I write this during yet another lockdown. Given the time of year, this seems worse than before, for my own family too, and I feel for everyone who has been directly affected by the impact of Covid-19, particularly those who have lost jobs, livelihoods and loved ones. 

2020 has been awful for so many.  Every time it gets worse, you hope to wake up as if from some bad dream.  But no, with almost 70,000 excess deaths this year from Covid-19, the nightmare is real, and it is impossible to conceive of how much worse this would have been without the restrictions in place. 

These are strange times in Westminster. One of the senior MPs told me last week that he cannot recall a more bizarre period in politics but like me, he remains confident that we will soon see the back of 2020 by seeing off the Covid-19 pandemic.