Could coronavirus change British politics?

Even if the Covid-19 coronavirus does not become a mass killer on the scale of, say, the Spanish Flu in 1918, the mere possibility of such severity still carries huge weight. Just the potential for a disastrous pandemic demands a response whose seriousness and nature will have political and social implications.

Even in this first week of the full UK response, some of those implications are clearly visible. And some of the inferences and lessons that can be drawn from this week are, to my mind, quite positive – small points of light in a dark and threatening sky, if you like.

1. The State matters

Small-state libertarians have always been a little group disproportionately over-represented in bits of the media and politics, and their influence over the Conservative party took a major blow at the general election: Johnsonian Tories might not love the state but they very definitely want to use it to do things, which will, eventually, mean funding and staffing it.