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15 May 2020updated 06 Oct 2020 9:45am

Why the government’s U-turn to get the economy moving may end up backfiring

By Samuel Horti

On reopening schools, asking people to commute to work and telling MPs to return to Parliament in person, the government has potentially ignited fights with unions, Londoners, and the Speaker of the House.

“What connects the three rows,” New Statesman political editor Stephen Bush writes, “is that the government, which only last week was talking about how its NHSX app would allow them to test and trace new infections once they had slowed the rate of community transmission, now seems to have U-turned in a bid to get the economy moving again.”

But the arguments are just the start of the government’s problems: the real risk is that “we end up with a second spike in infections and a traumatised public – causing both social and economic harm”, he says.

You can read the full piece here.

 

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