Eoghan Harris (Independent)

It is approximately two years since the House, the political class and the public became aware that we were in the equivalent of a long war, an economic crisis of a magnitude not previously seen. The other night, I was watching Brendan Gleeson's powerful portrayal of Winston Churchill. Thankfully, the cringe factor of someone needing to apologise for an Irish actor playing Churchill was avoided.

I was first struck by the way Churchill brought Clement Attlee into the war cabinet. The Tories were not the toughest members of that cabinet. Rather, the three Labour Party members fought the war to a tough and final conclusion. I was also struck by the cabinet's bipartisan approach and the way in which the war was democratically debated by the House of Commons. A Labour-Tory Government did the difficult stuff and the Parliament was allowed a rolling debate on the war as it continued. We would do well to consider something similar.