A Coalition with Two Wobbly Wings: Backbench Dissent in the House of Commons
| Author | Mark Stuart,Philip Cowley |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.2041-9066.2012.00091.x |
| Published date | 01 April 2012 |
| Date | 01 April 2012 |
a string of record-breaking votes. The 2001
Parliament saw a higher rate of rebellion
than any before it. The 2005 Parliament
then bested that. And this Parliament is
already on target to top them both, with
a rate of rebellion easily outstripping any
other Parliament since 1945.
From the start of the new Parliament on
18 May 2010 through to the Christmas re-
cess in 2011, there were some 331 divisions
(votes) in the House of Commons. Of these,
there were rebellions by coalition MPs in
179 divisions. That is a rate of rebellion of
43 per cent, simply without parallel in the
post-war era.
A Coalition with
TwoWobblyWings:
Backbench Dissent in the House of Commons
When 81 Conservative MPs defied a
three-line whip in October 2011 to
vote for a referendum on Britain’s
continuing membership of the EU, it rightly
attracted headlines. It was the largest back-
bench rebellion since the formation of the
coalition, and one of the largest rebellions
– of any party – in the post-war era.
Yet it did not come out of the blue. Con-
trary to the golden ageism of received wis-
dom, MPs have becoming more rebellious
and independent-minded in recent years,
not less. This was the latest record-breaking
rebellion, but it was the latest in a long
line. The Blair and Brown years produced
During the coalition government’s first 18 months, backbench MPs in Westminster have rebelled in almost half
of all votes. Philip Cowley and Mark Stuart examine the rising tide of dissent and ask what this might mean
for the coalition’s future.
The Frequency of Backbench
Rebellion
As Philip Norton’s research in the 1970s re-
vealed, in the first four parliaments after the
end of the Second World War (those of 1945,
1950, 1951 and 1955), the rate of rebellion
by government MPs never rose above one
backbench revolt every ten divisions – in-
deed, the majority of sessions between 1945
and 1959 saw a rate of below one in twenty.
That remained largely true in the next three
Parliaments – those of 1959, 1964 and
1966 – although there were five sessions in
which the percentage of divisions witnessing
dissent by government MPs rose marginally
above 10 per cent. Backbench rebellion then
increased noticeably during the Premiership
of Edward Heath, with a government rebel-
lion in almost one in five of the divisions
between 1970 and 1974, and increased yet
further during the Labour governments of
1974 to 1979 (to 21 per cent overall, but
reaching 30 per cent and 36 per cent in the
final two sessions of the Parliament).
Backbench dissent fell back somewhat
during the Thatcher and Major years –
although never to pre-1970 levels – and
then slowly began to pick up again during
the post-1997 Labour governments, rising
from a rebellion in 8 per cent of divisions
(1997–2001) to 21 per cent (2001–5) to a
post-war peak of 28 per cent (2005–10).
The current rate of 43 per cent is therefore
extremely atypical, with the Parliament
on course to be a record-breaker. While
individual issues can often generate par-
ticularly high levels of dissent over a short
time period, what will concern the govern-
ment whips is that dissent by coalition MPs
has now been running at this high rate for
Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin has been one of the most rebellious MPs in the Commons
Press Association
8Political Insight
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