Welcome to the final edition of the Guardian Weekly of a tumultuous year. With just a fortnight to go until the 1 January deadline, the UK and EU remained locked in talks this week to try to get a post-Brexit trade deal over the line. In the big story, Observer political editor Toby Helm and Tom Wall ask how on Earth it has come to this.
After that it’s our review of 2020: the year of Covid-19. There have been other seismic events – the Black Lives Matter protests; the election loss of Donald Trump and what may turn out to be a no-deal Brexit. But it’s the coronavirus, first officially reported on 31 December 2019, that impacted the lives of nearly every soul on the planet. In a special 2020 edition we look back at our lost year.
We begin this special look-back with a stirring essay by Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland, who argues that the pandemic has acted like a giant magnifying glass exposing both the frailties and strengths of our societies. Then, our science editor Ian Sample tracks back through the great project: the global effort by scientists and medics around the world to treat and prevent Covid-19. Barney Ronay remembers a year of empty-stadium weirdness in sport and Paula Cocozza investigates the psychological impact of living with the pandemic.
Also in our year-end special: the Observer’s always-moving look back at the lives we lost this year, and we wrap up the best films and music of a year when many people had little else to do but hunker down with home entertainment.
