From mere advice to full lockdown: the week when it all changed
A Tory government nationalising the economy and a country in lockdown marked the end point of a week like no other
On Friday evening, after one of the most extraordinary weeks in British history, a cabinet minister was among those trying to compute the scale of the government's response to the coronavirus threat. In the end, he was forced to conclude: "We've just nationalised the economy."
Given that Boris Johnson had just ordered every pub, restaurant, cafe and gym to shut its doors, shortly before his relatively new chancellor, Rishi Sunak, announced the state would begin to pay a huge chunk of the nation's wages, the remark seemed apt. The battle to control the coronavirus has remodelled Britain's way of life - and bulldozed political ideologies in the process - in just a few days.
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