Only Boris can end the lockdown

Events make a mockery of predictions. And events of recent days have borne that truth out most starkly. Nobody could have predicted where our nation stands today. We have gone from being a supposedly divided country into one united in response to an unprecedented crisis. The news that the Prime Minister has been admitted to intensive care has united the country in shock — and in hope for his recovery.

From the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, Boris Johnson led in the way he always has. He threw himself into efforts to counter the virus. He dispensed optimism and hope where there was understandable fear. He successfully persuaded the British people not just to volunteer in their hundreds of thousands to help the NHS but to agree to a set of lockdown policies which would have seemed unimaginable just weeks ago.

It’s not that Britain is handling the crisis very differently to any western country.