Johnson urges caution ahead of final easing

How different will life be after 19 July? Not very, if the Prime Minister’s press conference this evening was anything to go by. As with Sajid Javid’s statement in the Commons earlier confirming the final step of the road map, Boris Johnson’s emphasis seemed muted. He said he expected people to continue wearing masks, working from home and generally not making the full use of the freedoms they are being given next week. Johnson warned that ‘this is not the end of Covid’, that he didn’t want the public to be ‘demob happy’ and that we ‘must be cautious’ as we take the next step out of the restrictions.

Significantly, he didn’t say the roadmap was ‘irreversible’ as he has in previous statements. In fact, he accepted that he couldn’t rule out the reintroduction of restrictions. He explained that he ‘must protect the public and will not hesitate’ to use the powers that the government has in order to do this.