Johnson and Cabinet ministers 'get on with work' in socially distanced meeting
Boris Johnson made a joke about the large room required to facilitate a socially-distanced Cabinet meeting at the Foreign Office.
The cabinet held its first socially distanced face-to-face meeting since March to get the country back on track amid the coronavirus pandemic.
He told his team of ministers: “Welcome to the Locarno Suite, which is the Foreign Office’s idea of a modest seminar room, conducted on such an opulent scale that we can both observe social distancing and meet as an entire Cabinet face to face, which I’m sure you’ll agree is the right thing to do because we need – every human being needs – the energy and the stimulation that comes from face-to-face meetings – nothing propinks like propinquity, as I think somebody once said.
“I hope I speak for everyone in this room when I say we will not be blown off course by the coronavirus and we will get on with delivering our promises to the people, as indeed we are,” Johnson told cabinet ministers.
The PM said there was a huge amount of work to do and "we have to get on with it".
He added: “Whatever the current difficulties, and they will go on – we will have bumpy months ahead and as Rishi (Sunak, Chancellor) has rightly said, there will be difficult months ahead for our people and our country but no one will be without hope.
“We will build back better and come through this crisis more strongly than ever before."