Our theatres are dark – and in danger

Car showrooms are open again: some dealerships, with a hint of forgivable hyperbole, report a surge of pent-up demand. And after building only 197 new cars this April, compared with 71,000 in April 2019, car factories are returning to production — even if under new safety rules that will slash productivity for the duration and accelerate the shift to job-eliminating robotics for the longer term. But still the Daily Telegraph offers an uplifting glimpse of Land Rover’s Solihull plant emerging from hibernation: ‘At 5 a.m., as the first shift came in, every production manager was out in the car park to greet returning staff.’

Perhaps most importantly, Nissan made two announcements about its Sunderland factory, often described here as the bellwether of the UK auto industry. It will resume production on Monday, on a single adapted assembly line. And after a worldwide review, the loss-making Japanese car-making giant has decided to close its last plant within the EU, at Barcelona, but to keep Sunderland open — despite the uncertainties of Brexit, which put its future in doubt. The plant which currently employs 6,700 workers might even win contracts to build cars for Nissan’s alliance partner Renault, so long as the French government doesn’t make that impossible.

So the automotive sector at large, which claims to contribute £200 billion to the UK economy and to employ more than 800,000 people in occupations ranging from petrol station cashier to Formula 1 engineer, is — as we might reasonably expect, if we shake off lockdown anxiety and switch off the BBC’s livestream of doom — twitching back to life. Combine that thought with observation of reviving activity in your own locality and news from Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane that business data is coming in ‘a shade better’ than the Bank itself expected only a month ago.