Day: 7 May 2020

Today's Telegraph leads with the story that Boris is due to wind down lockdown restrictions on Sunday, although by the time you read this it will have officially been extended. Is this finally happening? Or will the announcement be postponed again? As Guido Fawkes points out, the Telegraph has predicted lockdown is about to be eased three times before on its front page, only for nothing to happen. But this is probably a case of fourth time lucky, according to Guido, because the story is "exclusive to all news outlets everywhere", i.e. all the other papers have it too. The Telegraph's Camilla Tominey has more details. One fly in the ointment – or, rather, two – is that the plan hasn't been signed off yet by Nicola Sturgeon or Keir Starmer, who both think it's too soon to start easing restrictions. According to the Mail, Sturgeon thinks any dialling back of stay-at-home measures would be "catastrophic". "Our assessment of the evidence leads me to the conclusion that the lockdown must be extended at this stage," she said at a briefing in Edinburgh this morning. (She must be looking at very different evidence to me.) Starmer, meanwhile, says the restrictions cannot be eased until testing has been ramped up further, highlighting the fact that the Government's daily figure has dropped below ...