{"id":1039,"date":"2020-04-02T12:18:19","date_gmt":"2020-04-02T11:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/thinking-wales\/?p=1039"},"modified":"2022-04-13T17:25:09","modified_gmt":"2022-04-13T16:25:09","slug":"first-minister-drafts-opposition-leaders-to-help-with-covid-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/thinking-wales\/first-minister-drafts-opposition-leaders-to-help-with-covid-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"First Minister drafts opposition leaders to help with Covid crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This post was written by Nye Davies and Luke Nicholas<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The First Minister\u2019s decision to draft the leaders of the two largest opposition parties into his Cabinet Core Group is a unique constitutional development in the UK when it comes to the political handling of the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The move brings the Conservative leader Paul Davies and his\nPlaid Cymru counterpart Adam Price closer to the decision-making process,\nwithout formally making those parties part of the government. At the time of\nwriting, there is no comparable arrangement at Westminster, Holyrood or (for\nclearer reasons) Stormont.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arguably, we have not seen this level of cross-party cooperation since the Second World War, where the major political parties agreed to join Winston Churchill\u2019s war ministry. Desperate times call for desperate measures and political differences have been put aside to work together in the interests of the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The difference of tone in the response of Price and Davies\nto the invitation \u2013 a confident welcome by the Plaid leader and a more cautious\none from his Conservative counterpart – can be explained by the differing\nstyles and experiences of the two leaders. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adam Price has already been involved in cross-party co-operation in this Senedd term and was instrumental to the \u2018Compact\u2019 arrangement between the Labour Government and Plaid Cymru. He and Mark Drakeford worked together<\/a> on budget deals between their two groups before either of them became party leader. Paul Davies\u2019 new closeness to government is without precedent but bringing him into the Cabinet committee clearly demonstrates the seriousness of the current crisis and how business as usual has been suspended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Up until this point, scrutiny of the Welsh Government has been effectively conducted from the outside. Adam Price, for example, has recently been pressing the government to explain the reason behind the collapse of a deal<\/a> between the Welsh Government and a company to supply coronavirus testing kits to the Welsh NHS. An initial promise was made by Welsh ministers to carry out 6,000 tests a day by 1 April. Yet, Vaughan Gething\u2019s most recent estimate is that we are now \u201ctwo or three weeks\u201d away from carrying out 5,000 tests a day. A matter of such importance to the Welsh people cannot be ignored and Price has effectively, and quite rightly, kept the pressure on the Welsh Government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a role played effectively by another Welsh politician, Aneurin Bevan, during World War Two. He faced heavy criticism for his scrutiny of the government during wartime \u2013 even receiving excrement through the door of his house \u2013 and accusations of attacking the spirit of common purpose that the war inspired. The Covid crisis cannot be compared to World War Two (despite talk of the \u2018Blitz spirit\u2019 some have attempted to invoke), but Bevan demonstrated that effective opposition was even more vital during a time of national crisis: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAdvocacy is the very essence of democracy. A formal unity, which serves to conceal and frustrate an underlying ferment, is a dangerous delusion rather than a source of national strength\u201d. <\/p>Aneurin Bevan, 1942<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The entry of Price and Davies into the Covid Core Group gives the two politicians the opportunity to \u2018scrutinise from the inside\u2019. They will receive access to possibly confidential information and medical reports and will have to demonstrate that they can be trusted and consulted with on key issues. In turn, the two opposition leaders will be able to seek answers on PPE, testing and the pandemic itself, though probably not the social and economic fallout from the crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It will be interesting to see, however, whether the high-level of scrutiny can be maintained from this new position. In addition to this, will Price and Davies be held responsible if the situation isn’t seen to have improved? It’s difficult to see how, as they won’t have decision-making powers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The First Minister\u2019s decision will probably be welcomed by\nthose aware of it as a demonstration of mature politics, but time will tell\nwhether the input of opposition leaders can refine the government\u2019s handling of\nthe pandemic and how it is communicated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This post was written by Nye Davies and Luke Nicholas The First Minister\u2019s decision to draft the leaders of the two largest opposition parties into his Cabinet Core Group is […]","protected":false},"author":1816,"featured_media":1047,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[143,16,49,48,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-covid-19","category-labour-party","category-national-assembly","category-plaid-cymru","category-welsh-conservatives"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8iFWs-gL","meta_box":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/thinking-wales\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/509\/2020\/04\/pjimage-2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/thinking-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/thinking-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/thinking-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/thinking-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1816"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/thinking-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1039"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/thinking-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1052,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/thinking-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039\/revisions\/1052"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/thinking-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/thinking-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/thinking-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/thinking-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}