In the age of Covid-19, as populations are “locked down”, financial “bazookas” are fired and the death toll climbs, the scent of war is in the air. Newspapers hail “wartime finance fit for wartime economic conditions” and cast Rishi Sunak as a “wartime Chancellor”. We must act, says Boris Johnson, “like any wartime government and do whatever it takes”. Should this include a wartime coalition?
In times of crisis, there is a romantic allure to the idea of old enemies forging new alliances, of statesmen and women sinking their petty differences and standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the face of danger. But governments of national unity (or “national governments”) come at a price. They override the verdicts of elections and suspend the normal working of democracy. By bringing opposition parties inside the government, they prevent the opposition playing its crucial role of probing and contesting the government’s decisions. At the very moment when the actions of government are most momentous – when lives are at stake and the economy in the balance – they shut down the part of our system that exists to challenge the exercise of power.
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