BLAIR’S BRITAIN, 1997–2007
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of allowing MPs – especially those in marginal seats – to spend extended periods away
from Westminster, ‘digging in’ to the constituency. See Ron Johnston, Philip Cowley,
Charles Pattie and Mark Stuart, ‘Voting in the House or Wooing the Voters at Home:
Labour MPs and the 2001 General Election Campaign’, Journal of Legislative Studies, 8,
2002: 9–22.
reported spending a full 49% of their time on constituency work.24 Factor
in some of the time the research allocated to ‘other’ tasks – which included
constituency-facing work – and the most recently elected batch of MPs
spend more than half of their time and energy looking away from
Westminster and to their constituencies. It is possible simultaneously to
value the constituency link (and it is valued by both MPs and constituents) and still think that it is now in danger of growing out of all proportion. A modernisation committee investigation into the role of the
backbencher in 2006 noted that the ‘primary’ role of the MP was at
Westminster. But this was by then more an aspiration, and a call for a refocusing of priorities, than it was a statement of fact.
Backbench behaviour
A key part of the thesis of parliamentary decline under Tony Blair was the
belief that there was an increasing lack of independence amongst backbench MPs – from Roy Hattersley’s claim that Labour MPs were ‘the most
supine Members of Parliament in British history’ to the belief of the Power
Inquiry that the whips ‘have enforced party discipline more forcefully and
fully than they did in the past’.25 Yet there is simply no evidence that party
cohesion today is higher than it was in the past. Rather the opposite: there
is plenty of evidence that MPs today are more independent-minded and
willing to defy their whips than they used to be. In the sixty-plus years of
the post-war era – the period for which we have the most reliable data –
cohesion was at its highest at Westminster in the 1950s.26 There were two
whole sessions in the 1950s during which not a single Conservative MP
voted against their whip. Tony Blair’s whips would have sold their souls
for that sort of discipline.
It is certainly true that Tony Blair wanted his MPs to behave in a cohesive and disciplined way. Unity was supposed to be one of the defining
characteristics of New Labour – it was supposed to be what distinguished
it both from Old Labour and from John Major’s Conservatives. In his first
speech to the Parliamentary Labour Party after the 1997 election (which
had to be held in Church House as there was no room at Westminster
large enough to hold the massed ranks of Labour MPs), Tony Blair
24 Gemma Rosenblatt, A Year in the Life: From Member of Public to Member of Parliament
(London: Hansard Society, 2006), pp. 31–2.
25 The Times, 3 November 2005; Power to the People, p. 133.
26 See Philip Norton, Dissension in the House of Commons, 1945–1974 (London: Macmillan,
1975).
emphasised the need for party discipline. Look at the Tories, he said, and
see what happened to them. ‘They were all swept away, rebels and loyalists alike. Of course, speak your minds. But realise why you are here: you
are here because of the Labour Party under which you fought.’ And for a
short while, it appeared the Prime Minister had got his wish, as Labour
MPs acquired a widespread reputation for levels of discipline that would
have stunned previous Labour leaders.27
But any initial self-discipline soon wore off, and the decade following
Blair’s Church House speech saw the PLP break a series of historical
records for dissent. The 2001 parliament, for example, can lay claim to
being the most rebellious parliament in the post-war era – seeing a rebellion by Labour MPs in 21% of divisions.28 The enormous rebellion in
March 2003, when 139 Labour MPs voted against the Iraq War, was the
largest rebellion against the party whip seen under any party on any issue
for 150 years. To find a larger backbench revolt than Iraq, you have to go
back to the revolt over the Corn Laws in the middle of the nineteenth
century, when the franchise was enjoyed by just 5% of the population, and
before anything that resembled modern political parties had been formed.
In addition, the Blair era witnessed the largest Labour rebellion ever in
government over education policy (top-up fees), heath policy (foundation hospitals), and defence policy (Trident).29 One of the Conservatives’
‘New Labour, New Danger’ ads prior to 1997 had tried to imagine what life
would be like under Labour – and included a sentence about a rebellion
involving ‘fifty Labour MPs’. There were plenty of occasions during the
Blair era when a mere fifty would have been a relief for the whips.
In part, the rise in backbench dissent was merely the inevitable
product of being in office continually for ten years – a phenomenon that
would be recognised by most previous Prime Ministers. Just four years
into the Blair governments, one senior whip noted that the government
were already getting trouble from what he termed the three dis’s: the dissidents, the dismissed, and the disgruntled. Of these three groups, the last
two inevitably grew over time, as MPs left government or failed to achieve
what they felt they deserved. Ironically, given what was to come, the
27 Even in the first Blair term, though, when the PLP was acquiring this reputation for bovine
loyalty, the reality was more complicated, with the PLP being more rebellious than was
widely realised. See Philip Cowley, Revolts and Rebellions: Parliamentary Voting under
Blair (London: Politico’s, 2002).
28 See Philip Cowley, The Rebels: How Blair Mislaid his Majority (London: Politico’s, 2005).
29 The revolts included the (joint-)largest rebellion at second reading since 1945 (top-up
fees) and the largest rebellion at third reading ever against a Labour government (schools
reform).
whips attempted an ambitious long-term strategy, trying to look ahead to
the third term: the goal of the second term was supposed to be to nurture
good relationships with backbenchers and to prevent the habit of rebellion from becoming too widespread, so that once the majority fell in the
third term (as they assumed it would), the government would have credit
to fall back on with their backbenchers. Yet the range of controversial
policies presented to the Commons during the second term blew this
strategy out of the water. Instead of being able to build up goodwill for
the third term, the whips frequently found themselves using it up as they
struggled to get legislation through the Commons. The rise in backbench
dissent was therefore at least as much a consequence of the Blair style of
government – with Labour MPs growing increasingly irritated by his
habit of dropping fully formed policies on them and expecting their automatic wholehearted support – as it was an inevitable consequence of the
government’s longevity.
Predictions from within the leadership that the smaller majority after
2005 would reduce dissent (‘co
ncentrate the minds’) proved an example
of wishful thinking.30 The first session of the 2005 parliament saw Labour
MPs rebel in 28% of divisions, easily eclipsing what had until recently
been the most rebellious first session of the post-war era, the 1992–3
session (a revolt in 23% of divisions) when John Major had struggled so
terribly with the Maastricht legislation. The government went down to
four Commons defeats in one session – two on anti-terrorism legislation,
two on racial and religious hatred.31 John Major’s much-derided Tories
had suffered just four defeats as a result of backbench dissent on whipped
votes in the five years between 1992 and 1997. The third Blair term thus
managed to achieve in its first year what it took Major five years to do,
despite having a majority three times the size. It also scraped past other
votes with minuscule majorities; won other votes thanks to a series of
retreats and deals; and won yet others only thanks to the support of the
Conservatives. Three key policies of the Blair era only passed the
Commons thanks to Conservative support: encompassing foreign policy
(Iraq), domestic policy (schools reform) and defence (Trident).
30 Philip Cowley and Mark Stuart, Dissension Amongst the Parliamentary Labour Party,
2005–2006: A Data Handbook, 2006 (available from www.revolts.co.uk).
31 The defeats are explained in Richard Kelly, Oonagh Gay and Philip Cowley, ‘Parliament:
The House of Commons’, in M. Rush and P. Giddings (eds.), The Palgrave Review of
British Politics 2005 (London, Palgrave, 2006), esp. pp. 106–8; and Richard Kelly, Oonagh
Gay and Philip Cowley, ‘Parliament: The House of Commons’, in M. Rush and
P. Giddings (eds.), The Palgrave Review of British Politics 2006 (London, Palgrave, 2007),
esp. pp. 102–3.
Not that he could have done much about it, but it is now clear that
Tony Blair would have been better off had he been able to have his parliamentary majorities in a different order. Margaret Thatcher had a small
but workable majority in her first parliament – when MPs’ self-discipline
is at its tightest – followed by two landslide majorities to cushion her
against any tendency to increased rebellion. Tony Blair had his largest
majorities first, during which rebellions became commonplace, and he
then saw the cushion removed, with a majority of just sixty-six after 2005.
By the end of his premiership, what one whip described as the ‘threshold
of rebellion’ had been crossed by most Labour MPs.
Women MPs
Labour’s 1997 manifesto had noted that it was ‘proud to be making major
strides to rectify the under-representation of women in public life’. Largely
as a result of its policy of All-Women Shortlists (AWS), the 1997 election
saw a dramatic increase in the number of women MPs – up to 120, 18% of
the House of Commons – with all but nineteen of them on the Labour
benches. The lack of AWS at the subsequent election (the policy had been
declared illegal) then led to a slight drop in the number of women MPs in
2001 – the first time female representation in the Commons had declined
since 1979 – and prompted legislative action following the election.32 The
Sexual Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act 2002 allowed parties to
employ measures to increase female representation. As a result, there was
another increase in 2005 – with a total of 128 women MPs elected.
In a purely descriptive sense, this has been a major change in parliament during the Blair era – and perhaps the most visible. After the 1992
election, women constituted roughly 4% of the House of Commons; after
the 2005 election, the figure was 20%, a fivefold increase. Moreover,
because of the asymmetric nature of this transformation – being entirely
a result of a change in the Labour Party – the increase in government was
even more dramatic, with almost every department of state having
women ministers, many for the first time. When the Prime Minister set
out his own record of achievements, shortly before his departure from
No. 10, he did not mention any of the modernisation reforms – indeed, it
was noticeable that he hardly mentioned parliament at all – but he did
32 After abandoning AWS, Labour moved onto 50:50 shortlists, and out of forty seats where
Labour MPs were retiring, just four constituencies selected women replacements. Byron
Criddle, ‘MPs and Candidates’, in D. Butler and D. Kavanagh, The British General Election
of 2001 (London: Palgrave, 2002), p. 195.
single out the increase in women MPs and ministers as one of the government’s achievements.
As with modernisation, however, it is one thing to note the development, another to judge it. Labour’s women MPs, especially those elected
in 1997, became possibly the most criticised of all Labour’s MPs.
Criticisms began with their appearance, moved on to their devotion to
the party line, and then ended up with their supposed overall lack of
achievements.33 These complaints did not just come from those who
always wanted the women to fail, but also from those who felt let down by
them. As Anne Perkins wrote in The Guardian, two years into the Blair
era: ‘It was their failure to fight collectively, in particular to unite against
the lone parent benefit cut that caused such a rumpus in late 1997, that
earned them the reputation of betraying women who needed them for
the sake of their own political futures. Most damaging, it was a view
shared by more experienced women colleagues.’34
Yet later assessments of the effects of the influx of women MPs, particularly those from the academic community based on evidence rather
than assertion, were more positive. Lovenduski noted that although it
was ‘notoriously difficult’ to identify cause and effect, there was now a
‘substantial amount of circumstantial evidence’ connecting the increased
women’s presence to policies which address women’s concerns.35
Examples would include the enhanced priority given to policies such as
childcare, maternity and paternity rights, equal pay and domestic violence.36 Research, for example, showed differences in the type of issues
raised by women MPs – providing clear evidence that the Labour women
MPs performed an agenda-setting function, pushing issues up the agenda
that might otherwise have been downplayed or ignored altogether.37 This
was often achieved despite obstructive (and sometimes downright
offensive) behaviour from some male MPs.38 And whilst there were
33 Sarah Childs, New Labour’s Women MPs: Women Representing Women (London:
Routledge, 2004), esp. ch. 1.
34 The Guardian, 29 April 1999.
35 Joni Lovenduski, Feminizing Politics (Cambridge: Polity, 2005), p. 180.
36 See Sarah Childs, Joni Lovenduski and Rosie Campbell, Women at the Top 2005: Changing
Numbers, Changing Politics (London: Hansard Society, 2005), section 2.
37 See, for example, Karen Bird, ‘Gendering Parliamentary Questions’, British Journal of
Politics and International Relations, 7, 2005: 353–70; or Sarah Childs and Julie Withey, ‘Do
Wome
n Sign for Women? Sex and the Signing of Early Day Motions in the 1997
Parliament’, Political Studies, 52, 2004: 552–64.
38 For a series of examples, see Bonnie Sones, Margaret Moran and Joni Lovenduski, Women
in Parliament: The New Suffragettes (London, Politico’s, 2005).
differences in the way the women MPs voted from their male counterparts, these differences were less dramatic than much of the coverage
implied.39
Overall, the effect of the increased numbers of women in the
Commons was probably not as great as many of the proponents of AWS
would have originally hoped. But it was greater than many of their critics
acknowledged.
The House of Lords
The process of House of Lords reform – discussed by Philip Norton in
chapter 6 – was not Labour’s finest hour in government. It consisted of a
compromise followed by a hapless White Paper followed by a U-turn followed by a farce followed by another U-turn.40 By the time Tony Blair left
office Labour had still not fully implemented its manifesto pledges to
make the House of Lords more ‘democratic and representative’ (1997) or
‘representative and democratic’ (2001).
Yet the understandable focus on the botched debate on Lords reform
has tended to obscure the way the Lords is now actually functioning. As
with so much of the Blair legacy in parliament, the reality is more complicated than the government’s critics allow. When the government
brought forward the House of Lords Bill in 1999, the accusation was that
this was an attempt to weaken the second chamber. By removing most of
the hereditary peers, critics argued that the government was emasculating one of the remaining checks on its dominance of parliament. For
example, of the first fifty-three defeats the government suffered in the
Lords after 1997, all but six occurred as a result of the votes of the hereditary peers. And so, the argument went, remove the hereditary peers and
you remove any effective opposition.
Yet, as was clear within a year or two of the House of Lords Act 1999
coming into effect, the exact opposite occurred. The pre-reform House of
Lords, conscious that its legitimacy was limited by the presence of so many
hereditary peers, frequently practised a self-denying ordinance, pulling