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The author is a political professor at Queen Mary University in London.
Since Labour first entered the government in 1924, a total of 13 party lawmakers have served as government chief whips. Few people spent a simple time. The relationship between the workers’ front and backbench was a permanent issue for the parties. Welfare reform was just as much a skeleton of regular competition as it is now. The government’s climbing over this week’s cut in disability benefits is evidence that it is becoming increasingly difficult for the Prime Minister to handle.
Welfare caused both the first major rebellion of the Blair era and lonely parents in the 1997 Congress, when 67 lawmakers ignored the whip beyond their incompetent interests. There was also a significant uprising against profit reforms against James Callahan, Harold Wilson, Clement Atley and Ramsay McDonald.
On 1931, within McDonald’s Second Government, Labour Back Venture voted against the government’s unemployment measures in 32 serial divisions.
In 1924, the first labor government saw almost four in 10 of the Congressional Party’s rebels over unemployment benefits. As a percentage, this remains the biggest rebellion of all time by a labor back-venture, and when the third rebelled, it was greater than the 2003 rebellion against Iraq (in percentage terms).
Thus, the former labor chief’s whip will understand the difficulties of Sir Alan Campbell in dealing with the threatened rebellion of the past few days – they may still be surprised by some details.
What’s rare here, in particular, is more than 120 Labour MPs. Such a major rebellion is becoming more and more a fact of life. Blair Iraq’s rebels were 139, and Theresa May was ignored by 118 conservatives over Brexit (again, this was even greater than the Iraqi rebellion, as a percentage of Congressional parties). John Major, David Cameron and Boris Johnson all suffered over 90 rebellions.
However, this kind of rebellion is very unusual in the early days of the Prime Minister. The biggest postwar rebellion in the first year of the government came in 1975 when 91 Labour lawmakers voted against increasing royal funds. But it’s a very outlier.
Keir Starmer’s current difficulties are part of the way the issues are dealt with, but they also reveal changes in the psychology of lawmakers who are generally more independent and willing to oppose stabbing.
We might have expected this to be a relatively cohesive and innocent labor intake (many new lawmakers were elected last year after a period of opposition). But many are well aware of the uncertain political foundations below their feet. Fearing that they may be there for just one term, I am not convinced that they are being led by political geniuses. Many people want to draw a line into the sand a year after repeated bites of their tongues.
Also, the rebels experienced by the Senior Committee Chair, a rebel, had a reasonable amendment in the second reading, a tactic that threatened to kill the entire bill – a really big deal. It took Blair’s second term before the important second reading rebellion. The biggest labour rebellion at this stage consisted of 72 MPS, a record jointly held by the Higher Education Bill (2004), which significantly increased the level of tuition fees.
To understand how unusual it is to discuss the potential losses of government bills this week, we need to consider that since 1900, the government, which has a safe majority in the Commons, has only lost the entire bill once in its second reading.
In 1986, Margaret Thatcher’s conservative government was defeated in a fateful attempt to deregulate trading hours on Sunday. In the biggest rebellion of her time, around 72 Tories ignored their whip, while others abstained.
That catastrophe came to Thatcher’s second term – by that point, backbench frustrations had been building for some time – and to an issue that was not at the heart of government programs. In response to the defeat, the government moved with a shrug. Thatcher made no further attempts to address this issue. Starme’s difficulties take less than a year. And on much more important policies.
The government retreat will not be very exciting to vote next week. But it would also demonstrate to Labour that they don’t have to be on the sidelines in the policy process. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger, they come back.
