Welcome to FT Politics, a weekly discussion on what's happening in Westminster from the Financial Times.

I'm Sebastian Payne. In this

week's episode we'll be discussing everything that's happened with

coronavirus this week and the disruption is created across the UK and

British politics.

We'll be looking at the apparent U-turn by Downing Street in its strategy,

which is soon an huge economic stimulus package to keep the economy going,

the social distancing measures introduced by the Prime Minister, how the National

Health Services coping, why schools are no longer sitting and what's going to happen in the

near future.

I'm delighted to be joined by our political editor George Parker

and down the line columnist Robert Shimsley and our global health editor Sarah Neville.

Thank you all for joining and if you find yourself liking this episode of politics, then don't forget to subscribe through all the usual channels to receive it every week.

Obviously, as we said last week, coronavirus is disrupting all of our lives and the FT is no exception. We're doing our best to keep going, we'll keep these

podcasts going, although the quality might not be what we're normally used to, so hopefully

you can bear with us. This week the coronavirus crisis heightened significantly.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced waves and waves of new measures to essentially

bring the country to a halt, introduce significant social distancing measures, all the while trying

to keep the economy going.

George Park, let's begin with what happened very early in the week.

Last Saturday, Sage, which is the body that gives the government scientific recommendations,

basically said that the disease was spreading at a much quicker rate and the UK government would

...