George Freeman, Tory MP for Mid Norfolk, used Twitter to call for a wartime coalition style government, bringing the Labour shadow frontbench in. He specified that this only be genuinely considered once Labour had “serious leadership” in a week and a half’s time, but it was still a Conservative Member of Parliament calling for a temporary grand coalition to fight the CoVid crisis. Is this a good idea for the country, for the Tories, for the Labour Party?
The short term benefits to the country would be having all the best brains available round the table to figure out how to get out of this mess. This assumes that Starmer will bring MPs who are actually talented back into the shadow cabinet, Nandy, Phillips, Cooper, etc, while booting most of the current nutters to the backbenches, but that appears to be likely. It would also help bring the country together and stop partisan bickering about the government’s approach, making any laws easier to implement and with fewer people flouting the new rules.
The main short term benefit to the Conservative party of this arrangement is that if things get really bad, they aren’t the ones holding the bag. If both the Tories and Labour can be seen to be at “fault” for what happens during the crisis, then that’s better for the Tories who have a majority already. The short term downside for the Tories is the exact flip-side to this: that if we come out of this quickly and with minimum damage done from the stand point of where we are now, the Tories have to then share the glory. The other short term problem for the Conservatives is that they would have to agree to a Brexit extension, surely, to get Starmer and his team on board. This could be looked at as a another benefit to Johnson and his party, however; the extension looks inevitable anyhow and there is a chance to blame it both on the crisis and the Labour Party in one go.
The long term benefit of a grand wartime coalition, I think, would belong to Labour. The major problem Keir Starmer’s got as he looks set to become leader of the Labour Party is that he leads an organisation that has very little credibility. It has come to be seen as a party that has lost its collective marbles, destroying the big tent they had built up over a century to become some sort of Islingtonian art project. Starmer as deputy prime minister in a time of crisis has the opportunity of bringing Labour back that lost credibility very quickly. It has the potential power to wash away the mistakes of the last five years (or ten years if we’re being less generous here).
Boris Johnson likes to see himself as Churchill, as we all know. Wouldn’t it be the ultimate irony if he were to lose the next election like Churchill lost in ’45, ultimately because the wartime coalition that he led made it impossible to effectively attack the Labour Party? Clement Attlee had been a diligent deputy for most of the war, so when it came to the ’45 election, none of the Tory attack lines on Labour worked. We’ll have gestapo in the streets under Attlee! Really? No one was going to buy that when in Attlee they clearly saw a man who had helped Churchill win the war for the Allies; an obviously patriotic and level-headed bloke. All of the Tory attempts to hurt Attlee and his party just bounced off.
Could this be Starmer’s fate? We’ll see how bad things get and how unavoidable a grand coalition starts to feel once Starmer becomes leader of the opposition. But if I were working for the Labour leader, I would advise him heavily to jump into such an arrangement if it comes on offer.
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In a few weeks time, I have another book coming out. It’s called “Politics is Murder” and follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. The plot takes in Conservative Party conference, a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.
Also: there is a subplot around the government trying to built a stupid bridge, which now seems a charming echo of a more innocent time!
It’s out on April 9th, but you can pre-order here:
Amid the pandemic, Starmer will have considerably more latitude to appoint who he wants, whether or not he were to collaborate.
That said this move is to deflect responsibility so totally in line with Johnson’s whole life, and it is not as though the Conservatives are divided. There was much more need for a broad coalition a year ago. An opposition is needed to call the government to account. Johnson has vacillated, been very mistaken and acted harmfully in his responses to the spread of CoVid 19. He has flouted the informed advice of the WHO and other more experienced leaders. We have to look to Trump and Bolsanaro for worse leaders. Opposition leaders need to have the freedom to spell out harsh truths to an indolent leader, they cannot do this while sharing offices.
We have to look to Trump and Bolsanaro for worse leaders
Macron.
Macron?
How has he been bad at dealing with corvid.
How has he been bad at dealing with corvid.
He’s mostly been using it as an excuse for grandstanding, but then what do you expect from Jupiter?
Also he’s been far too eager to enact far more repressive measures than most countries. Measures that have been very useful in clearing the streets of those who disagree with him. One wonders when the crisis is over whether he might like to keep some of these curfew powers that he would find so useful.
Boris by contrast — and I admit slightly surprisingly — has been subdued and not tried to steal the spotlight from the CMO and other experts, and has had to be dragged reluctantly to curtailing out liberties, which gives me confidence that once this is over those powers will be comprehensively rolled back (and indeed hopefully that there’ll be an overcompensation and some other bits of the nanny state will be got rid of as well).
We have to look to Trump and Bolsanaro for worse leaders
And of course Xi Jinping, who is responsible for the cover-up which prevented this being brought under control last November, and so whose fault it is that we are all cowering in our houses right now. I think in the rankings of world leaders once this is over he has to be in the absolute worst place.
Johnson incompetence and procrastination
His arse is on the line if our death rate surpasses Italy
Starmer needs to hold him to account for appalling leadership based on small state ideology