As traffic returns to the roads and shops begin to reopen, life in the UK is now a disorienting mix of normality returning alongside a sense that things are still anything but normal.
Reactions are divided between those whose main feeling is relief, and those who feel overwhelming anxiety about a second spike. On both sides, this divide has often been framed as a tussle between the economy and health.
Progressives lambast the government for putting ‘the economy’ ahead of human lives, by prematurely easing lockdown while infection rates are still too high. Meanwhile, polling shows that people have been getting increasingly concerned about ‘the economy’ as the weeks go by, and for Conservative voters it now outstrips health as their top priority.
