Blair’s great achievement is often cited as his quieting of the tumult that was once the Labour party, and in particular securing a broadly loyal PLP. But it is now many years since original need to unite and displace a rotting Conservative government. Can a parliamentary party be convinced of the need to permanently displace dissent for the greater good of staving off defeat, even when their stagnant government seems to be making decisions that actively punish their poorest constituents? Can they maintain discipline and a sense of higher need even as their own convictions and prime minister’s actions seem to diverge ever further?
Well apparently so, though this is not good news for the rest of us. Although more than 1 in 5 Labour MPs have defied the party whip at some point since Brown took charge, there doesn’t seem to be the sense of backbenchers actually articulating their constituents' concerns. When Conservative politicians sung out against their government in the 1990s, it was on issues about which they felt passionately (such as Europe), but which did not outrage general public opinion in the way that household finance issues like the 10p tax rate will. It was against a background in which the media painted, not entirely inaccurately, Conservative MPs on the back and front benches as venal, grasping and inept creatures.
Labour MPs have a very final opportunity now to avoid being sucked into this narrative, to stop each one of their colleague's slip-ups and peccadilloes being painted as part of a grand picture of failure. They can still show that they are capable of independent thought and speech. They need to clearly and publicly represent the very evident concerns of the people who elected them - and if need be to challenge Brown.
But rebels these days seem to melt away so easily. Junior Ministers are talked down from the ledge with a single telephone call. Have they no bottom? It feels like they’ve lost the instinct for when to side with their constituents over their party. Perhaps the Blair era intake era of MPs, from NGOs and not factories, feel that the Labour party is their ultimate employer, and not just the vehicle through which to advance the best interests of working people. The culture of the parliamentary party is one in which principled dissent cannot be allowed to ferment, indeed it has essentially been halted at the point of candidate selection.
The once fractious Tories have increasingly begun to mimic Labour’s institutionalised passivity, though it makes sense for them. Aided by the shedding of individuals like Bob Spink (their most prolific rebel) they look like a reasonably effective parliamentary unit – which is exactly what the party’s supporters are demanding after a decade of floundering opposition. During Major’s darkest days, struggling on with a paltry parliamentary majority, his administration ran an extremely effective whips office. It meant that even with angry and organised opposition from within his own party, he was able to maintain relatively effective, if often negatively perceived government.
Brown enjoys a greater majority, though weaker whips. Labour whipping today, however, is more insidious because part of it is unspoken and cultural. Perhaps the docile MPs are even unaware that they are subject to it. They just believe that towing a hopeless line is the only done thing. The time may come when they rue that they could not find the words or the stoutheartedness to speak up.
