 From Monday, the lockdown is being significantly eased, but it's unclear whether there is any science to back up the move. So before we go through the argument, let's take a look at Boris Johnson announcing changes at Thursday's Daily Downing Street press briefing. Lastly, I know the toll the lockdown has taken on families and friends who've been unable to see each other. So from Monday, we will allow up to six people to meet outside provided those from different households continue strictly to observe social distancing rules by staying two metres apart. At the moment, as you know, people can meet in parks, but not in private gardens. And this was a cautious first step. But we know that there is no difference in the health risk. So we will now allow people to meet in gardens and other private outdoor spaces. So that wasn't all the changes that were announced. Let's get those up now. It takes a while to get these points across. So from Monday, groups of up to six people can meet outside, including parks, but also now gardens. That's what's been added. Schools will reopen for reception year one and year six. And outdoor retail and car showrooms will open from the 15th of June. That's two weeks time. Some face to face contact for years 10 and 12 and other non essential retail to open. So a significant loosening of the lockdown there. I mean, I'm certainly going to be enjoying going out and sitting in six in groups of six people in a park. And there's no point in pretending that's not a good thing. But the problem and there is a big problem for the government here, which is this moment for loosening the lockdown for taking significant steps to increase the amount that we come into contact with each other. It goes completely against the advice which the government set for themselves. So it goes against the criteria which the government set for loosening the lockdown. Let's take a look at the COVID alert levels, which were introduced by the government. These are on the government's website. And it was introduced in that speech now infamous about three weeks ago, where Boris Johnson spoke to the nation and said, we've got to stay alert and was very ambiguous about what is and what isn't opening. So then Boris Johnson said, we're on level four. That is when a COVID-19 epidemic is in general circulation. Transmission is high or rising exponentially. And the action then is the current social distancing measures and restrictions. So that was the social distancing measures that were in place three weeks ago and up to now. Now, what Boris Johnson said then is that for us to go to the next phase, we'll have to go down to level three. That's when the COVID-19 epidemic is in general circulation, but it's not the transmission is not high. And that is when we'll have the gradual relaxing of restrictions and social distancing measures. Now, what we're getting at the moment is gradual relaxing of restrictions and social distancing measures. So you might expect we're at level three, the Lemon and Herb level, as Ash calls it. That is what also Boris Johnson suggested when he was speaking to the Parliamentary Liaison Committee earlier this week. So on Wednesday, Boris Johnson said, we're coming down the COVID alert system. We're coming down from level three to level four. We hope we're taking a decision tomorrow. So given that the lockdown, it was announced the lockdown would be easing yesterday. We would imagine that they decided, the scientists decided that, yes, we must have got to alert level three. However, that didn't happen. So at the Downing Street Daily Briefing, this was at the press conference or the one for journalists, not the one that gets streamed on TV. Sam Coates from Sky tweeted this. So Downing Street Daily Briefing, Government was unable to reduce coronavirus threat level below four. Boris Johnson signaled on Wednesday it was likely to be reduced to three. But the Joint Biosecurity Unit did not agree to this yesterday. Lockdown lifting goes ahead nevertheless. So this is, it's important to note, right, this idea of these five alert levels, this isn't something that independent sage came up with or some group of people who were separate from the government and potentially critical of them. This was published by the government. This is the government told us they're setting up this biosecurity unit precisely so that when we get to the next phase of our COVID-19 response, it will be science led, not politically led. That's why they invented those categories. They've gone to that biosecurity unit and said, are we ready to go down to alert level three? They've said no. And they've said, oh, well, fuck it, we'll loosen the lockdown anyway. Right. I mean, and journalists asked about this at today's daily press conference and no one could answer the question. They just kept changing the subject. I mean, it's a bit like when they announced that R was the most important thing. Then they had a press conference. They had a whole video explaining the concept of R. Then they had to announce that R had risen a bit. And then the scientists had to stand up there. I think it was Jenny Harris that time saying, oh, actually, R, who cares about R? It's just one of many things we have to keep an eye on. So they keep railing their own tests. Well, this table is only less than a month old. It's not like it's six months old and you go, okay, well, they're a bit embarrassed. That was an approach they don't really want to. First of all, nobody asked this table. It wasn't like a demand. You have to do this. It was something they completely unprompted said, we want to be judged by this less than a month ago. And so either that or the moves taken today, the measures taken today announced today, something's being led here by media strategy rather than public health strategy, right? Hey, maybe even both probably. And you're right. And you're saying, oh, the politics are coming before science. I wouldn't even say the politics are coming before the science. I just think whatever the Downing Street press operations head has vomited that day, brain farted that day, generally seems to be informing these things. I mean, the table just makes and also when that was published three weeks ago, I said, why would you do that? Why would you create these incredibly arbitrary categories? We might be doing really well on one thing, but not so well on something else. And why don't you give yourself more room to maneuver? And I think at the time that was created purely as a kind of, we're doing something because the shit was really hitting the fan three weeks ago. Things are still looking terrible. I think ultimately we're going to have a second spike and the government's going to continue to fail on all of this. And that remains to be seen. I hope that's not the case. But I think that was very much a PR stunt. I don't think it was ever actually something the government wished to be measured by. And the fact that he says having today, I think that confirms that. Well, I mean, it might make sense to have an independent joint biosecurity unit, which is separate from the policymakers to advise you whether or not we are in a situation to loosen the lockdown. The problem is they created it and now they're ignoring it. Well, it was more on the key part of their announcement. Well, it was more on the kind of terrorist alerts after the 777 bombings rights. You had color coding, etc. quite similar sort of categorization. So I always thought it was more public relations led, you know, the sort of similarities that had to the sort of terror alert levels. Remember them? It was sort of, you know, it was echoing through every government press conference and news program for about six months a year after 2005, 2006, 2007, all the way up to 777 basically for about a couple of years. But yeah, I never had faith in it, Michael. But I'm glad you did. I'm glad somebody did. I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt, you know, but I just keep getting disappointed. We're also going to go now to a worrying quote from Professor John Edmund. So he is one of really the two top modelers who are advising Sage. So along with Neil Ferguson, he's at the London School of Medicine and Tropical Hygiene. We've actually mocked him a couple of times on the show because he was the person who went on Channel 4 News arguing for herd immunity and then went on Channel 4 News six weeks later denying that herd immunity was, you know, could even conceivably be a strategy. So it doesn't even make sense to talk about that as a strategy. But in this case, I mean, he's still on stage. He's still a top modeler and he is independent from the government, even if he tied himself in knots before. But this is what he said today to, this was a briefing to journalists at the Science Media Centre. We can get this quote. I think many of us would prefer to see the incidents driven down to lower levels because that would mean we have fewer cases occurring before we relax the measures. If we had incidents at a lower level, even if the reproduction level went up a bit, we wouldn't be in a position where we were overwhelming the health service. I think at the moment with relatively high incidents, relaxing the measures and with an untested track and trace system, I think we are taking some serious risks here. Even if that risk doesn't play out and we keep the incidents flat, we're keeping it flat at quite a high level. All right. So this is one of the top modelers sitting on stage. We've got a government which is supposed to be following the science. I mean, maybe they have just given up and maybe now if you ask them whether you're following the science, it's like, fuck no, we never wear in the first place. Anyway, let's abandon that pretend. But I haven't heard them say that yet. Yet they are breaking their own rules, breaking their own recommendations in terms of loosening while they're still on alert level four. And now the top modeler on stage, now that Neil Ferguson has gone, is saying he'd prefer the levels of COVID-19 because I think the ONS are predicting that there's still 9,000 people getting infected a day would be much lower before we start loosening these social distancing measures. And the government are presumably completely ignoring this guy. I mean, I don't know if Sage has had any input in terms of the loosening of the lockdown at this point in time. Has anybody asked that question? I mean, that's a really good question, isn't it? It is. Yeah. I'm not sure if Sage have had much input. It doesn't seem like it. It seems, you know, the whole plastic, we're flattening the curve. Do you remember the government saying we're flattening the curve at 1,000 deaths per day? That's not an accomplishment. We're flattening the curve at a really high level. We're ending lockdown with still significant numbers of people dying and like you say, the R-Rate being really high. I mean, it seems we're skeptics. You know, we're not the Tories fans the best of times, but I think even to a supporter of the conservatives, this seems pretty quite injured issues. It seems like a huge risk. I mean, it seems it seems of a risk on a scale that could bring down the government. You know, if it goes very badly wrong, it's unclear to me how the government, well, not necessarily the government, but the prime minister, it seems very unclear to me how the prime minister could then respond if we get a second spike. If we ever go back to 1,000 deaths a day this year, I really struggle to see how you'd have a prime minister that stays on. I want to take us back to Monday. On that show, we mentioned that after Dominic Cummings' sort of bizarre explanation of his experience in Durham. After that, the prime minister had a press conference and we were expecting Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty to speak at that. That's what journalists have been told. They were there in Downing Street to do that and we saw them scuttling away at about, I think it was about half five and we ended up with someone else up on stage. I think it was Yvette Doyle and it was suggested at the time, it was speculated that potentially the reason they didn't have those two top scientists up there was because Boris Johnson didn't want them to get asked about Dominic Cummings and give an answer which he didn't like. Now, the first time we saw those two back up on stage was yesterday and basically that confirmed all of our suspicions. Let's take a look. Thank you, Prime Minister. Durham Police have said this afternoon they would have sent Dominic Cummings home if they'd found him in Barnard Castle. If one of your most senior team wasn't paying proper attention to the rules, why should anyone else and to the doctor, as if I may, is that the kind of example that you want people to follow? Well, Laura, first of all, can I say, I've said quite a lot on this matter already and what I also noticed that the Durham Police said was that they were going to take no action and that the matter was closed and I intend to draw a line under the matter. As I said, I think yesterday to the Parliamentary Liaison Committee, they're not taking any action and I intend to draw a line under it and all I can say, and I know that you've asked Chris and Patrick, but I'm going to interpose myself if I may and protect them from what I think would be an unfair and unnecessary attempt to ask a political question. It's very, very important that our medical officers and scientific advisors do not get dragged into what I think most people will recognise is fundamentally a political argument and if that's all right, Laura, and could we go now to Robert Peston of ITV? So you saw that, I mean, I don't know if you watched that live, but it was absolutely, you know, such a moment, him standing there and saying, no, you cannot ask them that question and then not allowing Laura Koonsburg a follow-up, she was basically muted, he went straight to Peston, Robert Peston actually asked a similar question, he was like, I don't think it is that political because it's a scientific necessity that people get a clear message about what they should do if they have symptoms of coronavirus and so the scientist should be able to give an opinion on that. Boris Johnson then interposed himself in his language. Again, you ended up with Sam Coates from Sky sort of saying to the two scientists, are you fine with Boris Johnson gagging you on this? Wink if you have problems with it. He went to them, they said, to be honest, we don't want to get involved in this Eva. But I mean, I think, obviously, completely shameful for Boris Johnson. I also think for those two, I mean, they should have the guts to say, you know, it's not political to comment on whether it's appropriate to drive from a part of the country with high levels of COVID, sorry, London at that point in time, to a part of the country with low levels of COVID, Durham at that point in time when you have symptoms. And the reason is because you will burden hospitals in rural areas and seed coronavirus from places with high levels of the disease, to places with low levels of the disease. And if we do have many people doing this, if they've got, if they've been texted to say you have to self isolate for 14 days, it's also worth noting that it doesn't seem like there's any financial package that's been attached to that. You're just supposed to. So, you know, Dominic Cummings didn't want to self isolate in his four story house with his great income. Some people are going to be asked to self isolate for 14 days without symptoms, without any extra money in their little flats. You know, it's the idea that you can have a strong public public health message without condemning what Dominic Cummings has done. This isn't about resignations. This is about what it's raining saying it's raining. And I think if you've got scientists who are unwilling to say that because they feel that that would, I suppose undermine their boss fundamentally in this situation, that just the whole thing just becomes a complete joke. Aaron, I know you watched that live because we were what's happening at the time. What did you think? I mean, my, my jaw literally dropped. I couldn't believe it. I mean, I couldn't believe it. I could not believe the prime minister was stopping, not just, you know, it wasn't Sienna from labelists. It wasn't Michael Walker from the forum media. This was Rob Peston, Laura Kuhnsberg, two highly favorable journalists from broadcast media, not being given second sort of responses, which you know, about a month ago, a bit more than a month ago, that was that was established as protocol. They could, they could get that a follow up. It was remarkable. And I agree with you. I think the response actually from, from Valence and Witty was that it was Valence and Witty, wasn't it? I thought it was deplorable. And they said, we don't want to get, like you say, involved in politics. It's not politics. It's public health. But what it illustrates to me is I have a sort of structural explanation for this, which is that because we don't have the formal separation of powers in this country, these people are political appointment appointees. And ultimately, they see themselves as being dependent on the goodwill of the prime minister and the executive or the governing party, rather than say the legislature. And I think that I think that's a problem. I think because you have so much power because the British system in the person of the prime minister, in the cabinet, I think that that makes this whole process very toxic. The idea of an apolitical impartial technocrat, which is what the chief medical officer is, we've had that roll since the First World War. I think it's particularly problematic now in an era of polarized politics, when you have a prime ministerial system. In the US, you've got the president, they would be answerable instead to Congress. I think it's much, much healthier. And so, yes, that's not good enough. I think when the investigation comes, that's what I thought when I saw their response. When the investigation comes or the inquiry comes, you're really in deep shit because you've basically just said, I am absolving myself of any blame when you should have just done your job fundamentally and said, yes, it's not abiding by the rules. We recommend other people don't do it. You didn't need to slay the guy. You didn't need to say he has to resign. You just need to say people probably shouldn't do that. No, we would consider it unwise, which is kind of what the Durham police did. We think he probably might have broke the rules. We would suggest people don't do it. They thought the trip to Barnard Castle was bad. The original trip wasn't all that, I mean, I presume they probably thought it was. They just don't want to create too much for sort of political scene. They could have done that. They could have done it really easily. And I think there were cowards for doing what they did, but I also have, like I said, that structure explanation. Should he resign? Political question. Did he break the rules? Not a political question.