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After a Cobra emergency meeting about the coronavirus Covid-19, when the number of cases in the United Kingdom had reached 40, Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, said that they had ‘agreed a plan so that as and when it starts to spread — as I’m afraid it looks likely that it will — we are in a position to take the steps that will be necessary’. The plan expects up to a fifth of the workforce to be off sick during the peak of an epidemic. After a week in which shares lost 12 per cent of their value, the Bank of England said that it was working ‘to ensure all necessary steps are taken to protect financial and monetary stability’. The Budget had to be adjusted. Anglo American’s £405 million bid for Sirius Minerals, the Yorkshire polyhalite mining enterprise, was approved by shareholders. Carrie Symonds, aged 31, the girlfriend of Boris Johnson, aged 55, announced that she would have a baby in the early summer and that at the end of last year they had become engaged to be married.
Sir Philip Rutnam resigned as the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office and said he would sue for constructive dismissal. ‘I have been the target of a vicious and orchestrated briefing campaign,’ he told the BBC. ‘The Home Secretary [Priti Patel] categorically denied any involvement in this campaign to the Cabinet Office. I regret I do not believe her.’ Britain began trade talks with the EU, which put it about that Britain would walk away from the table in June to force an agreement in September. Britain’s negotiating position for trade talks with America was published; it promised to maintain food standards and declared that the NHS was ‘not on the table’.
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