31/10/2020
31 Oct 2020

The long winter

31 Oct 2020

The long winter

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Fraser NelsonFraser Nelson
The long winter – why Covid restrictions could last until April

Not much makes sense during a pandemic but in recent weeks the Covid puzzle has become a deeper mystery. When local lockdowns failed, the solution was to try even more of them. Manchester was put into Tier 3 restrictions when its Covid cases were falling; now there’s talk of a Tier 4. Confirmed infections are nowhere near the 50,000 a day that Boris Johnson’s scientific advisers warned about last month - but the panic now seems far greater.

The long winter – why Covid restrictions could last until April
Paul Wood
Michael Cohen: ‘I lied for Trump, but that doesn’t make me a liar’

When I met Michael Cohen in New York two years ago, he was a man visibly crushed by what life had done to him. His whole face sagged: he could have defined the word ‘hangdog’, a beagle caught peeing on the Persian rug. We stood outside his apartment building, which was Trump Park Avenue, Trump’s name bearing down on Cohen’s head in gold letters three feet high. We’d already had a long lunch and I was trying to say goodbye but as he spoke about one injustice or humiliation he remembered another, a torrent of self-pity.

Michael Cohen: ‘I lied for Trump, but that doesn’t make me a liar’
Tanya Gold
The magic of cinema isn’t just about film

Cinema is fading. Borat went straight to Amazon Prime, where he is smaller, and Bond 25 — no time to die eh? — is delayed until next year. In response Cineworld has ‘temporarily’ closed its cinemas and the smaller film houses are struggling. Millennials and Generation Z don’t mind, but I am no such creature: I was an usherette at Options in Kingston-upon-Thames in 1990. Do they know that cinema remains, despite its best efforts, the most inspiring kind of mass culture? Dreams mean nothing to the gilded and interesting: they do not need them.

The magic of cinema isn’t just about film
Francis Pike
Erdogan’s game: why Turkey has turned against the West

Six years ago, at the celebratory opening match of the new Basaksehir Stadium in Istanbul, an unlikely football star emerged. The red team’s ageing, six-foot tall centre-forward lumbered toward the white team’s goal; a delicate chip over the advancing keeper brought a goal that sent the stadium into ecstasy. The scorer was Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It was the run-up to an election in which he expected to become his country’s 12th president.

Erdogan’s game: why Turkey has turned against the West
Allison Pearson
Mark Drakeford has made Wales a laughing stock

Imagine a country where you’re allowed to buy vodka and cigarettes but not baby clothes, because they are ‘non-essential’. A place where supermarkets can sell you socks but, mysteriously, neither tights nor lightbulbs. All right, you may plunge to your death down a dimly lit staircase in Pontarddulais, but at least you didn’t get that terrible Covid. Often the butt of ignorant jokes, my homeland Wales is now quite rightly a laughing stock.

Mark Drakeford has made Wales a laughing stock
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