Had the UK locked down one week earlier…

Had we introduced coronavirus lockdown measures one week earlier, we would have reduced the final death toll by at least a half. That was the view expressed by Professor Neil Ferguson yesterday. It means inaction caused tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. “The tragic reality is that Boris Johnson was too slow to take us into lockdown,” Jon Ashworth commented. Ministers say they were simply following their scientific advice, and will not accept fault. But as Rory Stewart highlighted this morning on Radio 4, and as Keir Starmer has said, the role of government is also to challenge and test that advice.

It is not as if the slow response was uncontroversial at the time: the World Health Organisation was issuing warnings, Labour was questioning why the UK was not following other countries, and in fact the British public was already ‘locking down’ voluntarily. The truth is that the advice coming from SAGE was convenient because it aligned with the Prime Minister’s libertarian instincts and the Tory priority of private wealth above public health. The cost of those bad priorities must not be forgotten.

Although horrifying and upsetting, it is easy to understand the thinking behind the lockdown reluctance. A government decision confirmed yesterday is just as distressing, but this one is more difficult to explain. Tory MPs voted to keep weakened legal protections for children in care in England, against the advice of the Children’s Commissioner and of children’s charities. Key safeguards were removed via a statutory instrument, without parliamentary debate, and the government is now insisting they remain in place. Here is our write-up of the troubling story and deeply disappointing outcome.

Racism within Labour is receiving increased attention thanks to Black Lives Matter protests, as well as the Equality and Human Rights Commission investigation of antisemitism that is expected to conclude imminently. Keir Starmer is unveiling a set of measures today to tackle anti-Black racism within the party, from building on the Bernie Grant Leadership Programme to introducing an immediate audit into the diversity of party staff. He is also promising to take action based on the findings of the leaked report inquiry, due to wrap up by mid-July.

The importance of behind-the-scenes as well as public-facing representation has been eloquently explored by Shamik Das on LabourList. The scale of the work that needs doing should not be underestimated. Labour’s Southside headquarters is disproportionately white, but the same criticism applies to the newly appointed leader’s office. The diversity of parliamentary staff (hired by MPs themselves rather than the party) may be trickier to confront yet also merits scrutiny. As with eradicating Labour of antisemitism, talk is welcome but genuinely improved outcomes are desperately needed – and we must recognise that this is intrinsically political.