Andy Richardson: Seconds out as Keir has Boris on the ropes again
Sir Keir Starmer has a forensic mind. Watching him duel with the blustering Boris Johnson is like watching a professor facing up to all-comers on Countdown.
If Keir and Boris were boxers, the ref would step in each week.
But it’s time for Sir Keir to go back to school and take a leaf out of Marcus Rashford’s textbook. The kid who grew up in poverty and idolised Ronaldo has captured the public mood and the Prime Minister is now chasing him, rather than the other way round.
His success in putting food on the table for children who could otherwise go hungry is a victory for common decency, rather than Boris’s much-vaunted common sense.
Covid-19 coverage:
In England in 2020, we ought not to be sending children to bed hungry and miserable. No excuses.
Footballers are so easy to criticise that they might as well walk around with targets on their back. Yet Rashford is a real role model.
Like Captain Tom Moore before him, he is the best of British and has shown that each of us can be an agent of change.
If we need to consider the likely trajectory of Covid-19 we can look to China.
Having flattened the curve and got its economy on track, it is now dealing with isolated outbreaks. Beijing is living under a mini-lockdown after an outbreak in a massive food market.
The city had been packing trains, enjoying sport, dining at restaurants and drinking at pubs after 50 days without an infection. Now it is back to square one.
Thousands of flights have been cancelled and authorities are trying to contain the spike.
Here, while schools remain closed to the majority, new sectors of the economy are planning to reopen. Theme parks, leisure centres and museums are figuring out how socially-distanced fun might look as the creative industries lose a massive £1 billion a week.
Limited numbers, viewing points, one-way systems, late night opening, one-in-one-out toilets and ticket-only admission are among the plans.
Britain’s overseas trade is on hold, though we’ve started exporting a new product to far-flung markets: Covid-19. It turns out the two new cases in New Zealand, which has led a world class fight against the virus, were travellers from the UK who left isolation without being tested.
