Coronavirus: Bumpy ride as message gets more complicated
- Published
Boris Johnson speaks of the "good solid British common sense" to combat coronavirus
Boris Johnson wasn't short of words last night when he spoke to the country.
But he was short on detail about exactly how the gradual easing of the lockdown will work in England in the coming weeks and months.
It might not sound like much, but a gap of even a few hours between saying changes were on the way, and spelling out precisely what they were, was enough to create lots of question marks among members of the public - and political anxiety too: tensions with the devolved governments, and interestingly, private worries on the Tory backbenches.
Through the course of the day, however, forests of paper emerged in government documents that have gone a long way to fill in some of the blanks.
And it's worth reading about all of the tweaks to the rules in England here.
Notably tonight the TUC, the umbrella union organisation, said the plans were a "step in the right direction", and with the help of the government's most senior scientists, the prime minister had to answer some of the questions from the public directly on primetime TV.
There are still anomalies, but ministers have gone some way to answer some of the doubts.
But in this new phase, where lockdown is at the start of a phased withdrawal, the message will continue to be more complicated for the government to communicate.
The sequencing on this first outing of the new message and alert system has been bumpy too.
And as part of this next era, it will become more contingent on the public to make decisions for themselves.
It's easy for the prime minister to say it's a case of "British common sense"; harder to make sure that happens without division and discontent.
The broad political consensus that has largely cushioned the government so far has been punctured.
Some of the latitude the government's been given in this emergency has gone.