What if COVID comes around a year earlier?

[nyx]

We can call it the COVID-18 virus, spreading on the same timeframe as in reality but just a year earlier.

This would obviously have a very major effect on British politics, as the time when May would be trying to push Brexit through parliament would be around the time when lockdown hits. I feel like Brexit would inevitably be delayed until the worst of the pandemic is over, which Farage would definitely attack the Tories over, albeit there would probably be no 2019 European parliament election to turn such discontent into immediate electoral success.

It would also probably significantly help Corbyn for the Brexit topic to be sidelined for a while.

[The Bishop]

Its not impossible that Corbyn would have passed on the leadership in those circumstances.

(and doing so on his own terms would have made him harder for his successor to do what Starmer did to him subsequently)

[stb12]

May generally sounded pretty lockdown sceptical especially in the latter part of it, although clearly that may have been easier to do as a backbencher rather than as PM

[nyx]

Johnson was fairly lockdown skeptical too, so I imagine the two probably wouldn't have governed overly differently in that regard.

[uthacalthing]

Another great counterfactual. I would be pretty sure that it would be seized on as an excuse to kick Brexit into the long grass.