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Hello and welcome to The Edition, the Spectator's weekly podcast discussing some of the most important and

intriguing issues within our pages with the writers behind them. I'm Cindy Yu. On this week's

episode, we take a look at the European experience and ask what are the lessons learned there that

apply to Britain. We also take a look a little further field at the developing world. How has lockdown

impacted those countries? And at the very end, is this period a renaissance for car driving?

First up, Swedish economist Frederick Erickson writes in this week's cover piece that the European

experience has shown that while everyone is

flying in the dark regional approaches to dealing with coronavirus rather than national,

maybe better. He joins me down the line now, together with Anne McElvoy, senior editor at

The Economist and head of Economist Radio. So, Frederick, can you tell us about the lessons from Europe? Well, I suppose the

first good news is that Europe is gradually beginning to open up again and that many countries are

on their way out of a lockdown. It's going to be a slow, gradual process where every government

is going to test their way forward

because simply science is not giving us any sort of clear direction. There is not a scientific

path to get out of lockdown. Even if all governments, of course, are going to keep a very strong

control about over how the virus spreads and what's going to happen to hospitals, etc.

We are talking about a scenario here where most governments are trying to adjust their policies

out of the lockdown with local political cultures. So I think sort of that's the first thing

which is happening. The good news then for Britain should be that there

is a big experiment, almost a laboratory experiment going on right now in Europe, which Britain

...