Johnson’s virus strategy hardens divisions in UK

Bloomberg

It was 2.15 pm and British PM Boris Johnson was fulfilling his promise to brief rival party leaders on his coronavirus strategy. It was meant to be a sign of national cooperation, with politics set aside in the crisis.
But over the course of a
40-minute conference call, Johnson’s opponents told him he was getting it wrong. His new slogan to “stay alert” was confusing, they said, and his plan to start easing restrictions on leisure activities and some workplaces risked giving the public the impression that the Covid-19 threat was over. Johnson listened — and disagreed.
Seven weeks after he put the UK into an emergency lockdown, with more than 30,000 dead and the economy on its knees, the united political front that had defined the first phase of the British response finally splintered. The national mission to repel coronavirus has fragmented along familiar lines in a country whose divisions deepened during years of bitter wrangling over leaving the EU.
The pro-independence Scottish leadership in Edinburgh
denounced Johnson’s English approach in London, while the administrations in Wales and Northern Ireland are also taking different paths.