Ten+ interesting and somewhat varied links

1. This is an interesting piece about what happened to Corbyn and Corbynism, written from the inside and therefore sympathetically, but sane and sensible. If that is your sort of thing, recommended.

2. Here is Lord Sumption: "“If you are going to inaugurate the greatest invasion of personal liberty in our entire history, even including wartime measures, if you dare to do that, then you have to move straight into justification mode.

“The government has now found itself trapped in a position where, first of all, it has to exaggerate the extent of the problem in order to justify its past actions. "And secondly, by exaggerating the scale of the problem, it is contributing to the difficulty that it now faces in persuading people to go back to school and back to work, because naturally what people ask is, well, what has changed since?”

He added: “The use of fear has, of course, been noticed by many people. And some members of Sage have made public statements since then saying that this was perhaps overdone, but it was a matter of deliberate policy, as it quite clearly was.

“What you have to remember is that when societies lose liberty, it is not because liberty has been crushed under the boot of some tyrant. It’s usually because they’ve been frightened into giving it up voluntarily.”" Well, here is Anders Tegnell in the FT.

3. In a similar vein, the Guardian tells me that "Covid lockdown rules more divisive than Brexit, survey finds". And there's a class angle too. What fun.

4. Taiwan. Oh dear. Is Switzerland like this, secretly?

5. This is a cool science thing - upside-down floating. 

6. BoJo and the rule of law. And here is what he says about it.

7. Are you interested in Nikola? "In Order to Continue the Appearance of Progress, Nikola Posted a YouTube Video of Its Nikola One “In Motion” on the Road. // Text Messages from a Former Employee Reveal the Truck Was Simply Filmed Rolling Down a Big Hill."

8. Your next lockdown project - claiming Bir Tawil.

9. This is where to follow European covid statistics. I don't see anyone congratulating BoJo and criticising Macron given the recent figures, nor should they. This thing is not over yet.

10. This Yglesias-Cowen conversation was nicely done, I thought.