Inside Politics – Coronavirus special: Boris Johnson out of intensive care, as lockdown extension looms

Sign up here to receive this daily briefing in your email inbox every morning

Friday 10 April 2020 07:49 BST

Dominic Raab: ‘I have all the authority I need to make the relevant decisions’ as Boris Johnson in intensive care

The Archbishop of Canterbury will be delivering this year’s Easter service from the iPad in his kitchen. The good news is that Boris Johnson may be able to sit up and watch the sermon from his bed – the prime minister is now out of intensive care, while remaining in hospital. Acting PM Dominic Raab is adamant everyone spends the Easter holiday weekend indoors. Suggesting the lockdown will soon be extended, he has called for a “team effort” to get through the difficult days ahead. I’m Adam Forrest, and welcome to The Independent’s daily Inside Politics briefing during the coronavirus outbreak.

Inside the bubble

Our policy correspondent Jon Stone on what to look out for today:

It’s the Easter bank holiday and politics would normally take a break today, but that won’t be the case for everyone. Labour’s newly-appointed shadow ministers will be getting on top of their briefs, after the final line-up was announced on Thursday night. The government’s daily press conference will be going ahead as usual, and there should be an update on the prime minister’s condition as he recuperates in hospital.

Daily briefing

ON THE MEND: Shortly before last night’s 8pm mass applause for NHS staff, No 10 confirmed Boris Johnson had been moved this evening from intensive care back to the ward at St Thomas’ hospital. “He is in extremely good spirits,” a spokesman added. His stand-in, foreign secretary Dominic Raab, told the nation it is too early to think about lifting lockdown measures. “We’re not done yet, we must keep going … I know it is tough going but this is a team effort.” Restrictions will likely be extended, but Raab said we shouldn’t expect a firm announcement until the end of next week, once ministers have been able to examine key data. As the death toll rose by 881 on the previous day, chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance told us he expects the number of deaths to be going up for about two weeks after outlook for intensive care admissions improves. “We’re not there yet,” he said.

SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY: The communities secretary Robert Jenrick has been forced to defend his movements over the past weeks, after it emerged he travelled from his home in Herefordshire to visit his parents in Shropshire. A report in The Guardian claimed a witness had spotted the cabinet minister visit the property over 40 miles from his own home. Jenrick said on Twitter his parents had asked him to deliver essentials, including medicines. “They are both self-isolating due to age and my father’s medical condition and I respected social distancing rules.” Questioned about government advice against travel to second homes, the MP for Newark in Nottinghamshire told The Daily Mail the house in Herefordshire was “our family home”. Will Labour make an issue of it today? Keir Starmer has finalised his shadow cabinet, with former leadership rival Jess Phillips joining the shadow home affairs team, focussing on domestic violence.

ZOOMING INTO FOCUS: Home secretary Priti Patel has been accused of disappearing during the crisis. However, she reemerged on Thursday evening to give an interview with TalkRADIO and defended her involvement in the decision-making process: “I’ve been involved in every single key government Zoom meeting.” She also said that police forces across the country must not act in a “heavy-handed” manner. It followed controversial comments by Northamptonshire Police chief constable Nick Adderley, who suggested his officers could soon start to check the items in baskets and trolleys to see whether people were buying “necessary” items (he later backtracked and said his remarks had been “clumsy”). Patel said: “That is not appropriate ... that is not the guidance.” The former justice secretary David Gauke said Adderley’s remarks had displayed “worrying and unacceptable authoritarian instincts.”

RANDOM ACT OF EVIL: New York governor Andrew Cuomo said the coronavirus was ravaging his state “with the same randomness, the same evil, that we saw on 9/11”. More than 7,000 New Yorkers have now lost their lives to Covid-19, and Cuomo pointed out it far exceeded the death count from the September 11 attacks. As photos emerge of mass graves in New York City, the authorities said they are bringing in additional funeral directors. Meanwhile, the US Senate failed to pass an economic relief package of $250bn (around £200bn) aimed at helping small businesses. Democrats blocked the Republicans’ attempt to ram through the legislation, claiming it would not address need and was a “political stunt”. It came as more than 6.6 million Americans claimed for unemployment benefits.

ONCE IN A CENTURY STORM: The pandemic is likely to lead to the worst global recession in nearly a century, according to the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Kristalina Georgieva growth would turn “sharply negative” this year and all but a handful of countries would see a fall in incomes. “Today we are confronted with a crisis like no other,” she said. “In fact, we anticipate the worst economic fallout since the Great Depression.” The faint glimmer of good news is that she believes we’ll at least see a “partial recovery” in 2021. EU finance ministers met on Thursday evening to try to agree on a strategy, having failed to find an unified economic response to the crisis so far.

PUTTING OUT FIRES: The Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte told the BBC the EU project risks “failure” if it doesn’t come up with an appropriate economic response. Conte also said Italy might begin to “relax” some of its lockdown measures in the coming weeks, depending on scientific advice. However, Italy’s death toll rose by another 610 on Thursday, up from 542 deaths from the coronavirus the previous day. There has, at least, been an encouraging general downward trend in new cases in Italy over the past week. There was better news from Spain, where 683 deaths from the virus were recorded – a fall from the 757 deaths reported the day before. “The fire starts to come under control,” prime minister Pedro Sanchez told MPs in Madrid.

On the record

“Great News: Prime Minister Boris Johnson has just been moved out of Intensive Care. Get well Boris!!!”

Donald Trump was pleased to hear the latest.

From the Twitterati

“The most damning line in this is that Robert Jenrick has a home in Herefordshire yet is a Nottinghamshire MP. In fact he owns FOUR homes. I hope he’s not been travelling between them during the lockdown.”

The Mirror’s Pippa Crerar thinks Jenrick’s plethora of homes might be a problem...

“Both Catherine Calderwood and Robert Jenrick felt the rules didn’t apply to them, while working class people without gardens get hassled by police and their local parks closed. Yes, it’s a class and race issue.”

…while Jacobin’s Dawn Foster thinks the problem is double standards.