Londoner’s Diary: New Covid website flags up ‘consistently-wrong’ sceptics

HOME schooling has been a humbling experience for MP Chris Skidmore. The ex-minister,  who is caring for three children under six, tells ConservativeHome  he’s come to suspect he’s lacking in teaching talent: “Those that can, teach, those that can’t… well, become Tory MPs perhaps.”

LISA NANDY artfully put the PM in a tricky position by calling Joe Biden “woke”, but her politicking hasn’t been spotless. There were reports this month Nandy might attend the inauguration. She didn’t make it, citing lockdown — but as Steerpike points out, that might be a rather handy excuse. 

Hafsa Zayyan, one of the winners of the Merky Books’ New writers prize, has revealed the time pressure she was under to complete her novel. Merky, Stormzy’s publishing imprint, said they wanted “to keep the momentum up”. So Zayyan, a lawyer by day, locked herself away and “kind of just gunned it”. Six months later her 384 page novel We Are All Birds of Uganda was ready. Speedy. 

Normal People was the show that captured our hearts — and it seems it wasn’t just a flash in the pan. We hear applications to The Lir Academy, part of Trinity College Dublin, have risen following the series’ success. Heartthrob Paul  Mescal, pictured, trained there and some scenes were filmed at the university. The Lir confirmed applications for the acting programme are up  â€œ74 per cent on this  time last year”. The Mescal effect.

It’s merely a “coincidence” that the New Statesman magazine just published a front cover with the same headline and image as one used for The Spectator’s December edition, NS deputy editor Tom Gatti says. Referring to the picture of Joe Biden carrying the world on his shoulders under the headline “Biden’s burden”, Gatti insists “the Atlas image is hardly original”. He said “though we admire our friends at the Spectator”, none of his team have seen a print copy since last March. If you can’t beat them...

Coronavirus wars have been raging online with websites such as Toby Young’s Lockdown Sceptics, but now there’s a new force in town.

Anti-Virus describes itself as “dedicated to debunking common Covid-sceptic arguments, and highlighting the track record of some of the most influential and consistently-wrong Covid Sceptics”. Started by a group of think-tankers, journalists and one MP — rising Tory star Neil O’Brien — it went live this week.  

Sam Bowman, a senior fellow at the Adam Smith Institute, tells us they’re trying to “join up the dots” in the ecosystem of what they see as misleading claims. Anti-Virus has a list of sceptics, including academics, journalists and Twitter users, whose arguments it documents.  

“Everybody makes mistakes,” Bowman says, but seeing the same people being “consistently wrong and in the same way, you wonder what’s going on there”.  

Bowman also reflected on the way coronavirus had divided those who were once ideological allies. “I find it really sad that a lot of people who I once would have considered fellow travellers have really gone off the deep end,” he said, adding “in another way it’s nice to know there are people of every political stripe…. [who] think how should we solve this problem, how do we debate with each other”.

Bowman pointed to Right-winger Ryan Bourne of the Cato Institute. Bourne, he says, spends “so much time arguing with allies. People who are wavering are more likely to agree with someone who they agree with on nine out of ten issues. The value of having a Ryan Bourne saying ‘I agree with you on tax and regulation and the usual rules don’t apply here’. It’s done a huge amount of good."  

Bowman adds that “if even a few people read it and feel that they realise they have been misled by those who they once trusted that would be a really good outcome.”