The House Opinion Article | Why Are Prime Ministers Struggling To Govern?

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The triumph of the Greens at the Gorton and Denton by-election prompted a renewed chorus of voices declaring the demise of the era of two-party politics.

It showed that incumbents on the centre-left are just as vulnerable to insurgents as incumbents on the centre-right, as voters seek to punish a political system they think no longer works for them.

And while the costs of a protest vote are lower in a byelection or local government elections, party affiliations in the UK are weakening and with them the Conservative and Labour duopoly.

Nobody knows how this new multi-party politics will play out in a first-past-the-post electoral system at the next general election, but it seems unlikely it will lead to a result that is any more stable.

Because one of the great puzzles of today’s politics is why large majorities have not, as in the past, translated into periods of calm, authoritative government.

If Keir Starmer can’t deliver sufficient change to wing round grumpy voters with a majority of more than 150 – just as Boris Johnson failed to make a majority of more than 80 work for him – it starts to look like something is broken.

Christopher Hinchliff, on paper, looks like a chief whip’s dream. A newly-elected MP in a marginal seat, Hinchliff has been a party activist for the Labour Party for half his life and previously served the party in local government.

Conventional wisdom suggests that Hinchliff should not cause too much disruption – MPs with small majorities do not rebel, less so committed activists recently elected.

At 31, Hinchliff might have expected to have a long parliamentary career ahead of him, but in July, a year into a Labour government with a historically large mandate, he found himself without the whip. He voted with the government 97 per cent of the time. But like many youthful MPs, he voiced much of his displeasure publicly – via X.

Among the targets of his ire were bureaucrats on Labour’s governing body, who he called “mouthpieces” for housing developers, while critics in government were guilty of “public schoolboy drinking culture”.

Hinchliff’s suspension, alongside that of a number of newly elected MPs, is one of the quickest in recent history. But it didn’t seem particularly surprising. His suspension (now ended) is symptomatic of a culture of political defiance, which the current and previous occupiers of Number 10 seem to have no clue how to fix.

The raw statistics bear this out. Britain has had six prime ministers in the last ten years, as opposed to eight between 1966 and 2016. Backbench revolts throughout that period, such as those over EU issues in the 90s, rarely ended prime ministerships. Since then, there have been four mid-term transitions in the last decade.

Britain’s generally weak economic performance ever since the 2008 financial crisis, with stagnating real wages, flat productivity and GDP per capita growth, is an obvious factor. When real incomes stagnate, poll decline for whoever steps through the door of Number 10 is unlikely to be far away, and when MPs are fearful for their seats, it makes them more inclined to speak their mind on leadership failings.

Then there are obstacles to delivery. The two leading parties in the polls describe Britain’s state as being broken, and the desire for an overhaul of British polity is spreading regardless of ideology. Attempts to remedy issues with the delivery of policy are underway. Antonia Romeo has been appointed to Cabinet Secretary following the defenestration of Chris Wormald, with Romeo known for getting results across Whitehall for her political masters.  

Morgan McSweeney departed Number 10 as the sixth consecutive Downing Street chief of staff to leave after less than 2 years, many having fallen to protect their boss from party indiscipline.

If MPs know rebels can still get ministerial appointments, there’s less incentive to always tow the line

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Nicholas Allen, Professor of Politics at Royal Holloway, said that MPs’ careers break down to two aims, which until recently have been seen as mutually exclusive.

“In essence, it breaks down the idea of the ‘career politician’ into distinct components. One component — a strong commitment to a full-time political career — makes cross-voting and rebellion more likely. Ministerial ambition has the opposite effect and makes rebellion much less likely.”

“Assuming commitment and ambition are present to varying degrees in MPs, it could be that a large number of MPs are less motivated by ministerial ambition, or MPs have come to the conclusion their ambition is less likely to be fulfilled or rebelling is less of an impediment to getting to high office.

“If MPs know rebels can still get ministerial appointments, there’s less incentive to always tow the line.”

Part of this stems from MPs being much more prominent on social media. Choice briefings by Downing Street officials, which they dislike, are visible to them, and MPs are much more willing to call it out.

Meg Russell, Director of the Constitution Unit at UCL, told The House that social media has caused a two-way feed of rebellion among MPs — voicing their criticism of the government is far easier, and the criticism of voters is far easier to see.

“Perhaps there are some factors about MPs in recent years that make them more rebellious — the most obvious to me is social media, which means that individuals have an outlet, and are to an extent under the pressure, to expect their views on individual policy matters”.

While social media’s role in politics has grown over the last two decades, some suggest the hard edge of the whips to enforce discipline has also declined. The former MP Paul Flynn’s book outlined how some whips previously went around the business of party discipline. He wrote: “I witnessed a cowering, tearful young MP pinned to a wall of the ‘No’ lobby by the fat gut of a sixteen stone whip yelling his charm offensive message: ‘I have two words to say to you – fucking coward’. The whip then waddled off to share the same potent words with half a dozen other Tories who had disobeyed the whips’ instructions.

While a more professional workplace is surely no bad thing, there’s also a question mark over whether such tactics actually worked in the long term. Russell offers a different theory on whipping: the tools of whips are increasingly limited when trying to enforce discipline.

“I think a lot of this is about the recent attitudes of the parties and their leaders. Whipping is a two-way street. It was always exaggerated the extent to which the job of whip was to make MPs do things, and it’s well known that the tools of discipline have declined. For example, whips never controlled speaking time or funding for MPs as they do in some parliaments, and have largely lost control over things like allocation for office space and committee seats”

For the current government, the prognosis still seems poor, as once discipline is lost in a parliament, it becomes very hard to regain.

Phillip Cowley has previously highlighted a research paper in his column for this magazine, which noted that British government MPs were 0.3 per cent more likely to rebel for each month their party was in power, indicating Britain is only likely to get harder to govern rather than easier.

That raises questions for Starmer’s future. If further rebellion is unavoidable, how can he combat it?

Russell said that attempts to use purely the stick in order to fight indiscipline don’t often work well, and a more collegiate approach may be the only way to survive.

“Boris Johnson sought to be a hard man by throwing MPs out for rebelling only once. That behaviour might have worked short-term, but that kind of behaviour just builds up resentment among MPs towards a leader, and of course, he was toppled at the end.

“Starmer seems to have the same hard man attitude, but it was always a myth that MPs voted cohesively because leaders were telling them what to do — leaders have to earn that support. Leaders who misunderstand this end up in a fragile position”.

If Starmer goes the way of Sunak, Truss, Johnson and May before him, his successor will inherit a huge majority. They will also be passed the conundrum that defeated him and his Conservative predecessors – that this no longer brings the power it once did – while voters’ expectations are higher than ever.