U.K.'s Johnson Looks Beyond Virus as Poll Ratings Extend Slide

Boris Johnson will set out his plans for rebuilding the U.K. economy after the coronavirus as he seeks to stem the hemorrhagingof support for his government’s response to the crisis.

The prime minister will use a speech later this month to commit to speeding up spending on roads, hospitals and research, his office said after three opinion polls published on Saturday showed public confidence in his administration slipping and the gap narrowing between his Conservatives and the main opposition Labour Party.

Johnson, who won a commanding majority in the House of Commons in December, will commit to spending to support the normally Labour-voting industrial regions in the north that backed him at the election. He has already said there will be no return to the austerity policies that followed the 2008 financial crisis.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock insisted there will be no “trade off” between the economy and health in a response to reports in the Sunday Times newspaper that Johnson wants to speed the lifting of the U.K.’s lockdown to stop a massive increase in unemployment.

“The worst thing for the economy would be a second spike, so there isn’t this trade off that much is made of in the media between health and the economy,” Hancock said in an interview with Sky News. “I care deeply about getting the economy going and the best way to get the economy going is to ensure we get down the number of new infections right down.”

The U.K., which passed 40,000 deaths from the disease on Friday and has the second-highest number of any country in the world, has been moving to lift restrictions as Johnson battles claims that his administration has botched its response to the pandemic by failing to prepare and moving too slowly to lock down the country.

Lockdown Easing

Non-essential retailers are scheduled to reopen on June 15 and places of worship will be available for private prayer from the same day, the government said. Schools are gradually reopening and travelers on public transport have been told they will have to wear face coverings to help reduce transmission once shoppers and students increase pressure on networks.

Sunday newspaper reports that Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak will offer tax incentives to encourage smaller companies to hire employees and is mulling a car-scrapping program were “speculation” and no decisions have yet been made, the Treasury said.

An Opinium poll of 2,002 adults found 47% now disapprove of the government’s handling of the crisis, compared with 34% who approve. A similar survey by the same company on March 25 found 23% disapproval while 65% backed of the government’s response.

The poll showed the gap between Johnson’s Conservatives and Labour at 3 points, down from a lead of 26 points in April. Polls by Survation and Deltapoll showed a similar difference.

Scientific Guidance

Hancock insisted ministers had “made the right decisions at the right time” and had been guided by scientific advice throughout the crisis. “We have to make balanced judgments based on that evidence,” he told the BBC.

About one in every thousand people in the U.K. has the virus, Hancock said, so people need to continue to be vigilant and follow the guidelines to socially distance, stay away from gatherings and not go into other people’s homes.

While he said he supported the message of the Black Lives Matter protests in central London on Saturday, he warned they risked spreading the disease.

“I hope people will make that case strongly, but please don’t gather in groups of more than six, because that risks spreading the virus and that risks lives,” Hancock told BBC TV. “When you have tens of thousands gathering of course the likelihood is some of them will have the disease.”