Katy Balls

What will the lasting impact of the coronavirus be in the UK? It's a question William Hague attempts to help answer on this week's The Edition podcast from The Spectator. The former foreign secretary joins James Forsyth to discuss the politics column in this week's magazine. He says that any such forecast has to come with a very big caveat:  'It's very hard to predict the longer term effects of a big change in world affairs – if we think of the end of the Cold War and the universal assumption that liberal democracy was going to triumph everywhere for the long term – well it didn't work out that way'.

The idea of a government of national unity appeared to have died when Boris Johnson won a decisive majority of 80 in the December snap election. Prior to that, it was a topic that frequently dominated Theresa May's premiership and the beginning of Johnson's. Proponents argued that a government formed of senior figures from each party (sometimes sharing similar views) would be best placed to solve the Brexit conundrum. With Brexit wars now a distant memory thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, the idea has re-entered public debate over the government's handling of the virus outbreak. A number of commentators have called in recent days for Johnson to be replaced by a team of experienced politicians from across the divide.

With social distancing now the order of the day, Matt Hancock used today's government press conference to update the nation on NHS preparedness – and call for the country to come together to tackle the pandemic. The latest government figures put the number of coronavirus fatalities at 422 and this is expected to rise. In order to prepare the NHS for an increase in cases, the Health Secretary announced that a new temporary hospital is to open in London's ExCel Centre – and said that so far 11,788 retired NHS staff had responded to the government's call for volunteers to return to work. Hancock said the government is now hoping to recruit 250,000 healthy individuals to form an NHS volunteer responders army, to help with deliveries to the vulnerable.