Britain needs all the expertise it can get. Time to bring former prime ministers into government

Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. Several politicians—from the Conservative George Freeman, to new Labour shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy—have floated the idea of a government of national unity in recent weeks, or at least something resembling it. One way this could work would involve bringing senior opposition MPs onto Cobra and the cabinet committees charged with making decisions about the coronavirus response.

But this could risk reducing scrutiny of government decisions at a critical time; a better approach might be to bring the expertise of former prime ministers into government.

There are some strong arguments in favour of a cross-party approach. Parliament is not sitting—it is currently on a month-long Easter recess—and it is not clear what the arrangements will be from late April onwards as the lockdown continues. Although a few select committees are continuing to hold virtual sessions, this four-week recess is undoubtedly cutting into the ability of opposition MPs to hold the government to account during a critical period. This strengthens the case that they should be able to input into and scrutinise decisions as they are being made.

Moreover, political ideology has been temporarily put to one side: the government has explicitly stated that its objective is minimising the loss of life by making decisions informed by scientific expertise, and it has rightly pledged huge cash injections into the economy that are completely out of step with Conservative policy over the last decade. In a time when there is more political consensus about end goals, improving the diversity of thinking in the room would improve the quality of decision making. On average, Labour MPs tend to represent a different sort of seat than Conservative MPs and come from less gilded backgrounds: at a moment of unprecedented national crisis surely their constituents deserve to be better represented in decision making. It’s certainly an idea with public support: almost two thirds of the public—including a majority of Conservative voters—back the idea of a government of national unity.

The Welsh government has chosen to go down this road—First Minister Mark Drakeford has invited Conservative and Plaid Cymru politicians to join the Welsh cabinet committee coordinating the coronavirus response. But there are downsides. More scrutiny from the inside inevitably means less scrutiny from the outside. If parliament can’t meet physically, perhaps a better alternative would be for it to do more of its work online; for example, Harriet Harman has called for the Liaison Committee, which brings together all select committee chairs and by convention holds regular question sessions with the prime minister, to meet during recess, and there is no reason why ministerial questions should not be conducted online. And a government of national unity may be unlikely for political reasons: there has been suggestion that some Conservatives have talked about it behind the scenes as a way of neutering opposition, leading to fears on the Labour side that it could be a trap.

One alternative with a lot of the upsides, but none of the downsides, would be to invite into government former prime ministers and senior ministers, to share their wealth of experience of running the country at a time of international crisis. Gordon Brown made a powerful and constructive intervention recently when he argued that governments around the world are not thinking enough about the long-term response to the pandemic, and that the coordination needed to reduce the risk of wave after wave of the virus re-emerging is simply not there. Global funding for vaccine development is billions short of what is needed; there is too little focus on expanding total capacity to produce ventilators and testing kit; and richer countries are not doing enough to improve the resilience of health systems in the global south. Brown drew on his considerable experience of coordinating the international response to the financial crisis.

No one can be expected to have all the answers in a crisis like this, or to get things right all the time. But the government should be doing everything humanly possible to reduce its unforced errors, because they will inevitably cost lives. It seems madness not to be drawing on the expertise and wisdom of former politicians who led the response to global crises like the financial crisis and swine flu. So perhaps the best form a government of national unity could take would be to bring people like Brown into the fold—either in a formal advisory role, or with a specific brief—while this crisis is ongoing, and leave the current opposition to do its job of scrutinising from the outside.