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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. This week, The Spectator celebrates its 10,000th edition. So I speak to two people in the know about what magazine's history has been.

But before that, we discussed the political decision of exiting the lockdown, as well as what coronavirus has done to African countries.

First up, James or South writes in this week's magazine about the political dimension of the coronavirus crisis in Britain.

He joins me on the podcast now, together with Craig Oliver, Director of Communications under David Cameron.

So, James, can you tell us about what the dynamics are like in Cabinet at the moment when it comes

to the question of lockdown?

So I think one of the things that this crisis has done is it is exacerbated the division

between the kind of what you might call the inner cabinet, those who are in on these detailed conversations about how to deal with coronavirus and the kind of outer cabinet who

are just really seeing how it affects their department but aren't really involved in the detailed

policymaking. You speak to people about last week's cabinet meeting and this will come as

no surprise to Craig, but the real

decision have been taken before the cabinet met. And I think one of the things you see in the outer

cabinet is mounting concern about the economic and societal costs of the lockdown. I think,

you know, one cabinet minister estimates that about two-thirds of the cabinet overall would

like to see a significant easing of the lockdown at the next review. But I don't mean that's

where Boris Johnson is. I think we're looking at a fairly mild lifting of restrictions because

there is this incredibly difficult question, a delicate question really, which is this, which is the R.

So e.g. the number of people that any person with coronavirus infects is currently below one.

If you can keep that below one or below, then the NHS can manage the virus.

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