Monday briefing: England councils scramble to keep schools closed

Top story: ‘Schools are safe’, PM insists

Yes we’re back, back again … welcome friends to this, the first Briefing of 2021. Warren Murray here and trying though times remain, it’s a pleasure as always to share these few moments with you.

Parents face disruption and uncertainty as local authorities in England scramble to delay schools reopening from today. Secondary schools are due to stay closed this week to all but vulnerable children and those with parents who are key workers. Primary schoolchildren are due to return to classrooms in all but 60 high-infection “contingency” areas, which include all of London and large areas of Essex and Kent, as well as parts of East Sussex, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire. But Essex council said it would unilaterally close schools to most pupils until at least Wednesday, and Kent joined England’s largest education authority in Birmingham in asking the education secretary to allow primaries to stay closed. Education bosses in Newcastle, Gateshead and Manchester also said they would support primaries that did not agree to fully reopen.

Labour has called for a national lockdown within 24 hours, warning the coronavirus is “out of control”. While stopping short of calling for all schools to close, Keir Starmer said it was “inevitable” more would need to do so. But Boris Johnson has urged parents to send their children to primary schools this week: “I understand people’s anxieties but there is no doubt in my mind that schools are safe and that education is a priority.” Secondaries are supposed to reopen next week for pupils in years 11 and 13 facing GCSE and A-level exams, then more fully from 18 January. Meanwhile, senior public figures have written to the PM saying hundreds of thousands of pupils should be provided with the devices or broadband connection they lack for remote learning during the pandemic.

People in the UK will begin receiving the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine today. In England the first doses are to be administered in a small number of hospitals for surveillance purposes, before being shipped days later to GP-led centres in the community. The first priority is to immunise care home residents, after the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which needs to be kept ultra-cold, was not taken into most care homes.

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‘Just find 11,780 votes’ – There are calls for Donald Trump to face prosecution after he demanded that Georgia’s secretary of state invent 11,780 votes to deliver him a win there. An extraordinary phone call has become public in which the voted-out president harangued Brad Raffensperger for an hour. “So look, all I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes,” Trump said at one point.

In one of a number of parries, Raffensperger replied: “Well, Mr President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.” The Democratic chairman of the House judiciary committee, Jerry Nadler, said Trump “remains profoundly unfit for office” and “may have also subjected himself to additional criminal liability”. Congress is due to ratify the presidential election result in Joe Biden’s favour on Wednesday, though some Republicans intend to try to derail proceedings, without any justification.

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‘He was our hero’ – Gerry Marsden, lead singer of Gerry and the Pacemakers, whose hits included You’ll Never Walk Alone and Ferry Cross the Mersey, has died aged 78 after an infection that reached his heart, his family said. The group shot to fame in the 1960s at a time when Liverpool was the centre of the musical universe.

His daughter Yvette Marbeck told the PA news agency: “He was our hero, wonderful. His heart has taken some battering over the years. He had a triple bypass, an aortic valve replacement and ironically he also had a pacemaker.” Sir Paul McCartney wrote: “[Gerry] and his group were our biggest rivals on the local scene. His unforgettable performances of You’ll Never Walk Alone and Ferry Cross the Mersey remain in many people’s hearts as reminders of a joyful time in British music.”

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Reading stabbing – Four boys and a girl have been arrested by police investigating the murder of a 13-year-old boy in Reading. Thames Valley police said the five teenagers aged between 13 and 14 were being held on suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder. Police were called on Sunday afternoon to Bugs Bottom fields, in the suburb of Emmer Green, where the victim was found and pronounced dead. Det Supt Kevin Brown, head of Thames Valley major crime, said: “I would urge anybody who has any information surrounding what happened yesterday to please make contact with Thames Valley police.”

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Assange verdict due – Julian Assange is due to hear today whether he should be extradited to the US to face espionage charges. The WikiLeaks founder, 49, faces an 18-count indictment alleging a plot to hack computers and a conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information in a case critics have decried as a dangerous attack on press freedom. The case relates to WikiLeaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, as well as diplomatic cables, in 2010 and 2011. Assange has been held in the high-security Belmarsh prison since police carried him out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he had taken refuge for seven years, and arrested him for breaching his bail conditions.

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‘Death by misadventure’ in Nora case – A coroner in Malaysia has ruled that no third party was involved in the death of Nora Anne Quoirin, the London teenager whose body was found in a Malaysian jungle. The inquest in Kuala Lumpur ruled that Nora, 15, probably died of misadventure. The teenager likely left family accommodation “on her own and subsequently got lost in the abandoned palm oil plantation” said the coroner. Nora, from Balham, who had a disorder called holoprosencephaly, went missing overnight while on a family holiday at a resort in Seremban, south of Kuala Lumpur, in August 2019. After a 10-day search her body was discovered in dense jungle 1.2 miles away from the resort.

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Creative chops – A Canadian venture dreamt up over sushi has so far recycled 32m disposable chopsticks bound for landfill into everything from tablet stands to tabletops, butchers’ blocks and desks. “These chopsticks travel 6,000 miles to arrive on your dining table for 20 to 30 minutes,” said founder Felix Böck, 31. “You can’t possibly feel good about throwing them out afterwards.”

ChopValue’s process uses heat, steam and pressure to transform the chopsticks into wooden tiles. Chopstick recycling bins are being placed in restaurants across North America. “We’ve made money since day one,” Böck said. “We obviously reinvested every dollar we made into growth because we feel that the responsibility right now is to expand the concept globally.”

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Lunchtime read: 2021 for the gamers

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Sport

Frank Lampard insisted he does not feel his job is under threat after an insipid performance in a 3-1 home defeat by Manchester City left him under mounting pressure with Chelsea in eighth place. Gerwyn Price’s 7-3 destruction of Gary Anderson was notable not just for what it was but for what it portended: the birth of a new superstar of darts, the first player to seriously challenge the supremacy of Michael van Gerwen and the first new world No 1 since van Gerwen took over from Phil Taylor seven years ago. Julie Harrington will start work this week as chief executive of the British Horseracing Authority, tasked, among other things, with helping to right the sport’s finances before they keel over entirely.

Sebastian Coe, the president of World Athletics, has dismissed concerns that Nike’s controversial new track spikes, which have produced a spate of recent world records, could provide an unfair advantage at the Olympics. Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp has acknowledged this season’s Premier League title race is too close to call and seems likely to go to the wire as he prepares to take his defending champions to Southampton on Monday night. Wasim Khan predicts a huge two years for Pakistan, with the return of a touring England side for the first time in 16 years among the highlights of a leap towards a full schedule of international cricket in the country.

Business

Asian stock markets have risen on 2021’s first trading day, boosted by optimism about the rollout of coronavirus vaccines after Wall Street ended the year on a new high. Market benchmarks in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul and Sydney advanced. Tokyo declined. The FTSE looks like opening 0.3% higher while the pound is worth $1.369 and $1.117 at time of writing.

The papers

“Schools crisis grows as PM warns of new Covid curbs” – our print edition’s lead story today. The Guardian front page also reports that two-thirds of youth groups in England face closure as we look into the plight of the Covid generation. The Metro’s splash today is “Happy new tier” – Boris Johnson’s government is warning that four levels of restrictions may not be enough. The FT reports that “Johnson tells England to prepare for tighter Covid-19 restrictions” while the Telegraph has “Threat of national lockdown looms again”.

The Mail embarks on a campaign to have Grenfell-style cladding removed from four million Britons’ homes, saying they are victims of “Towering injustice”. It also covers Bitcoin’s skyrocketing valuation. Others strike a more positive tone, on the topic of vaccinations – “Jabby Monday”, says the Sun, as “530,000 Oxford jabs are dished out today”, while the Express has “PM: jab gives hope to tens of millions”.

Like the Express, the Mirror reports that Jodie Whittaker is rumoured to be leaving Doctor Who, while its splash is “Class chaos”, about the Covid-disrupted return to school. The Times says “Stand by for new Covid curbs, PM warns” and the i leads with “Tougher Covid rules on the way, warns PM”.

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