Tony Blair today insisted decisions on how to ease the coronavirus lockdown must be taken now – warning ministers cannot allow a ‘void’ while Boris Johnson recovers from the disease.
The former PM said the government had been ‘behind the curve’, underlining his demand for mass testing and a fundamental reorganisation of Whitehall, with experts being pulled in from business to help a war-style response.
He also raised concerns over the government’s insistence that an ‘exit strategy’ cannot be laid out now. Mr Blair said Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and senior ministers must make crucial choices on releasing schools, regions and sectors to avoid huge damage to the economy.
Mr Blair waded into the row amid signs of Cabinet divisions over when and how to loosen the draconian social distancing curbs threatening to wipe a third off GDP and destroy millions of jobs.
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair (pictured above) has today claimed that Boris Johnson’s government is ‘overwhelmed’
Mr Johnson has intervened from his recuperation at Chequers to snuff out speculation of an imminent easing, with scientists warning the situation is so delicate that even marginal changes to the rules could cause another flare-up in cases.
So-called ‘doves’ in the Cabinet, like Health Secretary Matt Hancock, have been suggesting restrictions will need to be in place for many months more, until the disease is suppressed to much lower levels.
Mr Blair said the government seemed ‘overwhelmed’ by the pandemic, amid heavy criticism over PPE shortages, testing blunders, and the lack of a clear exit plan.
The ex-PM told Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid on ITV’s Good Morning Britain: ‘I think in a situation where every day matters and where every day decisions have to be taken, I think the person who is the acting prime minister along with what is essentially the war cabinet – the top four ministers that are meeting together – that person has got to be taking those decisions.
Mr Blair said he ‘completely’ sympathises with Mr Johnson’s condition, but insisted some important decisions have to be ‘taken now’, adding: ‘You can’t have a void of decision making.’
He went on: ‘These decisions around how the government organises itself, what are the issues that we need to be preparing for now to exit from this lockdown, around things like schools, geographic sectors, age sectors, business sectors – those have got to be taken now.’
There are growing signs that Mr Johnson is close to a return, after he spoke to Donald Trump yesterday, and he will have his audience with the Queen this week. However, No10 insists he is not yet back working, and Mr Raab is taking PMQs and chairing Cabinet in his absence.
Mr Blair said wanted to be ‘constructive’ rather than ‘criticise’, but the government needed to be ‘re-organised’.
‘I think you need to re-position government completely’, he added.
‘Many of the skills you need to deal with something like this, which is around things on production of equipment how you source different elements of the equipment, the heart of this is mass testing and what I’m saying is that you have to reorder the whole of government.
‘You should divide up the different key elements and have senior ministers in charge of each element, divided up in that way with good outside people, people who have got the skill set that won’t be politicians or people in government or bureaucracy.’
He claimed the government needs to get to the point where it has the capability of dealing with ‘all the different dimensions and not getting overwhelmed’.
‘I say that with a lot of humility because I know how difficult it is to be in government and I know how tough the decision making is.
‘I’m sure everyone is working flat out by the way but it’s really just a question of whether we are positioned rightly to measure up to the scale of this problem and there is a need for action, decision making and speed.’
Asked on if he thought the army should be more involved he said that when he was dealing with the foot and mouth outbreak during his tenure, it was only when the army stepped in that they were able to ‘accelerate our ability to deal with it.’
‘In normal government, as you know Piers, you have your education department, your health department, your industry department, your defence department. This is just a government with one challenge and so I don’t think you can leave the system operating as the normal system and that’s really the point I’m making.
‘When you come to the exit from the lockdown, this phase of the suppression of the disease – which is absolutely right and necessary, that in my view is actually probably a simpler task than how you exit from the lockdown.
‘How you exit is really, really complicated and unless you have the right skill set there at the centre of government right from the very beginning then it’s going to be very hard to do things like mass testing, which I can’t see any other way out of this.’