I’ll bite. What is COBRA?
COBRA is an abbreviation for Cabinet Office Briefing Room A, as the meetings take place at the Cabinet Office behind the prime ministers residence of 10 Downing Street. The first meetings were convened to coordinate the governments response to the 1972 miners strike. Since then, meetings have been held to discuss the response to numerous moments of national emergency, the most recent one prior to Tuesday taking place in response to the March 22 Westminster terrorist attack. It is a way of ensuring you have got security, intelligence, police, emergency services, whoever you need for the nature of the crisis itself, brought together in one place and communicating very rapidly with one another, Lord Turnbull, formerly a senior civil servant, told the BBC.