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BLAIR’S BRITAIN, 1997–2007

Page 6

by ANTHONY SELDON (edt)


  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.

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  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).

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  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).

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  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.

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  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.

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  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).

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  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

 

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