No one will admit it openly but there has been a decisive shift in the British government’s approach to coronavirus. In the minds of ministers, the pandemic is no longer primarily a health crisis; it is now principally an economic crisis.
Of course, it has always been both but the move to ease lockdown, when there are still thousands of new cases each day, shows that economic considerations are weighing more heavily.
Many will say amen to that. A scared public is insufficiently frightened of the economic costs of shielding themselves. The damage to companies and livelihoods, to say nothing of the social costs, has been immense. Easing must come before safety can be assured. As foreign secretary Dominic Raab says: “We cannot just stay in lockdown forever”.