 We're joining me now as a Sunday Times journalist, Catherine Forster. We're also joined by Navarra Media's contributing editor, Michael Walker, this Sunday lunchtime. Thank you very much for both of you talking to us. Let's start with you, Catherine. Pritipa Tell on Sky News earlier. Not going as far as saying some people are acting irresponsibly as we are coming out of the lockdown, but she was pressing home the need for the public to follow social distancing rules. Do you think the country or the government, though, are losing the country on this? Well, I think a lot of people are still extremely concerned about coming out of lockdown because the government were very, very successful in persuading us all to stay at home. But of course, as lockdown is eased, it, and especially with this glorious sunshine that we've had, the messaging is becoming less clear. It's changing all the time. And how much attention people are necessarily paying to the nitty-gritty of this, I'm not sure. We all know that next Saturday, super Saturday, when we will be able to go to the pub, et cetera, et cetera, I'm not convinced of the wisdom of relaxing these rules on a Saturday, especially a Saturday when potentially we may have very good weather. So I think it is difficult for the government, but I also think their messaging has been muddled. And I would also say that it doesn't help when it sometimes seems that some of their own advisors are not playing by the same rules as public are expected to follow. I wonder who on earth you're talking about there, Catherine. Michael, let's bring you in now. I mean, what do you think? Do you think the messaging is running away from the government? Because it's not just Pretty Patel. We've had Boris Johnson. We've had Chris Whitty. We've had high-level members coming out this week saying, adhere to the social distancing guidelines. And yet, we've seen the scenes, haven't we, on beaches and parties in the capital overnight? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a difficult one. On one level, I don't think we should be too worried about people going to beaches. They seem like one of the safer places to be when it comes to coronavirus. But also, I think here that the government have shown really an absence of ambition, because what they've said is, you're free to go to the beach. You're free to go and enjoy the sunshine, but don't too many of you go. And obviously, it's impossible for us all not to go at the same time, because we don't know when everyone else is going. So who should be solving these coordination problems? It really should be the government. So what you're seeing in somewhere like France is potentially you get people queuing up who can then get a slot on the beach. Could we be booking certain time slots in these places? Because to say you can go to the beach, but don't all go at the same time, it just doesn't work. I mean, what we're also seeing is that they don't seem to have given these coastal towns the infrastructure they need to deal with this influx of people, public toilets, for example. And when Peter Karl asked Boris Johnson about this on Tuesday, Boris Johnson's reply was for him just to toughen up. And I don't think that's a particularly acceptable response from a government with respect to local authorities who are facing real challenges here. Let's have a chat now, Catherine, about the polling that our deputy political editor, Sam Coats, has looked at today. Number's not looking good actually for the government. The number of people who think the government is doing well in terms of its cover handling of the coronavirus pandemic is around 44%. It's down from 72% from March and April. And I suppose that kind of brings home the issue that going into lockdown is easy, isn't it? But taking people out of lockdown is going to be far trickier in the months ahead. Yes, I think that's right. And obviously early on in the pandemic, before lockdown and going into lockdown, there's very strong support for the government. But as time has gone on and clearly mistakes have been made, everything hasn't gone entirely well, given the number of people that have sadly lost their lives. I think people have lost faith. Many people have lost faith in what the government is telling them because they're looking at the results. So it is not surprising, I think. There's also an opinion poll in the Observer today, which says that the first time more people think that Keir Starmer would make a good Prime Minister than Boris Johnson. Keir Starmer on 37%, Boris Johnson on 35%. Also Keir Starmer's favourability rating is right up to about 27%. And Boris Johnson is now on minus seven. I think the public gave Boris Johnson a lot. There was a lot of goodwill, obviously, early in the pandemic when he was very ill and then recovering, of course, and quite rightly. But I think that a lot of people now are beginning to get quite fed up. And when we look at the polling in a bit more detail, it seems that the country is very supportive broadly of the economic measures that have been put in place. But when it comes to government's efforts to minimise the death rate, testing and tracing, and also the scandal regarding PPE, they've really fallen short, haven't they, Michael? Yeah, well, I mean, I have to say, I think the government's response to coronavirus has been absolutely catastrophic. We've seen 65,000 excess deaths and it didn't need to be this way. So there were people back in March saying, why are we not entering a lockdown yet? The government were pursuing a herd immunity policy way longer than they should have done. And I think also what's problematic in terms of public trust here is, yes, this was a new virus, a new phenomenon. I think if the government had said, look, we got it wrong at first, but we're gonna learn from those mistakes and we're gonna change the way we approach this virus. Whether that's to say, we're actually gonna try and suppress this virus. We're not gonna try and let it run through the population slowly as they originally suggested. Instead of being honest and blunt with the public about that, what they've said is, we made the right decisions at the right time. When, I mean, the whole public, I mean, as it's borne out in these polls, can now seem that that wasn't the case. They consistently made decisions way too late because I think initially it was because they were trying to protect the economy, but it's actually turned out to be completely defeating because going into a lockdown late, it turns out means that you have to stay in one much longer because you have the virus moving around society for a longer period of time. So I think it has been catastrophic and I think the public are right to realize that and the government by now should have apologized for the mistakes that they've made. I suppose an inquiry will follow and all those questions will hopefully be answered. Catherine, let's look ahead to the week ahead. We widely flagged in the newspapers today about Boris Johnson's big speech, operation speed is what it's dubbed to be called and his plan for us to spend our way out of this recession. What are you expecting to hear? Yes, that's right. So on Tuesday, this speech is widely trailed that he's going to announce a massive spending splurge, spend, spend, spend will be the message. He wants to get, go back to the agenda on which he was elected, which was let's build schools, let's build hospitals, let's invest in infrastructure, let's level up the economy. And of course, some of the people and indeed areas that have been hardest hit by the coronavirus are some of the red wall now blue wall seats that Boris Johnson won for the first time for the conservatives. So they do need to get back to that levelling up agenda. Of course, it's all been made much more difficult now because we've had to take such a huge economic hit already and get into vast amounts of debt. But I don't really see this as an alternative given the state that we're currently in. Michael, what do you make of it? And in very big contrast to the Cameron and the Osborn years, no mention of austerity and actual fact saying he definitely will not be going back to austerity. Yeah, well, I think that's obviously welcome. Austerity was the wrong policy in 2010 when the economy had had a huge external shock, in that case, the global financial crisis. Sucking money out of the economy is a terrible thing to do in that situation. It lengthened the recession then and it would do so now if that were to be the policy the government pursued. So I welcome the fact that Boris Johnson is ruling out austerity. I do think it matters how that money is spent. So what I would hope is that the government recognises this is a historic opportunity to invest in a green economy. We've seen how a failure to prepare for a coronavirus when it was warned by scientists has turned out to be hugely costly. And I'm hoping we don't make the same mistake when it comes to climate change and we can actually prepare, take the warnings of scientists seriously and invest in that particular direction. There is also one of our concern which relates to news stories this week, which is that if the government is going to be splurging lots of cash on infrastructure, which I welcome, we need to be sure that the process by which it's decided what projects go ahead is watertight. And what we've seen this week is that the housing minister, Robert Jenrich, it seems, and well, to be honest, he's basically admitted it. He was very close to someone who was looking to do a one billion pound development and then that got given the go ahead against the advice of senior civil servants. So if we're going to have the government splurging lots of money, we need to have trust. And at the moment, I'm not sure that's there.