Ensuring public safety during COVID-19 requires significant support for businesses and individuals from the government — in excess, in fact, of what was already committed. But instead of continued investment through the ongoing pandemic and recession, we’re already hearing rumblings from the Tories about the “tough choices” that are just around the corner.

There is an alternative to their preferred cutbacks or the return to disastrous austerity policies. A publicly led stimulus package could not only pull our economy out of this crisis, but restore the public purse as well. This stimulus package — whether you are a follower of Keynes or Friedman — is frankly morally unavoidable in any event and it begins with a Green New Deal.

Scientists have repeatedly told us, with almost complete unanimity, that we are in a climate crisis. Even optimistic forecasts now predict extreme weather and basic food and water insecurity. In 2018, the Environmental Audit Committee produced a report showing that the UK faces a trebling of heat deaths by 2050 as well as severe flooding if the government fails to act.