All the evidence shows voters want Labour to shift to the left — but initial signs from Andy Burnham are worrying on that front, cautions DIANE ABBOTT
IT’S been a year. On March 9 2020 I felt a tickle of a sore throat and left my office — and London — for the last time. Like millions of others with laptop jobs, I haven’t been back.
Since Boris Johnson’s announcement of a timetable to freedom on February 22, the media message — as delivered by the BBC and the rest of the Establishment press — is to cheerily march forward into a new post-Covid dawn, while remaining cautious about new invasive virus strains.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s Budget on Wednesday was another landmark in which his massive bungs to business — put in a quid and get £1.30 back, what a cool magic trick — were received with the breathlessness that used to be reserved for royal reportage.
The real ‘humanitarian threat’ isn’t Cuba but the United States, where poverty, lack of healthcare and illiteracy abound, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
Remembering the 1787 Calton Weavers strike, MATT KERR argues that golden thread of our history needs weaving into the fabric of every community in the land
As football grapples with overloaded calendars and commercial pressure, the Mariners’ triumph reminds us why the game’s soul lives far from the spotlight, writes JAMES NALTON


