Will the benefits of Boris Johnson’s reopening outweigh the potential costs?

The prime minister is gambling with other people’s money. Even his opponents have to cross their fingers and hope he manages to avoid snake eyes, writes James Moore

Safe? The British public so far seems minded to take a more cautious approach than its government (Getty)

The UK economy’s resemblance to a pile of wreckage on a set of railway tracks explains why Boris Johnson is extending the reopening of England. The government is scared. Perhaps with good reason.

But here’s the problem: consider the impact of sending an express train into it the wreckage. Consider the unprecedented scale of the economic shock the UK is enduring and then imagine it getting worse.

This is the danger posed by the much-feared “second wave”.