Shropshire Star comment: Huge economic rebuild ahead

Last weekend the sun shone and the tills – ordinarily – would have been ringing in tourist hotspots across the region. Quite rightly, people heeded the government’s advice to stay at home.

The cost of this to the tourism industry is huge. Those businesses driven to the brink by the impact of the virus will face an incredibly difficult recovery, and they will need our support when the lockdown is over.

There are tragic victims up and down the country, and many people have lost loved ones. This is a disastrous tidal wave of misery caused by the health impact of Covid-19.

Looming behind this wave is another wave which will take a while to break upon the shore with its full force. We can all see it coming though. This is a tidal wave of economic victims who have not lost their lives, but who have lost their livelihoods.

The Easter holiday should have been a bumper time for the tourism industry. But tourists, there were none, in line with the government’s stay-home guidance.

Deserted places and attractions which rely entirely on people visiting them for their economic vitality still have to meet their overheads.

When the lockdown is finally lifted, which is going to be weeks away at best, Britain will not hit some sort of reset button. Things will not revert to how they were before. There will be a huge job to rebuild amid a sea of economic damage. Sadly, some will be irreversible.

There are so many unknowns, one of which is how people will behave post-lockdown. Going on holiday, either abroad or at home, may be seen by some as a risk in uncertain times.

In an entirely different context, there was in the 1960s a national “I’m Backing Britain” campaign.

Perhaps, when we have come through this, something similar will be needed to try to get Britain back on its feet.