Inside Politics – Coronavirus special: Boris Johnson back in charge again

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Monday 27 April 2020 07:51 BST

Minister tells idle furloughed workers to help with the crop harvest

We’ll take any signs of normality we can get right now – even if it’s steak bakes and sausage rolls. Greggs is set to re-open some branches to test out whether it can operate while maintaining social distancing. Boris Johnson will try to reassure the nation it’s something vaguely like business as usual as he takes charge again at No 10. The prime minister will be given little time to re-adjust, however, coming under pressure from all sides to set out a lockdown exit strategy. I’m Adam Forrest, and welcome to The Independent’s daily Inside Politics briefing during the coronavirus crisis.

Inside the bubble

Our deputy political editor Rob Merrick on what to look out for today:

All eyes will be on Boris Johnson, back at his desk today. Has he managed to have his hair trimmed while at Chequers? More seriously, can he bring some direction to a government that has sometimes appeared rudderless in his absence? We are told the PM will summon cabinet ministers to provide him with face-to-face updates on the progress. Meanwhile, Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove will update the Brexit committee on the latest negotiations with the EU.

Daily briefing

PATHFINDER GENERAL: Boris Johnson was pictured returning to Downing Street last night after only two weeks of convalescence in the Kent countryside. His stand-in Dominic Raab told us the PM is “raring to go”. Which is just as well, because Tory donors, cabinet ministers and the opposition are all clamouring for a clear plan to ease the lockdown. According to The Telegraph this morning, Johnson is preparing to announce a “road map” for lifting restrictions in stages. An ally of the PM told the paper he could even tinker with some measures before the 7 May deadline, but Downing Street has pushed back hard on the idea, saying it was premature. Elsewhere, Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon suggested she could take a different path out of the lockdown if – for example – she felt No 10 had taken “premature” decisions. The SNP leader insisted she wouldn’t diverge “for the sake of it”.

FURLOUGHED IN THE FURROWS: Are you one of the millions of people to have been furloughed at work? Environment secretary George Eustice thinks you should consider fruit picking to “help get the harvest in”. The minister revealed there are only a third of the usual migrant workers to pick fruit and vegetables, and pledged government would work with industry on encouraging Britons to join a new land army. Eustice also said the number of supermarket staff absent from illness or self-isolation has halved, and home delivery slots have increased from 2.1m to 2.6m a week. It comes as the British Retail Consortium and the Usdaw union issued new social distancing guidelines for shops drawing up plans to reopen, including limiting the number of people in-store and using floor markings.

SITTING DUCK: Matt Hancock is sure to be in the firing line this week on his end-of-the-month target to reach 100,000 coronavirus tests a day, with one unnamed minister calling recent increases “too little, too late”. There will be fresh questions for the health secretary on PPE too – as the Royal College of Physicians reveals that a third of physicians working in high-risk settings have reported running short of long-sleeved gowns or full-face visors. Meanwhile, the professor in charge of a new NHS-backed contact tracing app said it could be ready within weeks. Professor Christophe Fraser said it would need 60 per cent of the population to use the app for it to become, on its own, an effective way of stopping any resurgence of the coronavirus. He estimated that up to six million people in the UK may have already had the virus.

BERGER KING TURNS BITTER: Donald Trump’s latest thoughts on Covid-19? We don’t know exactly, because he’s decided against holding any more daily press briefings. On Saturday tweeted that they weren’t worth his “time or effort”, blaming the media for “nothing but hostile questions”. In a misspelled Twitter rant on Sunday, he threatened to strip reporters of “Noble prizes” and claimed he worked late into the night “angrily eating a hamberger”. Dr Deborah Birx – the coronavirus taskforce co-ordinator seen looking dismayed during Trump’s recent sunlight and disinfectant remarks – said it “bothers” her those remarks are still making headlines. She blamed the media, and dismissed the president’s comments as merely “a musing”.

TAKE IT OUTSIDE: Some relatively good news from Spain, where the health minister announced on Sunday that 288 had died of the virus – the lowest number since 20 March. Children under 14 were allowed outside for the first time in six weeks yesterday. In Italy, prime minister Giuseppe Conte has outlined plans to lift some lockdown measures from 4 May. Factories and construction sites will reopen, while people will be allowed out to visit their relatives. New Zealand, meanwhile, moves out of its strictest lockdown level at midnight after prime minister Jacinda Ardern said community transmission in the country had effectively stopped. Some non-essential shops will be allowed to open up again.

MARVELLOUS MILLION: More than one million Australians have downloaded an app designed to accelerate contact tracing. Chief health officer Damian Murphy said he surprised and “really excited” by the COVIDsafe app’s early popularity, after it hit the million mark within just five hours of its release. The government has said at least 40 per cent of Australia’s 26 million people need to use the app for it to be an effective way of containing further outbreaks quickly. If a user is diagnosed, the app works to identify other users who have been in close proximity for 15 minutes or more in the previous three weeks.

On the record

“The British public have made great sacrifices to make the lockdown work. They deserve to be part of an adult conversation about what comes next.”

Keir Starmer wants transparency over the lockdown exit strategy.

From the Twitterati

“Boris’s critics will never accept it. But the truth is he had to follow the science, he did follow the science, and following the science has worked.”

The Mail on Sunday’s Dan Hodges defends the PM...

“How can you possibly say it’s ‘worked’ when we’re heading for 2nd worst death toll in the world?”

…Piers Morgan is having none of it.