Macron: The number of infection has doubled in two week.

"We've taken difficult steps...but these aren't enough to combat this second wave which is engulfing Europe."

Macron says that if more measures aren’t taken, French hospitals will be overwhelmed and doctors will be put in a position to choose between life and death

Macron says he doesn’t believe in a distinction between controlling the virus and protecting the economy- that the economy will wither in a situation where the virus is out of control.

Macron saying that these are his five priorities. Protect the old, protect the young, protect medical staff, protect the less well off, protect the economy

There we have it. Macron says that France will reenter lockdown starting on Friday.

It will be a different form or lockdown in France to the first. Macron says schools will remain open and many workplaces will too. But other places where the public mixes will be closed across France.

And unlike in the UK macron says people will be able to visit nursing homes.

Macron says he wants renewed vigilance across France. For French citizens to ensure they are not breaking the rules, to ensure they are wearing masks.

Documentation required to leave home for work, doctors appointment, for training and to take fresh air. Public gatherings banned. In this way v similar to the spring. Most draconian return to lockdown we’ve seen yet in a major European country.

Macron says these measures are necessary “so [covid] does not overwhelm us”

So in a day the picture across Europe looks different and yet familiar. Back in March it was partly the lockdowns we saw in other European which drove political pressure for one in Britain, that the UK shouldn’t be an outlier. Hard to see how it doesn’t have a similar effect now.

But this time there is far more political pressure from within the Tory party not to lockdown. And it has also partly become a party political question with the govt staked to a regional approach and Labour a national. It’s a politically much more complicated picture.

And that’s before you even mention the competing pressures and approached of the different nations of the UK, two of which have returned to a form of national lockdown.

more European lockdowns could give govt cover with backbenches, to help argue there is no choice. But if so it’s a bleak picture all round, with none of the systems adopted by major European countries working to properly suppress covid. Hence all heading back to where we started.