Covid, debt and desperation: an MP’s caseload in struggling Hull
With infection rates more than twice the English average, Labour’s Emma Hardy fears reopening may come too soon for her constituency
While much of England counts down the days to their first beer garden pint or a long-overdue haircut, Emma Hardy will be watching the government’s Covid dashboard nervously. The Labour MP is looking forward to a trim, but she is also very worried that her Hull constituency risks being forgotten again.
Coronavirus has hit Hull so badly that last month Hardy quit her job on the shadow frontbench to devote her full attention to her constituents’ woes. Like many deprived northern English cities, Hull has had three Covid waves rather than the two that have hit London and the south: the first one in spring last year, a second in autumn (when at one point a quarter of all Hull children were off school isolating) and a third in January. Each was more deadly than the last.
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