UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has written a letter to all opposition party leaders calling upon them to “work together” with his government on a response to the Coronavirus.
Mr Johnson’s letter was strategically timed to be released just an hour before Keir Starmer was announced as Jeremy Corbyn’s replacement to lead the Labour Party.
In the letter, Johnson invited all opposition leaders in Parliament to a briefing next week in No. 10 Downing Street with himself and the Cheif Medical Officer and Cheif Scientific Adviser.
“As party leaders, we have a duty to work together at this moment of national emergency. I want to listen to your views,” Mr Johnson wrote in the letter.
I have written to all leaders of opposition parties to invite them to work together at this moment of national emergency. pic.twitter.com/HgEsMo3DO2
— Boris Johnson #StayHomeSaveLives (@BorisJohnson) April 4, 2020
Despite speculation that Mr Johnson could try and push the new Labour leader toward forming a temporary national unity government to help the UK navigate its way out of the Coronavirus crisis, he stoped short of explicitly making such an offer in the letter.
It had already been reported that allies of Keir Starmer had ruled out the possibility of the new Labour head forging a government of national unity with Boris Johnson’s Conservatives.
One such ally told The Mirror newspaper that many among the opposition suspect that Boris Johnson is trying to rope Labour into such an arrangement so that he alone does not have to take all of the blame for the Coronavirus crisis.
“It's very clever by the government… It’s naked politics - let's hope people realise it is,” the anonymous Labour insider told The Mirror.
Now-former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has been scathing in his remarks about Boris Johnson’s handling of the Coronavirus crisis. Preempting Johnson’s latter, Mr Corbyn said on Friday, April 3, that his replacement should not consider any kind of national unity coalition with the Conservatives. Corbyn argued that failing to challenge the government’s response from the opposition benches would constitute a “negation of what our democratic society is about.”
