New Variant

Days ago, the Government was threatening legal action against schools and councils unless the schools were kept open.

But by then, not only had the schools attended by Cabinet Ministers and their children already broken up, but the Government already knew about a far more infectious variant of Covid-19, and it already knew that schoolchildren were particularly liable to spread it.

Indeed, the Government was already planning the measures that were announced yesterday, measures that have been made necessary by that refusal to move teaching online for the last week of term, by the exclusion of schools from the second lockdown, and by the failure to provide testing in schools.

This has all been either cheered on, or abstained upon, by Labour and the Liberal Democrats. But I am the Independent parliamentary candidate for North West Durham. What are you doing?