RAMZY BAROUD highlights how Israel’s ambassador sought to shut down UN officials documenting sexual violence and abuses against Palestinians
Latest editorial
Covid-19 exposes the failure of the 'post-political state'
DR LEE JONES and DR TARA McCORMACK argue that if we learn anything from this crisis, it is the need to stop hollowing-out the state and restore ministerial accountability
The left has become too reliant on persuasion and too detached from the workplaces and communities it seeks to represent, argues NICK TROY
The US-Israeli conflict with Iran has had far-reaching consequences, including a boost to Pakistan’s regional standing, argues ROGER McKENZIE
The recent heatwaves revealed how ill-prepared Britain remains for a hotter future – and how unequal the ability to cope with it has become, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
The drive to strengthen European defence is reshaping relations between France, Germany, Italy and Britain, says NICK WRIGHT
The UN blames gangs for Haiti’s turmoil, while ignoring decades of foreign intervention and support for an unelected government that lie at the heart of the country’s continuing crisis, says RUBEN BRETT
EVERY DAY we are told that Covid-19 is an unprecedented and unanticipated crisis. In reality, the British state spent 15 years preparing for a pandemic. Its inadequate response to Covid-19 signals a deep failure of the state, whose roots go back many years — not, as some suggest, to Boris Johnson’s winter vacation.
Covid-19 is not an unexpected event. Successive British governments have identified pandemic viruses as a major national security threat. Tony Blair’s government issued the first pandemic plan in 2005, in the wake of the SARS and bird flu pandemics. In 2008, the Brown government included pandemics in Britain’s first National Security Strategy.
Subsequent versions under Conservative governments rated pandemics as a “tier one” threat, with the risk of an outbreak rising in the medium term. The National Security Council, established in 2010, created a sub-committee on Threats, Hazards, Resilience and Contingencies to manage this threat. The Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy followed in 2011. The government’s Biological Security Strategy was published in 2018.
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