Hello, I'm Alfa, and I'm Stephen.

And you're listening to the new Statesman podcast.

On today's episode we discuss Freedom Day, and you ask us, could Boris Johnson's government

survive the re-imposition of coronavirus restrictions?

We're a double act on today's podcast because Purinosh has

COVID, and has been quite poorly.

So it's just you and me, Stephen, to discuss the weekend that has been, and the bright

art look for England on this Freedom Day.

Over the weekend, obviously we had a terrific Sunday morning with this big government

U-turn, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunekron are isolating having been in contact with

Saturday, who has COVID, they did this terrible U-turn, having initially an ice that they

would be taking part in a trial, which meant that they didn't have to isolate, and then

they faced quite a big backlash and reversed that decision quite quickly, but it all comes

against this bigger backdrop of England losing basically all legal coronavirus restrictions

today, while cases absolutely sore, and as well as I suppose the health concerns around

increases in hospitalisations and deaths, there's also just a concern about what this unrestricted

spread of the virus might look like just in terms of very high case numbers, and the impact

that lots and lots of people, I said I think we'll have on businesses and society in general.

Stephen, what did you make of the weekend that we've just seen?

I found it a fascinating U-turn, because I can get my head around, obviously it was the

right to send to U-turn, right? One of the underappreciated strengths of this government,

particularly, well actually with Boris Johnson throughout his career, but even more so, again,

...