Coronavirus: Corbyn warns next Labour leader not to join unity government with Tories
The IndependentSign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Get our free View from Westminster email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. His comments came as former Conservative leader William Hague said it would be “constitutionally correct” for prime minister Boris Johnson to brief the new Labour leader directly on the government’s strategy, suggesting that this would help relieve pressure on ministers from the opposition. So it’s in the government’s interest as well as in democracy’s interest for that sort of meeting and discussion to take place.” But asked whether Labour should be offering its support to the government to help the country get through the coronavirus crisis, Mr Corbyn told the Daily Telegraph’s Chopper’s Politics podcast: “It’s the duty of opposition parties to hold it up into account and that is exactly what we’re doing.” Mr Corbyn has said that Labour would have moved faster to ramp up Covid-19 testing if he had been in power. “If everybody got together and said ‘we’re all absolutely in this together; we won’t criticise each other’ – that is a negation of what our democratic society is about.” But leadership contender Lisa Nandy repeated her call for a “national Cobra” emergency committee, in which government ministers would be joined by representatives of opposition parties and devolved governments, and said that Labour should be offering ideas on how to defeat the virus. We saw it with issues early on like sick pay, which Matt Hancock said hadn’t been thought about initially but were obviously really, really important if we’re going to be able to give people the ability to follow the guidance.” As Corbyn prepared to step down after five years at the helm, his wife Laura Alvarez broke her longstanding silence to voice her pride in her husband and declare she would “never regret our dream of a better quality of life for everybody”.