| Dear Reader,
The Prime Minister confirmed today that the next stage of the roadmap out of lockdown will proceed as planned. You can follow the latest lockdown news on our live blog, including Britain's Covid alert level dropping from four to three. As ever, there is significant debate as to whether the UK is moving at the correct speed. Sarah Knapton sets out the experts' arguments for both going faster and taking it slow, so that you can make your own mind up.
A few bright spots aside, Labour suffered a grim set of election results last week, which was compounded by an apparently botched shadow cabinet reshuffle at the weekend (the fallout from which you can keep up with on our politics live blog). MPs from every faction of the party are debating why Labour hasn’t improved under Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership. At the root of all of the party’s problems, argues Suzanne Moore, is that it hasn’t got over the politics of Jeremy Corbyn - even with a new leader.
For the SNP, the elections meant victory, but not quite the triumph Nicola Sturgeon had hoped for. There is a pro-independence majority at Holyrood, but not an SNP one, which has complicated her drive for a new referendum. The Prime Minister has insisted now is not the moment to hold one and that, says Alan Cochrane, gives the Government more than enough time to learn from its mistakes and turn back the nationalist tide.
The debate over whether London needs a truly great concert hall periodically returns, rarely coming to any conclusion. Yet it may come as a surprise to know that until the Blitz, the capital did indeed have a world-class venue for classical music. Simon Heffer tells the fascinating story of why, while the House of Commons and St Clement Danes were rebuilt after the war, the Queen’s Hall was, sadly, not.
Even before Covid-19 struck, one’s mid-50s were seen as an age for relocation. The standard narrative is of decamping to the seaside or perhaps the country, and often downsizing, but not everyone follows that path. In a lovely piece, Sam Baker writes of how she and her husband decided instead to move to the middle of a bigger city at the opposite end of the country, and explains why it’s more common than you might think.
Finally, it may seem some time ago now, but snooker once dominated the public’s attention like nothing else beyond football. Ahead of a new BBC documentary exploring those glory days, Jim White spoke to Jimmy White for a wonderful and touching interview about the hedonistic days when snooker stars had private concerts from the rolling stones and all kinds of bad things were provided to them on tap.
Chris
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