Coronavirus has exposed a desperate need for localism | Simon Jenkins

A new Beveridge-style report on the welfare of communities could help our traumatised minds focus on the future

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At the height of the blitz in 1941, the labour minister Ernie Bevin so disliked an official called William Beveridge that he got rid of him to write a report on national insurance. As the bombs fell, an angry Beveridge proposed an entire postwar welfare state, with financial security from cradle to grave. No one seemed to mind...