RISHI SUNAK: In 2021 we won’t be Remainers or Leavers – only believers in Britain By Rishi Sunak For The Mail On Sunday Published: 22:15 GMT, 26 December 2020 | Updated: 22:16 GMT, 26 December 2020 This has been a tough year for everyone in this country. We all know businesses which have had to … Read more