The House Opinion Article | The Professor Will See You Now: Waka

Illustration by Tracy Worrall

4 min read28 min

A few years ago, a reviewer of a book I’d edited complained that it was not so much full of conversation starters but conversation stoppers. When this was reported back to the academic contributors, it was not taken as criticism. “We are,” one of the authors said, with a little too much enthusiasm, “the sort of people who like to say: ‘It’s a bit more complicated than that’.”

This exchange came to mind as the petition calling for automatic by-elections whenever an MP changes party sailed past 100,000 signatures; it is now scheduled for debate later this month. On the face of it, it seems fair enough – if an MP is elected under one party but then changes affiliation, why shouldn’t voters get a say? – but it is, yes, a bit more complicated than that, involving some fundamental questions about the role of an MP, and ones that could easily have unintended consequences if we are not careful.

There have been two Private Members’ Bills on this issue in recent decades, in 2011 and 2020. Both attempted to introduce a recall petition if an MP voluntarily changed affiliation. The voluntary bit is important, else we could be giving the party whips the sort of disciplinary tool of which they can currently only dream.

“If you don’t vote with us on the Murder of the First Born (No 2) Bill, then we will remove the whip, and you will have to fight a by-election.”

“Ah, well, yes, I wasn’t in favour initially, but I do now see the wisdom of the government’s position.”

Yet I am not sure this voluntary/involuntary distinction works. It is always worth asking: how might someone – someone who was perhaps a bit sneaky – use this to their advantage? In this case, what is to stop an MP staying within their party but behaving differently? You don’t need to defect from the Conservatives; you just start wearing turquoise, telling people to vote Reform, voting the Reform line and so on.

New Zealand offers an interesting lesson. It passed laws against party-hopping in both 2001 and 2018. They have a great term for it: ‘waka-jumping’, after the Māori word for canoe. The creators of the 2001 law were rightly suspicious that not all MPs would voluntarily announce they were defecting – so they created a system by which the party leadership could also report an MP as having de facto left their party, subject to some procedural hoop-jumping and the support of two-thirds of the parliamentary group.

As Andrew Geddis notes in his account of the legislation, this effectively changes the ownership of the seat from the MP to the party. Even if it is not the intention, it is easy enough to see how such rules lead to a tightening of party discipline. Indeed, one of the many curiosities of this issue is that there are many people who feel negatively about defections but positively about rebellious MPs. Yet many of the arguments used against allowing MPs to defect can easily be deployed against MPs being allowed to vote against their party whip. In India, MPs are barred from both.

Debates on this are not helped by the hypocrisy frequently involved. If you have a spare five minutes, look at the supporters of those two previous Private Members’ Bills. You might note that several were later to switch parties; you might also note that not one of them then resigned their seat. Rules for thee, not for me.

A final note: don’t call it crossing the floor, unless they actually cross the floor. Most changes of party label take place on the same side of the House; they are much less consequential. 

Further reading: A Geddis, Proportional Representation, ‘Party Hopping’ and the Limits of Electoral Regulation: A Cautionary Tale from New Zealand, Common Law World Review (2006) and his Standards of MP Behaviour and Aotearoa New Zealand’s ‘Party Hopping’ Law, Public Law Review (2025)