To rebel is to wage war. Specifically, if you go back to the Latin, it means to wage war again – the conquered rising up against their conquerors, insurgents who refuse to let grievances go.
Etymology is probably not front of mind for Keir Starmer as the vote on his government’s highly contentious welfare reform bill looms today (1 July). Last week, 126 Labour MPs – nearly a third of the parliamentary party, easily enough to defeat the government – put their names to a wrecking amendment. A stand-off ensued, and eventually it was the government that blinked. In an attempt to win over the backbenchers, concessions were hastily offered, concessions that will leave Rachel Reeves with a £3bn hole to fill in. But that still may not be enough. Around 50 rebels are thought to be holding firm – including, somewhat ironically, one who was until very recently a Labour whip.
Assuming the numbers are accurate (which, given how this disaster seems to have caught Downing Street by surprise, isn’t worth counting on), a government with a majority of 156 should be able to ram its reforms through with a revolt of this size. But what happens next?
Rebellions are not just humiliating for the prime ministers who suffer them. As the derivation suggests, they are rarely a one-time thing. For MPs mulling over whether to defy the whips and vote with their conscience or be well-behaved little backbenchers who might get a promotion one day, the data shows rebelling gets easier with practice. Philip Cowley and Mark Stuart from the University of Nottingham analysed rebellions in the 2001 parliament under Tony Blair and found a worrying trend of MPs who had previously been obedient getting a taste for revolt. Matt Bevington from UK In A Changing Europe pointed out that, once Theresa May had lost one vote on Brexit, the situation spiralled: her government suffered ten defeats on Brexit votes in nine months.
As well as altering the psyche of the backbench MP, big rebellions – whether they succeed or not – automatically reflect the party leader in a way that is uncomfortably revealing. When David Cameron lost a vote in 2015 regarding the rules around a future EU referendum, it wasn’t just his personal authority that took a blow. Cameron, who had just won a slim majority earlier that year, lost by 27 votes when 37 of his own MPs joined Labour in opposing the government. Both the scale of the rebellion and the willingness of Labour to work with the Tory Eurosceptics should have sent red lights flashing on No 10’s dashboard. It signalled that the government could not count on Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party in its coming fight over the EU, regardless of the broadly pro-Brussels sensibilities of the Labour MPs and members – a lesson that proved inescapably true during the referendum campaign itself.
Theresa May’s premiership after the 2017 election was essentially one rebellion after another, each sapping at her authority and backing her further into a Brexit corner. The parliamentary arithmetic of pragmatists in government attempting to work out something the EU might actually accept, hard-Brexiteer Tory rebels willing to brook no compromise and opposition MPs intent on being as obstructive as possible meant there was a majority against every conceivable option but no majority for any of them. May was eventually chewed up and spat out by her government’s own contradictions.
May, of course, had the excuse that she didn’t have a majority to work with. Rishi Sunak did, having inherited the “stonking” electoral triumph won by Boris Johnson. He ended up equally trapped between his backbenchers and reality, suffering a humiliating rebellion when 61 of his MPs backed an amendment condemning the Rwanda bill for not being tough enough. The fact that Sunak went on to win the vote didn’t matter. His authority – already fragile after failing to win a leadership contest in his own right – never recovered.
That’s the thing about rebellions: once MPs realise they have the numbers to force the government into positions it would rather avoid, they rarely forget it. Starmer is now facing down a revolt of a similar size to those who challenged Sunak with the Rwanda amendment, but at the start of the parliament (which celebrates its first birthday on Friday) rather than the end of it. It is delusional to imagine the 126 MPs who managed to extract major concessions from the government over the welfare cuts will settle down and play nice for the next four years. They’ve learned a powerful lesson from all this.
How has a government with a seemingly unassailable majority got into such trouble early on? The issue is partly one of substance: asking Labour MPs to vote for measures that seem tailor-made to antagonise the Labour base and go against Labour principles was always going to be a brutal struggle. And there are major issues of party management. Labour MPs talk openly of feeling disregarded and ignored, patronised by the leadership and taken for granted. Keir Starmer clearly hasn’t done enough to get to know his 400-odd foot soldiers and win them over. This has been bubbling over for some time – perhaps since he withdrew the whip from seven rebels 18 days into office.
There’s another issue. Backbenchers with rebellion on the mind talk of being unwilling to have a vote cutting disability benefits on their record. That record is very easy to find: online on the official parliamentary website, or via They Work For You, where you can look up your MP and see a helpful summary of how they’ve voted on a range of topical issues – like, for example, disability benefits. There is no allowance made for “the whip told me to” – and nor should there be. Transparency in politics is undoubtedly positive. It is good that voters can see how the people elected to represent them are getting on with that job.
But in the days before the internet, MPs didn’t have to worry about constituents marking (or, at least, being able to mark) them on every vote. They had more leeway to back an unpopular measure for the sake of keeping the government running smoothly. They Work For You is run by the mySociety project, whose aim is to use the internet to empower citizens to take a more active role in democracy. It launched in 2003 – the same year a staggering 139 Labour MPs voted against the Blair government, opposing the invasion of Iraq. No one is suggesting the Brexit hardliners of the May era or Sunak’s Rwanda challengers made decisions purely on the basis of ensuring their profiles gave the correct impression for the voters they cared most about. But it’s hard to imagine this didn’t feature at all in their thinking.
As he heads towards his one-year anniversary in government this Friday, Starmer should be aware that the same will feature in the thinking of the 126 MPs who signed last week’s letter, whatever happens with the welfare vote today. If you put your principles first by rebelling once, the temptation is there to rebel again. The clue’s in the name.
[See also: A humbling week for Keir Starmer]
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