the times | Saturday December 18 2021 47
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My Week
Chris Whitty*
Monday
I’m meeting with the prime minister.
He says he’s very worried about how
the numbers will look on Friday.
“Really bad,” I tell him. “My
estimate is about 90,000.”
“God, that’s awful,” says the PM.
“I know,” I say.
“Especially,” he says, “as our
majority is only 23,000.”
“This is much bigger than the by-
election,” I say. “My worry is that this
could be our worst week yet.”
“But that’s exactly my worry, too,”
says the PM.
“I just feel,” I say, “that all this talk
about parties has done immense
damage. When we should be talking
about boosters.”
“Couldn’t agree more,” says the PM.
“And yet,” I say, “I can’t help feeling
that we’re somehow at cross
purposes.”
“No idea what you mean,” says the
PM.
Tuesday
The PM has asked me to drop in on
an informal gathering of backbench
Conservatives, to reassure them about
my motives before the big debate on
new Covid measures. So I do, and I
tell them it’s vitally important that
they realise I’m not their enemy.
“So how come,” says one of them,
“you’re not wearing a party hat?”
I’m not a politician, I tell him. So I
can’t tell you how to vote. But I can
tell you that Omicron is a terrible
threat, and that the NHS will struggle
unless we dramatically reduce our
levels of pre-Christmas socialising.
“I can’t hear you,” he says, because
the music is a bit loud.
“Perhaps we could sit down,” I say.
“Just as soon,” he shouts back, “as
we finish this conga.”
Wednesday
Yesterday’s rebellion was pretty
big. Today, all the same, the PM
and I are practising for our
5pm press conference. He’s
saying people should keep
going to parties. I’m saying the
opposite.
“I just think it might be less
confusing,” he says, “if you
agreed with me.”
I’m just following
the science, I tell
him.
“But we’re
sliding in the
polls,” he says.
“And people are
going to start
thinking you’re
encouraging
that.”
“Next slide,
please,” I say. “See?” he says.Thursday
Today a Conservative MP has been
tweeting that I should defer to elected
officials in my advice. Afterwards,
Downing Street makes her call me up
and apologise.
“But you must see where I’m
coming from,” she says. “Nobody
voted for you.”
“I’m just following the science,” I
say, for the millionth time.
“But it’s not the science,” she says,
“that is effectively saying that people
like me are irresponsible idiots.”
I don’t say anything.
“Is it?” she says.
“I’ll have somebody draw you a
graph,” I say.Friday
The PM asks me to drop round to
Downing Street again.
“But we’re supposed to be working
from home,” I remind him.
“But this is my home,” he says.
“Also Carrie’s nicked the laptop for
Spotify, because she’s got some people
over.”
When I get there, he’s wearing a
mask for the first time ever. But he’s
also punched a hole in it, so he can
drink through a straw.
“The numbers,” he says. “My God.”
“I told you they’d be bad,” I say.
“Not those numbers,” he says.
Then he says he reckons that the
big problem is that the public just
can’t see what they’re really doing all
the time. And I say that might be
true, but on the other hand it might
be the exact opposite.
“No idea what you mean,” he says.
“Fancy an eggnog?”
“Absolutely not,” I say, and that’s
when he gets cross.
“The thing is,” he says, “I’m starting
to wonder if I can trust you. Because
we don’t seem to be on the same
page. And I don’t actually see
what we’re doing wrong.”
“What, really?” I say.
The PM glowers at me.
Then he says if I carry on like
this, people are going to
wonder whether this country
is actually in safe hands
after all.
“I never doubt it
for a moment,”
I say.
“Good man,”
he says.
“Oh hang
on,” I say. “Did
you mean
yours or
mine?”
*according to
Hugo RifkindO come, all ye faithful Daisy Shepherd and Millie McDaid in the Cellarium at Fountains Abbey, a ruined Cistercian monastery
near Ripon, where visitors can enjoy a light show and sing along to recorded carols or, today and tomorrow, to live choirsTIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JAMES GLOSSOPMan’s T-shirt backed terror group
A judge told a terrorist sympathiser
who wore a Hamas T-shirt in a Jewish
area of London that while his support
for Palestine was “worthy” his backing
of violence was abhorrent.
Feras Al Jayoosi, 34, admitted four
counts of wearing an article supporting
a proscribed organisation.
The charges relate to him wearing
T-shirts supporting Hamas Izz ad-Din
al-Qassam Brigades — the military
wing of the Palestinian organisation
Hamas — and Palestinian Islamic
Jihad. Both are proscribed as terrorist
organisations in the UK.
Three of the charges relate to Jayoosi
wearing the garments in Golders Green
in north London, an area with a large
Jewish population, on June 8 and 9 this
year. The fourth involved an incident atBarbury Castle, an Iron Age hill fort in
Wiltshire, on May 30 this year.
Paul Goldspring, the chief magis-
trate, gave Jayoosi a 16-week jail
sentence suspended for two years at
Westminster magistrates’ court. He
told Jayoosi his autism and Asperger’s
reduced his culpability, and meant he
would not go to prison immediately.
“You had multiple warnings that the
path you were taking — the organisa-
tions you sought out to align yourself
with — would get you into trouble, but
you carried on,” Goldspring said.
“This prosecution is not about [you]
supporting the cause of the Palestinian
people. You and very many others,
rightly, feel very strongly about that. It’s
about supporting organisations that
believe the way to solving the problemis in ways that are violent and that we
should all abhor. Do not be under any
misunderstanding that your support
for the Palestinian cause is somehow
not thought to be worthy and lauded —
it is.
“There were many ways you could
have expressed your support for the
cause without finding yourself in
court.”
Goldspring said he did not expect
Jayoosi, from Swindon, to find himself
before the courts again, but also said he
would probably struggle to find a job in
the future with a terror conviction.
Jayoosi was ordered to carry out 100
hours of community service and was
banned from the NW11 postcode area
of north London. He was also ordered
to pay £288 to the court.The number of Christians in England
and Wales is close to falling below half
of the population for the first time, with
a large increase in the number who
have no religious faith, figures show.
The 2011 census found that 59.3 per
cent of the English and Welsh popula-
tion were Christian, but by 2019 this
figure had fallen to 51 per cent, accord-
ing to data from the Office for National
Statistics (ONS). Less than half of men,
at just 47.4 per cent, reported their
Losing our religion: Christians poised to become a minority
religion as Christian, with 54.9 per cent
of women declaring themselves to be
Christians.
The proportion of people who cited
no religious belief, including those
whose faith was documented as “no
religion” or “not stated”, rose from
32.3 per cent in 2011 to 38.4 per cent in- This will include atheists,
agnostics and those who may hold spir-
itual but non-religious beliefs.
More than half of those in their
twenties, 53.4 per cent, state that they
have no religion, with just 35 per cent
describing themselves as Christian.
Among over-80s, 81 per cent of people
describe themselves as Christian with
just 14 per cent having no religion.
The ONS warned that the data
sample for the 2019 figures was much
smaller than for the population-wide
census, stressing that it would be
necessary to wait for results from the
2021 census for a more reliable
comparison with 2011 figures.
Just 10.6 per cent of the population
follow a religion other than Christian-
ity, but this rises to more than 25 per
cent in London. Across England and
Wales, 51 per cent of people are Christ-ian, 5.7 per cent are Muslim, 1.7 per cent
are Hindu, 0.7 per cent are Sikh, 0.6 per
cent are Jewish, 0.4 per cent are
Buddhist, and 1.5 per cent cited another
religion, while 38.4 per cent cited no
religion.
Christianity appears strongest, in
percentage terms, in northwest En-
gland, where 59.4 per cent are Christ-
ian, and least strong in London and
Wales, where 45 and 48 per cent of
people are Christian respectively.
ONS experts said it may be necessary
to provide comprehensive data on eth-
nicity and religion more than once perdecade in the census. Sarah Coates,
from the ONS, said: “There is a strong
user need for timely data by ethnic
group and religion.
“This is especially significant now, as
the coronavirus pandemic has high-
lighted the urgent need to improve the
evidence base around ethnicity and
health.”
A Church of England spokesman
said it was encouraging to see that more
than half of people still described
themselves as Christian in an era when
people were less likely to tick the
“Christian” box automatically.Kaya Burgess
Religious Affairs Correspondent