If coronavirus really is a war, shouldn’t opposition parties be invited to join the effort?

Boris Johnson has repeatedly compared his administration’s actions on Covid-19 to those of a wartime government, writes Andrew Woodcock. In both world wars, prime ministers formed coalition ministries

Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn speaks to the media on the coronavirus pandemic outside the Finsbury Park Jobcentre, north London, on 15 March 2020. (PA)

The past few days in Westminster have been like nothing that anyone in parliament can remember.

The doors are still open and debates still taking place, but the palace has lost its bustle and many MPs think it’s only a matter of time before they will be sent home.

Parliament continued to sit throughout the Second World War. But that was a time when the threat came from outside, from enemy bombing, not from MPs infecting one another – and potentially their constituents – with a deadly virus.