COVID-19 UK Political Analysis by Tim Hames – 27th November 2020
Between the lines. What the COVID-19 Winter Plan might imply.
Even by the standards of these exceptional times, this has been an extraordinary week in the enduring coronavirus crisis. We have had the latest positive preliminary reports from another vaccine. Ministers set out their stall on how they would move back to regional tiers and published a COVID-19 Winter Plan. The identities of which localities would be allocated to which tier in the first instance has been established. A UK-wide set of arrangements for Christmas has been released. In the midst of all this, the Chancellor used his statement delivered in the House of Commons on Wednesday on a one-year comprehensive spending review to indicate how enormous the impact of the virus crisis on the public finances, national income and unemployment levels will be not simply this year, but potentially a long time to come. It has been an extremely large amount of information to attempt to make some sense of.
In the short-term, it is probably the provisions of the COVID-19 Winter Plan and what implications might legitimately be drawn from them that should be the focus for the attention of the business community. It is not merely the case that the Government has returned to the regional system of tiers which it had announced and operated for less than a month before resorting to the lockdown in England that will expire next week. There are differences – some substantial, others more subtle – to take account of.
