Recession, tourism and Cavalier PM

Alex Brummer said the International Monetary Fund’s top economist continued to warn of grim times ahead, with the equivalent of 300 million jobs globally under threat.

Gita Gopinath warned of ‘the worst recession since the Great Depression, a crisis like no other and the highest public debt as a proportion of world output in history,’ he said.

“The really scary thing is that there is no ‘V’-shaped recovery in 2021 but something which looks more like the Nike tick on my sports shirt,” he said. “Scarring from Covid-19, if the IMF is right, will leave the UK with an economy 4 per cent smaller at the end of 2021 – a catastrophe for a previously resilient jobs market unless interventions are stepped up hugely.”

He said there was no comfort to be drawn from the IMF’s midsummer forecast except to note that the UK’s downturn, projected at -10.2 per cent this year, is no longer the worst among the advanced countries.

“Among the G7 countries, France and Italy outpace the UK in terms of the scale of the calamity,” he added. “The Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has gone far beyond what anyone could have expected in seeking to cushion the impact of the virus. But could he or should he do more?”

The Guardian

Giles Tremlett pointed out that Britain and Spain vied for the ‘gruesome title’ of having suffered the most deadly consequences –sharing 107,000 deaths from Covid-19.

But, he said, comparisons end there. Spain had the toughest lockdown which produced a dramatic tail off and the country’s mortality rate returned to normal on May 10.

He asked whether British tourists would destroy the effort to squash the virus in Spain as it welcomes them again this summer.

“Spaniards observed lockdown with fortitude and discipline,” he said. “Spain’s economy relies on tourism, which generates 12% of GDP. The government is determined to “save the summer season”, which is why it let Britons and EU nationals enter the country and move around freely on exactly the same day as Spaniards were able to.”

This is the country’s ‘big gamble’, he said.

“Much now depends on how visitors behave. Almost everyone walking the streets of Madrid still wears a mask,” he said. “ Visitors who feel even slightly ill are expected to visit a doctor immediately .Anyone with one of a dozen different Covid-19-like symptoms should be tested within 24 hours, with results coming 24 to 48 hours after that. This is free, and the same system applies to Spaniards.”

In the end, he said, visitors may be both safer from the virus and more likely to be reliably diagnosed in Spain.

“ Spaniards want you back, but only if you respect the effort 47 million people have put into making their country safe,” he said.

Daily Express

Leo McKinstry said this week’s announcement of a dramatic relaxation in the coronavirus restrictions was the ‘perfect platform for Boris Johnson to display the best of his political talents.’

“He is always at his most effective in the glow of advance rather than the gloom of adversity,” he said. “The “broad, sunlit uplands”, to quote the phrase of his hero Winston Churchill, are his natural territory. “

With his announcement of hibernation coming to an end, he was back on form, he said.

“As a Cavalier by instinct, not a Roundhead, he finds it much easier to embrace liberty rather than extend officialdom,” he added. “ This pandemic has forced him to act out of character. That is partly why he has struggled in recent months. He yearned to play Shakespeare’s Falstaff, but was required to be Hamlet.”

Since his own brush with death in hospital he has endured a long and draining recuperation, he said, with his three hour long afternoon naps whispered about in Westminster.

“The whole complex apparatus of the lockdown, with its two-metre rules and socialising bans, was the very antithesis of his generous spirit,” he said. “By nature, he is the welcoming bartender, not the box-ticking bureaucrat.”