Sounding Off
This was the week that Parliament bit back. On Wednesday night, just hours after Blair-At-His-Best gave an impassioned defence of his Terrorism Bill at Prime Minister’s Questions, 49 Labour MPs voted against their Government and helped to inflict a defeat of 31 votes. The casual observer may, then, be concluding that Blair’s time was up. But does this make sense? By some measures, the Government’s authority is extremely small.
Philip Cowley, an academic who spends his time looking at revolts, has calculated that at least some Labour MPs voted against the party line in 20 per cent of divisions in the last Parliament. To put that in perspective, that is the highest level of repeated dissent since 1945. Wednesday was also, of course, the first time this government has been defeated in the Commons, showing that it is much harder to pass contentious legislation with a majority of 66 than with one three times that size.
Crucially though, the Prime Minister made it personal. This is undoubtedly what got the rebels really, really motivated. By declaring to Parliament during PMQs that he “believed” in the bill, Blair came within an inch of making the issue one of confidence in his Government. Instead, he made it about him, his party, and the residual authority he has left over Labour MPs. It must have come as a nasty surprise, then, when they threw it back in his face and killed dreams of 90-day detention.
At the risk of stating the obvious, it’s also crucially important that 49 MPs voted against him. Not only because this was enough to resoundingly defeat the bill, but also because it shows that dissent in the Parliamentary Labour Party now stretches well beyond the usual awkward squad of around 30 MPs. Admittedly, part of the opposition in this case probably came from genuine civil libertarians opposing the bill’s provisions on a range of ideological grounds.
There’s still plenty of room in the 49, though. I’m willing to bet that these were the folk who simply want Blair to change. Either way, it is unlikely that even those who would consider themselves genuine civil libertarians would have been sparked from their stupor to take a stance that was likely to put their own Government at such risk, were they not sufficiently angered by Blair’s leadership.
They knew that rebellion would put their party, and their leader, in serious problems, but were sufficiently exasperated by Blair himself to take this risk. Much of the immediate response to the defeat, especially from the broadcast media, was involved in asking the question, does the Prime Minister have any authority left? Unsurprisingly, Blair reacted by keenly defending his continued ability to exert influence at the heart of government.
Some of us were reminded of Maggie Thatcher’s comment: “Authority is like being a lady: if you have to say you are, you aren’t!” It must be at moments like this that Tony wishes Alastair was still around. In all seriousness, though, Blair must now realise that his authority is not gone forever.
What the MPs were rebelling against was a style of government, pioneered in the UK by Thatcher but perfected by Blair, in which decisions are made on leather sofas in Number Ten and then rubber-stamped by Parliament. He must realise that the votes would come flowing back if he changed into a more consultative and less confrontational leader.
But for a Prime Minister who has, in the past, defined himself as the antithesis to many within his party (think Clause IV), this is a change that will be very difficult to make. Having said this, though, as long as the Conservatives continue to stumble over each other in their desperate quest to who can impress the party faithful more by appearing as unelectable as possible, perhaps Blair won’t ever have to change.
17th Nov 2005