Normal service has been resumed for me this week, with apologies for last week’s interruption. A combination of an IT glitch and a day full of old fashioned meetings meant that we were not able to put out last week’s offering. For those of you who want to read it all the same, as well for the satisfaction of my own schoolboyish need to demonstrate that I really had done my homework before the dog ate it/baby was sick on it/seagull flew off with it, it will also be available to read today. If nothing else, it’s interesting to see how quickly things are moving at the moment.

So now we know. Normal life has been postponed for four weeks, or, according to reports this morning, maybe two. Unless that is, you’re going to a wedding in which case, the leash has been allowed to slip a little with, in reality, a lot of slippage likely by the end of the evening at many of them. Against the ongoing spread of the Delta variant, Monday’s announcement was only to be expected, although it has not been universally agreed with. The three cornered equation between vaccination, hospitalisations and deaths seems to be at the heart of official thinking with, at times, infection rates seeming almost to be immaterial. A prime minister who seems willing to bet big on some strategies has clearly backed the efficacy of vaccinations in controlling the impact of the virus at this point. It’s in all our interests that day to day developments show him to be right to have done so.

The economy has brought some good news, although there are also some concerns to balance them. GDP continues to grow, as does employment. In the middle of the good news/bad news indicator is an inflation figure which may, on the one hand, be a natural effect of strengthening consumer spend in an economy which is growing more rapidly than we are used to but will, on the other hand, be concerning if it proves to be an early indicator of a wage/price spiral. On the downside, our economy is recovering more slowly than many, probably because of the continuing significance in the UK economy of the service sector and the drag on parts of that sector of lockdown, and there are signs of labour shortages in some areas. Labour shortages seem to be attributable in part to Brexit, as is a drop of food exports from the UK to the EU. Never mind-look out for the effects of the noisily announced trade deal with Australia which will give us access to a market of 25m consumers (France alone has 67m) as well as to tariff-free TimTams.

Before yesterday, the leadership of the Conservative party had already had a bit of an uncomfortable week with the latest of Dominic Cummings’s drip fed revelations. The dangers of the indelibility of social media have meant that no denials are possible in relation to what one newspaper headline described as a hopeless man reporting that another hopeless man had called another man hopeless. Whilst we can all understand that Cabinet life has its tensions, that not everyone in a team the size of the Cabinet will like each other and that they’ve had a colossally difficult issue to deal with, what emerged this week is not likely to be good for any of its protagonists in the long run. As if matters were not bad enough for Matt Hancock, he now also has to carry the burden of a Rees-Mogg pronouncement of his genius.

The party’s leaders now have to pick the bones out of a by-election result which saw a swing of extraordinary dimensions away from the Conservatives towards a Liberal Democrat Party which had seemed to be so deep into the long grass as to be almost invisible. Whilst the government’s opponents will claim the result to be a judgement on its performance in office, there is likely to be a significant local element to the outcome of the vote because of opposition in the Chesham and Amersham constituency towards HS2 which is due to go right through it. The 1922 Committee, never shy to step in when it feels that the ability of the Conservative party to keep control of political power is under threat, will be taking a keen interest.

Football’s oldest international fixture is resumed this evening to the delight of the print media. You can tell that it’s taking place in the summer because the press have filled their pages not so much with pre-match analysis as stories ranging from how to block Uri Geller’s attempts to influence the match telepathically to the return of a score predicting walrus. Most of us couldn’t make it up-perhaps at times like this it’s not a bad thing that some of us can.

Enjoy the weekend.

Ian Waine leads Prettys’ Corporate Services Team and has advised on a large number of corporate recovery and corporate restructuring cases over the last 30 years. He can be contacted at 07979 498817 or iwaine@prettys.co.uk.