Otto English’s 2021 Round-Up: Part Two

Euro 2020, a manufactured ‘culture war’, anti-vaxxers, a rare resignation and the fall of Kabul – the summer of 2021 was an eventful one

JUNE

On 1 June, brilliant sunshine embraced the British Isles in the wake of a Bank Holiday Monday that had been the hottest day of the year. The warmer days, falling Coronavirus infections and loosening restrictions gave hope – once again – that the worst might be over and there was comfort in the news there had been no recorded COVID-19 deaths in the previous 24 hours.

Two days later, Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi hailed “another important milestone” as it was revealed that more than 50% of British adults had now received both doses. Urging others to come forward, Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock enthused: “Let’s roll up our sleeves and put this pandemic behind us, once and for all!”

It was time to Get COVID Done. But, much like leaving the EU, that was easier said than done.

Dr David Nabarro, the World Health Organisation’s special envoy on COVID-19 told Sky News: “It’s always the most dangerous moment, when you’re managing an infectious disease, as you get that curve coming right down to zero. It’s at that point that if you release your precautions too quickly then a spike will come back up and given that we’ve got new variants… we have to be doubly careful.”

‘Vaccine-beating’ variants would emerge, Dr Nabarro predicted and it would be reckless to think that it was all over.

A week on, as Italy faced Turkey in the first game of the Euro 2020 football tournament in Rome, the World Health Organisation urged caution again about what could become a super-spreader event.

In the UK, some seemed far more bothered about the virus of ‘wokery’ infecting the England squad. When the team was booed for taking the knee – reflecting its stance to stand against racial injustice – at a warm-up fixture against Austria, manager Gareth Southgate told a press conference: “We feel, more than ever, we are determined to take the knee throughout the tournament… we’re all trying to move towards equality – and support out team-mates because of some of the experiences they’ve been through.”

With the first match approaching, Laurence Fox, fresh from his humiliation in the London Mayoral election, took to Twitter to declare that “I’m embarrassed to be British”. He wrote: “I hope any team but ours wins in any future sporting endeavour. Tell me a single thing to moderate my thinking? Millionaire woke babies protesting inequality on 200,000 grand a week. We deserve everything that is coming. Weak men. Weak.”

England’s players took the knee at their first match against Croatia at Wembley on 13 June. A vocal group of supporters from both sides booed – although, to their credit, many England fans responded by trying to drown-out the noise with applause. The Croatian players stood.

England won the game – and then won and won again, reaching the Euro 2020 final on 11 July, in which it lost on penalties. Football may not have come home – but they had done themselves and us very proud indeed.

When the three players who had missed penalties – Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka – received racial abuse in the days following, their fellow England player Tyrone Mings confronted the Home Secretary on Twitter when she condemned it, having previously accused the team of conducting “gesture politics” by taking the knee.

The Delta variant of the Coronavirus was now the dominant strain. By 17 June, there were 10,000 daily cases – the highest figure since February – and, while deaths and hospitalisations remained low, it was clear that the pandemic was not over.

Current affairs lovers could at least console themselves with both a brand-new news channel and a very current political affair.

GB News‘ first night on 13 August was more The Play that Goes Wrong than ‘Fox News UK’. Having promised, at some considerable length, that the ‘anti-woke’ channel would “give a voice to those who felt sidelined or even silenced in our great national debates” Andrew Neil introduced his team.

Neil – whose history of being sidelined and silenced included being chairman of the Spectator magazine, the former editor of The Sunday Times, founding chairman of Sky News and the host of high-profile BBC shows – was joined by other silenced figures including a former ITV newsreader, a plummy ex-Guido Fawkes ‘reporter’, a former Sky News anchor, at least two former Brexit Party MEPs, and former ‘national treasure’ Neil Oliver – whose set piece rants to camera would delight fans of unhinged blather for the rest of the year.

Plagued with technical hitches, the launch was widely mocked and, just a few days later, Neil retreated to his French villa – never to return. He later described his involvement with GB News as the “single biggest mistake of my life”.

Then there was Matt Hancock. The Health and Social Care Secretary’s squirm-inducing dalliance with his advisor and friend, Gina Coladangelo, was captured by a seemingly covert camera in his office and later leaked to the Sun newspaper.

The footage had been shot on 6 May and, since ‘intimate contact between different households’ only became permissible from 17 May, the pair were clearly in breach of regulations. In a rare resignation, Hancock quit but here, perhaps, were the first signs that the Conservative Party viewed lockdowns in terms of ‘one rule for us and another for them’ – an attitude that was to later come back and bite it.

Hancock later let it be known that he was planning to write a book called How I Won the COVID War and was already in talks with HarperCollins for a deal worth a “six-figure sum”. HarperCollins, very sensibly, denied all knowledge of it.

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JULY

July saw the Batley and Spen by-election being held. The contest, in the murdered Labour MP Jo Cox’s former seat, was brought about by the resignation of incumbent Labour MP Tracy Brabin, following her election as Mayor of West Yorkshire.

Labour’s majority had fallen sharply – by 12.8% – in the 2019 General Election and the Conservatives clearly hoped that there was a chance to unpick another brick in Labour’s once-iconic ‘Red Wall’.

The bad-tempered contest, which attracted all manner of dissemblers and agitators, eventually saw Kim Leadbeater – Jo Cox’s sister – scrape home with a majority of just 323 votes. The Conservatives came second and clearly saw their progress as a win.

There was further good news for the Conservative right when, on 13 July, MPs backed a £4 billion cut to the overseas aid budget, slashing it down to 0.5% of Government expenditure. For a decade, right-wing politicians including prominent Christian millionaire Jacob Rees Mogg and ‘Poundshop Enoch Powell’ Nigel Farage had backed the move. But it left many decent people appalled.

This was “the stamp of Little England, not Great Britain”, according to former Conservative Prime Minister Sir John Major. “It seems that we can afford a ‘national yacht’ that no one either wants or needs, whilst cutting help to some of the most miserable and des