On Friday, Boris Johnson set out a new timetable and guidelines in the government's effort to return things to normal in the fight to overcome coronavirus.

The prime minister hopes that the UK could return to some semblance of normality by Christmas or, at the earliest in November, but couldn't confirm anything for sure. He also announced that local councils will now be granted powers to enforce local lockdowns and employers will be able to decide if they want their employees to return to the workplace from 1 August.

Johnson also revealed that fans could potentially start returning to stadiums to watch live sports events from October with Premier League clubs home to fill their grounds by 40 per cent come next season. Dido Harding who is heading up the UK's contact-tracing system also gave an update on Track and Trace and when we can actually see it start to take effect.

As usual, reaction to Johnson giving a speech on coronavirus and the UK's recovery has been mixed, to say the least.

Although there are many important talking points to come from this press conference an interesting one that might go under the radar was the unveiling of a new slogan from the prime minister. Throughout several points in his speech, Johnson repeated the phrase "hoping for the best, planning for the worst" which would appear like a wise sentiment but didn't exactly fill people with confidence.

If this quote sounds familiar to you then it might be because it is very similar to a quote from Lee Child's Jack Reacher spy thriller novels, which were made into two movies starring Tom Cruise.

The quote from Reacher is much smaller than what Johnson said ('Hope for the best, plan for the worst') but it didn't stop people picking up on the similarities.

The phrase isn't exclusive to Lee Child and iterations have been used by the likes of Benjamin Disraeli, Maya Angelou and Mel Brooks, many preceding the publication of the Jack Reacher novels.

Of course, given how well known the phrase is, it is unlikely that Johnson knew that he was quoting Jack Reacher or any of those aforementioned names.

But we can't help but think a more inspiring slogan would have worked in this instance.

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