Defeating the Covid-19 crisis could need a wartime coalition government | Martin Kettle... - 0 views
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although the transformation of the role of government in less than two weeks has been genuinely jaw-dropping, this is not yet the same as a wartime crisis in some very important ways. These differences need to be understood, not least because it may help to avoid the error, long familiar in military strategy, of mistakenly setting out to fight the last war rather than tackling the one that we actually face.
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Britain in 2020 is not the Britain of 1939, let alone the Britain of 1914. We are an infinitely more connected, more individualistic and more informed society today than we were then.
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the incomplete character of Sunak’s huge spending spike. Johnson may say that the state is standing behind society “through thick and thin” but the state is not yet standing behind households, behind renters and the self-employed. At the height of the second world war, public expenditure topped 80% of national income. We are nowhere near that figure yet.
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The Emergency Powers Act of 1939, for example, gave ministers sweeping authority to govern through regulations with no parliamentary sanction whatever. Any act of parliament could be amended or suspended on a minister’s say-so. Food, fuel, pharmaceuticals and clothing were controlled by the state and strictly rationed. Ministers could intern anyone whose detention was thought expedient on grounds of public safety or the defence of the realm. Censorship of the media was effective and was broadly accepted by the media themselves.
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this is unquestionably a national crisis. But it is just the start. We are still in the phoney war, it-will-be-all-over-in-weeks phase
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In August 1914, most governments assumed the existing armed forces would do all the fighting and that civilians would not be much involved. They were wrong. By the same token, it is possible that Johnson and Dominic Cummings still imagine they will be able to spin their way through the crisis and resume their interrupted election agenda. But they would be wrong too.
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The country has been deeply divided by austerity and Brexit. That’s why, just as in 1915 and 1940, it may eventually feel inevitable for Labour and even the SNP to be brought into a governing coalition in some way. This may be a wartime government but, as Asquith and Churchill found out and Johnson may learn, the politics that emerged from the war may be very different from the politics that preceded it.