When this is over, and it will be over, we want to look back on the acts of kindness done by us and to us.. and remember how we thought first of others and acted with decency.. IT’S ON

cafes, restaurants, gyms, leisure centres, cinemas and betting shops to shut.

Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UK Hospitality, said: “This has saved a million jobs. This is big. I think for once the politicians weren’t exaggerating when they said it was unprecedented.”

But hotelier and restauranteur Mark Fuller dismissed the package as “a small

THE magnitude of the coronavirus is so huge that even major announcements have lost their power to shock.

Not yesterday. In the space of 15 minutes the Prime Minister and the Chancellor made interventions that were so extraordinary that you had to triple check, that you heard them correctly.

Firstly, Boris Johnson ordered what amounts to the total shutdown of our leisure and hospitality industry. A sticking plaster over a massive gash”. Despite the huge package of measures, the Chancellor admitted: “I cannot promise no one will face hardship.”

He accepted those who lose jobs will need more aid, announcing the standard Universal Credit allowance and Working Tax Credit basic allowance are being increased by £1,040-a-year from April 6. He also said the minimum income floor for Universal Credit will be suspended – meaning the self-employed can access the benefit at the rate equivalent to statutory sick pay for employees.

And the self-employed will not make further payments on their self-assessment tax return until 2021. Having announced mortgage breaks last week,

intervention in this country’s history. Less than three months ago Tories were lambasting Jeremy Corbyn for being a profligate Marxist whose spending plans would bankrupt the country.

Now they are implementing policies that make Corbyn’s manifesto look like a model of fiscal sobriety. The Tories have embraced the power of the state, Labour will be asking why it took a crisis to convert them to the merits of socialism.