13th July 2022
The essence of our parliamentary democracy is confidence – that is its lifeblood, its electricity.
The United Kingdom is not a direct democracy, and it is not an absolute monarchy.
The government instead rests on having the confidence of the House of Commons.
That is: the confidence of the majority of elected Members of Parliament.
Without that confidence, a new government must be formed or there must be a general election.
In this way, the test of confidence of the House of Commons is the most important political test for the government in our constitution.
This confidence is of more immediate import than, say, the results of a general election – for a government will only resign after an adverse general election once it realises it does not also have the confidence of the House of Commons.
Confidence is therefore fundamental, crucial.
The test of confidence thereby provides both the authority and the legitimacy of our government in this parliamentary system.
And because the test of confidence is so important, then the application of that test must take priority over any other parliamentary business.
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In the last week the governing party of the United Kingdom has imploded.
The Prime Minister announced his impending resignation after dozens of ministers resigned, leaving at least one department without a minster.
The governing party is now seeking a new leader, as we have the public spectacle of ministers campaigning against each other, and even attacking each other publicly.
Instead of collective cabinet responsibility, we have a collective cabinet free-for-all.
The government of the United Kingdom is in a dreadful state.
And as this government – as with any other government of the United Kingdom – derives its authority and legitimacy from having the confidence of the House of Commons – then whether the government has the confidence of the House of Commons must be tested.
For, if that confidence is not to be tested in this current remarkable situation, when should it be tested?
Yet the current government is refusing to allow a confidence vote in the House of Commons.
The pretext for this refusal – though not a good reason – is that the wording of the confidence motion, which refers to the current Prime Minister as well as the government is not within the convention for such votes.
But this excuse is wrong both as a matter of precedent and as a matter of principle.
Previous confidence motions have expressly mentioned the Prime Minister.
And as the function of such votes is so that the authority and legitimacy of the government within a parliamentary democracy can be affirmed, it is not for the government to refuse such a vote.
Either parliament, through its elected representatives, is supreme or it is not.
Either the government of the day has the confidence of a majority of Members of Parliament, or it does not.
There is no doubt that a debate and a vote on a motion of confidence is unwelcome not only to the current (though departing) Prime Minister and to the governing party.
There is also no doubt that in political reality the governing party has no confidence in the current Prime Minister and thereby in how this government is currently constituted.
But these are not good reasons to deny a vote – indeed these are reasons why such a vote should take place.
Once a new Prime Minister is in place then it is likely that the newly constituted government will allow the confidence of the House of Commons to be tested.
And so, in a way, the practical effect of a vote of no confidence is being put in place, but without an actual vote.
It can thereby be argued that having such a vote is superfluous.
But.
The problem here is not that the government will not be reconstituted when it needs to be reconstituted, for that is happening.
The problem is that it should never be for the government of the day to gainsay when votes of confidence are to take place and not to take place.
It is not good enough for ministers to say that such votes are not necessary, for it is not for ministers to make that decision.
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There is no doubt that the majority of Members of Parliament have lost confidence in the currently constituted government.
That is as plain as a pikestaff.
There is also no doubt that the government and the governing party have lost confidence in themselves.
And by refusing to allow a vote of confidence, they are subverting what gives a government its authority and legitimacy in our parliamentary system.
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Absolutely right. If the government takes it upon itself to decide if ‘the time is right’ to face a motion of No Confidence, then we can be sure that the only time it will face one is when it suits it to do so. And if the time is not right now, then perhaps the time will not be right for a general election when 5 years are up – there may be some new crisis within or outside the country!
The problem, at its heart, is that the government controls not only the executive – which it must do – but also the legislature. This is ‘efficient’ in that we do not have the US, and sometimes French, problem of an elected Head unable to get his or her mandate through Parliament but it depends on a certain flexibility in the way Parliament is controlled, and a willingness to accept that things may sometimes go against the ‘right’ (i.e. my preferred) solution.
I am not expert in Parliamentary procedures but does the Speaker not have the right to accept a motion from the Opposition? And if he chooses not to exercise that right, can he be replaced by the Members of Parliament?
I’m fairly certain that he can, Jim Callahan was toppled by an opposition initiated no confidence vote.
Despite all the technocrat detail of the why’s and wherefore’s of now having a vote of confidence, even Labour admits that the likelihood of them winning a vote of confidence now is low to zero.
It could, therefore be viewed as a distraction ahead of Parliament being disolved, worse in the court of public opinion it could even be viewed as high/low order whataboutary or even virtue signalling with no obvious benefits to anyone.
There was a division, amounting to a Vote of No Confidence in Neville Chamberlain’s Government during the Norway Debate.
That is a critique of Labour’s actions in putting forward the VoNC.
It is quite proper that they can be criticised.
Using it as a justification for denying them a VoNC, though, makes the right to call a VoNC conditional on matters the right should not be conditional on.
Such as the goodwill of a dishonest, venal, charlatan of a Prime Minister.
“Despite all the technocrat detail of the why’s and wherefore’s of now having a vote of confidence, even Labour admits that the likelihood of them winning a vote of confidence now is low to zero.”
Labour knew in May 1940 that it could not win a Vote of No Confidence.
“It could, therefore be viewed as a distraction ahead of Parliament being disolved, worse in the court of public opinion it could even be viewed as high/low order whataboutary or even virtue signalling with no obvious benefits to anyone.”
We were actually at war in May 1940.
The Norway Debate held between 7th and 9th May 1940 on the Government’s conduct of the war, included at the end of the second day, a division of the House of the Commons, effectively a Vote of No Confidence in the Government.
“In the name of God, go!”
It is generally understood that Labour did not intend a division before the debate began, but Clement Attlee, leader of the Labour Party, after hearing the speeches of prominent backbench Conservative Members of Parliament, realised that discontent within Tory ranks was far deeper than had been initially thought.
A meeting of the Labour Party’s Parliamentary Executive was held on the morning of 8th May and Attlee proposed forcing a division at the end of the debate that day. There were a handful of dissenters, including Hugh Dalton, the Labour Party’s spokesman on foreign policy, but they were outvoted at a second meeting before the debate recommenced.
As a result, when Herbert Morrison reopened the debate just after 16:00, he announced that:
“In view of the gravity of the events which we are debating, that the House has a duty and that every Member has a responsibility to record his particular judgment upon them, we feel we must divide the House at the end of our Debate to-day.”
Roy Jenkins says the Labour decision to divide turned the routine adjournment motion into “the equivalent of a vote of censure”. Earlier in his opening address, Morrison had focused his criticism on Neville Chamberlain, John Simon and Samuel Hoare who were the three ministers most readily associated with appeasement.
The vote was won by the Government, but with a drastically reduced majority.
On 10th May, Neville Chamberlain resigned as Prime Minister leading to the replacement of his government by a broadly based coalition under Winston Churchill and the rest, as they say, is history.
That’s a judgement for Labour to make. It in no way justifies the Government’s blocking of the application.
I had a suspicion some time ago that this might happen.
I took the view that Labour needs to hire a hall and invite the other parties to attend a no confidence debate and vote therein.
A Parliament is a place in which debate takes place.
The people make the Parliament, not the building.
The spectacle alone should get lots of media interest.
It would be hard for the media, though I accept not impossible to cover this event without explaining the reason for it.
I am also reminded of Santos in The West Wing using such a tactic to force a debate between all of the Democratic Party candidates vying for their party’s nomination to be its Presidential candidate after a debate was scheduled that would only be for the front runners out of the Seven Dwarves.
Will Sir Keir Starmer QC and his Josh Lyman take such a bold step?
It took them nearly five days from the announcement of the intention to seek a Vote of No Confidence to actually making the formal application.
The House of Commons rises on Thursday 21st July for the summer as does the House of Lords.
Of course, Members of Parliament in the Commons and the Lords might refuse to rise …
The reaction to the motion is proof of the need to have it.
The possibility exists that the Tory part of the HofC could agree with it, or demonstrate its collective complicity by opposing it. This puts the Government in a bind, which is clearly designed into the motion.
Being unwilling to face the consequences of their complicity with the corruption of the cabinet is a characteristic of the cabal.
(sorry – perhaps irksome but I couldn’t resist)
You mention that there is precedent for previous motions being in the same format as the one denied yesterday. But, you did not cite one. That is unusual for you.
Could you provide a citation for this and perhaps the circumstances leading up to and after it?
I do not say that, so please read again what I did actually type – and demanding citations is the sign of a certain type of reply
Previous motions have referred to the Prime Minister – I said nothing of the specific wording used
Informative thread here from @redhistorian on Twitter: https://twitter.com/redhistorian/status/1546993895925481478?s=20&t=w1yoiub23zJwypsV9LNOiA which includes a link to a House of Commons Library briefing including the texts of all VsoNC since 1895: https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN02873/SN02873.pdf
(Including from 2nd August 1965: “That this House has no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government and deplores the Prime Minister’s conduct of the nation’s affairs.”)
If you want chapter and version on previous confidence motions, up to 2019, see https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN02873/SN02873.pdf
Perhaps the closest, in terms of timing, was the confidence motion in 1990 after Thatcher failed to secure re-election
as Conservative party leader at the first ballot.
And the closest in terms of language may be August 1965: “this House has no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government and deplores the Prime Minister’s conduct of the nation’s affairs.”
It is not for the government to tell the opposition how to draft a confidence motion. As the appendix to that briefing paper makes clear, a confidence motion may take many forms, and may refer to the prime minister specifically.
But chapter 6 in that paper make it clear that the thrust of a confidence motion should be about the government as a whole, not just the prime minster. See the quoted reply from the Speaker to the point of order raised by Valerie Vaz in December 2018.
Refusing to provide time to debate a legitimate confidence motion brought by the opposition is a constitutional outrage and underlines how much contempt this government has for our parliamentary democracy.
Now that the government has tabled its own motion of confidence, and provided time to debate it on Monday, I should get my righteous constitutional outrage back in check.
I wonder if the opposition will table an amendment, we might get two votes – first on the amendment, and then on the motion.
For the umpteenth time in recent years, this becomes inevitable when constitutional principles are based on the assumption that essentially decent politicians will do the right thing.
The principle can’t be protected from essentially unscrupulous politicians because it is nothing but an assumption (I’m avoiding the word ‘convention’ deliberately; allowing a confidence vote is a convention, the broader assumption of ministers doing the right thing is not, and that’s the central issue).
These assumptions are not law and there is no judicial power to enforce them as law. There is a method, of course, by which conventions could be enforceable even with an unscrupulous PM, a method adopted by nearly every country in the world, but…
There is an alternative non-judicial consequence, I suppose. Johnson has made this into a much bigger story by his refusal to be reasonable – not for the first time, but hopefully the last – and perhaps, perhaps, future PMs might be smart enough to learn a lesson from Johnson’s experience. Perhaps.
Thanks for your helpful analysis. What I don’t understand is why it is the government, rather than the Speaker, who decides whether a no confidence motion will be debated.
Is it the speakers job to set the agenda? I’m curious too. If Bercow was still speaker would the result be different?
I believe the government sets the agenda. Otherwise the reason given for refusing would be a nonsense.
“a government will only resign after an adverse general election once it realises it does not also have the confidence of the House of Commons” is a ridiculous state of affairs. In effect, a general election could elect another government from another party, but if the government in power does not want to leave, they don’t seem to have to do so. It shouldn’t matter whether they continue to have the confidence of the House, as they are, in principle, no longer in office. Does this not expose the absolute absurdity of the good chaps theoy of government?
” In effect, a general election could elect another government from another party, but if the government in power does not want to leave, they don’t seem to have to do so.”
Whilst they wouldn’t have to leave power *immediately* after losing a general election, such a government faced with an opposition party who can now command a majority in the Commons would be forced out in very short order. The new ‘majority opposition’ would demand a vote of no confidence in the government and the opposition would win that vote (as well as a subsequent vote of confidence in the incoming government).
That is, if you like, the default way that the system is supposed to work, but most PMs give way to an incoming LOTO who has just won an outright majority without going through the rigmarole. The system really comes into its own after an election that has led to a Hung Parliament, because it allows the body politics to navigate the different possible outcomes that might arise in that circumstance.
Isn’t this a significant decision by a prime minister who agreed not to make such a thing ?
In my view it is a very serious situation. We do not have a functioning Democracy in the UK at present.
Yet another of our checks and balances subverted. And yet further evidence our constitution, voting procedures, Parliament, and even our “constitutional monarchy” need root and branch reform. When the Head of State is too old, too infirm and too timorous to intervene for fear of being seen to be political, we are in trouble. But I don’t anticipate this happening until after the United Kingdom has dismembered itself. We cling to flummery, deference, “traditions” (black rod nonsense), a venal royal family and ridiculous pageantry. Time for a very stiff broom and a very bright light to shine into all the dark corners.
Has anybody actually asked her?
I think it is entirely appropriate for her to wait until she is asked, and quite probably for somebody with the appropriate authority, such as the leader of the opposition.
Cannot – or should not – the Speaker resolve this?
Either this motion is intended to test the House’s confidence in the Government or it is not.
If it is, then it can explicitly be phrased that way.
If it is not then Erskine May says the convention to make time for the vote does not apply, and it should be debated in opposition time.
See here: https://erskinemay.parliament.uk/section/4683/confidence-motions/
From the House of Commons Library:-
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN02873/SN02873.pdf
Every time the Government commits an act of constitutional vandalism and attempts to justify it by reference to a highly contrived and strained reading of law and precedent, which is approximately weekly at the moment, this description pops into my mind:
“On the one hand was the ‘normative state’, bound by rules, procedures, laws and conventions, and consisting of formal institutions….and on the other there was the ‘prerogative state’, an essentially extra-legal system that derived its legitimation entirely from the supra-legal authority of the leader” (Richard J Evans, ‘The Third Reich in Power’, 1933-1939, Penguin, 2005).
No, I am not saying the Tory Party are Nazis: not even close. However, that regime is a salutory reminder that open revolution is not the only way consitutional government is usurped. It can be undermined by a creeping destruction of the procedures, laws and conventions of which that constitution comprises under the cover of superficial adherence to them. Each act, seen in isolation, may appear trivial (or merely procedural not substantive), by they operate cummulatively, like ‘blows upon a bruise’, and the cumulative effect is devastating.
Nothing, in the past week, has given any cause for hope that a new incumbent at No. 10, selected from the candidates with a more than remote chance of success in the current leadership contest, would arrest this process. Why should it when, after all, each, in their own way, is part author of the current state of affairs.
Plainly, this can be stopped and reversed, by the simple act of a general election, in due course. As such, most days, I remain sanguine that none of this damage need be long lasting. However, I confess, that in the last seven days, 2 years has felt a dangerously long time to wait for a return to constitutional normalcy.
A strange quietude seems to have descended over the govt’s refusal of Labour’s request for a motion of NC, whereas there surely ought to be a massive row in progress.
Its constitutional significance is, to me, at least as great as the prorogation matter, and is not dissimilar in that a wholly unpersuasive pretext is being offered buy the govt for breaching the constitutional convention.
Why the hiatus? What’s going on?
A strange quietude seems to have descended over the govt’s refusal of Labour’s request for a motion of NC, whereas there surely ought to be a massive row in progress.
Its constitutional significance is, to me, at least as great as the prorogation matter, and is not dissimilar in that a wholly unpersuasive pretext is being offered by the govt for breaching the constitutional convention.
Why the hiatus? What’s going on?
REPLY
I think I disagree, on grounds that some commenters might consider linguistic pedantry.
The whole point of a no-confidence motion is that the text must be such that passing the motion very clearly signifies the House has no confidence in the government. It would be no good for a motion to be passed but then it not be crystal clear what the House had decided.
Under the FTPA, the text had to be
“That this House has no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government”
which definitely fulfils this. But Labour have proposed instead
“That this House has no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government while the Rt Hon Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip remains Prime Minister.”
I think it’s the “while” that’s the problem here – that suggests a sort of “conditional no confidence” or “no confidence for the time being”. If this is passed, does it mean the House has no confidence, or just sort of lacks confidence for a bit, or will have no confidence soon if no further action is taken?
If the “while…” clause was instead “…because of the Prime Minister’s actions” or “…and deplores the Prime Minister’s behaviour”, then this would, I think be fine. Those clauses would *add* things to the simple declaration of no confidence. But the “while” makes it conditional and, therefore, unclear.
I would argue the “while” makes the motion more precise: After a simple “no confidence in the government”, how can confidence be regained? Is it sufficient for the PM to replace a scandalous minister, do all ministers need to be replaced, or can the governing party not convince the House at all?
Here, the motion is clear that confidence can be regained simply by replacing the PM. It’s also different from adding “because of PM’s actions/behaviours” since the PM could just pledge to not do any of that again, whereas the “while” brands the PM as a time-bomb that needs to be defused.
Whether that’s still a motion on “confidence in the government” or just a motion on “confidence in the PM” (as the government appears to argue) is the interesting question. But in my view saying “I don’t have confidence in this car while the brakes are broken” always implies “I don’t have confidence in this car” (since just replacing the brakes would already present you with a slightly different car).
I think that the point is that a “no confidence” motion is a very serious matter, not just an opinion that parliament is merely displeased with the government. The answer to “How can confidence be regained?” is (a) by calling and winning a general election, or (b) by being replaced by a government that does have the confidence of parliament.
If parliament’s temporary displeasure can be remedied by a simple change of policy or leadership, then it seems to me that it’s not the sort “no confidence” motion that has the constitutional significance that obliges the government to schedule time for it immediately.
That was certainly my reading of it – that the ‘while’ clause enabled the government to frame the motion as a motion on a specific government minister, for which time will not necessarily be allocated per Erskine May.
I agree that it looks shoddy and dishonourable, but I think Labour should have seen this response coming and headed it off by using an ‘and’ or ‘given’ wording rather than ‘while’.
Solid negotiating advice from a chap called Ernest Bevin, a turn up in a million, who said a couple of days before he died:
“The first thing to decide before you walk into any negotiations is what you’ll do if the other chap says ‘no’.”
It would appear to be to put down a Vote of Confidence in themselves.
So there’s now a VoNC, with time allocated.
Can the Labour (or anyone else) table an amendment to the motion to change it’s wording to the original one?
It seems to me a way for the Commons to nullify the subversion by the Government.
There are several examples of precisely that in the link I gave above to the House of Commons Library website. Both governments and oppositions quite commonly propose amendments which directly contradict the substantive motion where confidence is either explicit or implicit. According to the briefing paper containing those examples it seems that the government often announces in advance that it regards the upcoming vote as one of confidence, but there are some categories which are automatically treated as such.
Having said that, my use of the present tense is dubious in the light of recent developments.
The fact that this Vote has been denied, apparently on the diktat of Nº 10 Downing Street, is just one more example of the malignancy/toxicity of the man in charge there. Even more reason for trying harder to get Boris Johnson away from the levers of power before 5th September.
Its clear that while the Tories want rid of Johnson as he is an electoral liability they absolutely do not want a GE anytime soon which they would lose massively and this is why in my opinion they broke convention and refused a VONC.
That being said its instructive that Johnson recently refused Nicola Sturgeon’s formal & perfectly legitimate request for an enabling act allowing a Scottish independence referendum with the comment that the SNP was ‘playing politics’, and Starmer backed Johnson’s refusal and further expanded that a future Labour government would never grant the SNP permission for a referendum. So Labour have no leg to stand on complaining about the Tories refusing a VONC.
You may be, to use the old Whitehall cliche, comparing apples and pears. It seems to me a sustainable argument that they are totally different. (That said, I agree with you that the situation since the 2014 referendum is now so different that a further referendum is justified if that’s what the Scottish Parliament wants.)
I think you will find that from the viewpoint of Scotland & NI two of the other countries in the UK union its very much apples & apples. Both are matters relating to rights and obligations laid down in the constitutional fabric of the union and this government routinely rides roughshod over constitutional practice.
I’m from NI & right now we have the NI Office running an ongoing advertising campaign in the media including Twitter claiming that the NIP harms NI business and that the NIPB is both legal and needed. All of that is lies. Under the GFA which is embedded in UK law as the 1998 Gov of NI Act and a constitutional document the NI Office headed by the SoS and MoS is supposed to be neutral but under the Tories (since May) it has become overtly partisan and an active participant in the plan to destroy the NIP and make no mistake ultimately the GFA as well.
To summarize the general attitude among Republican politicians in November 2020: “What’s the harm in humouring him for a few months? He just needs some time to process this.”
I predict that once the VOC is passed in favour of the government, Johnson will attempt to cancel the leadership race to replace him, as *his* government will then have a mandate from the Commons. I recall Dominic Cummings issued a warning against letting him stay, that seems prescient.
Exactly so.
If the House passes a vote of confidence, then Mr Johnson has the confidence of the House, so what is the basis by which they seek to remove him?
Are they really saying that they have confidence in his ability to lead the nation, but not his ability to lead the party?
In fact that is exactly what they are saying.
They didn’t oust Johnson over anything about his inability to govern, but because he appointed a pervert as party whip, and they risk getting their bottoms pinched.
Fascinating that David discusses the representative nature of our democracy and then notes that “The government instead rests on having the confidence of the House of Commons.”
Here, I see not merely a disconnect, but a massive chasm.
Where is the remedy when a constituency has no confidence in their elected representative? Let’s put this to a practical context. Suppose we have a Conservative MP who declines to support a motion of no confidence as they are a member aligned with the government of the day.
What happens if the voters in that MPs constituency reject that position and wish to replace their MP?
The answer – today at least – would appear to be through the “Recall of MPs Act of 2015″… But herein lies a problem. Thanks to the wording of that act, there are only three circumstances under which an MP can be recalled:-
1. If they receive a custodial prison sentence
2. If they are suspended from the House for at least 10 sitting days or 14 calendar days, following a report by the Committee on Standards
3. A conviction for providing false or misleading expenses claims
Now, it might just be me, but that last one looks awfully specific… and overall this set of conditions looks to be weighted far too much in favour of the sitting MP.
Now, to be balanced about this, I don’t think it would be viable to allow a constituency to recall their MP over “anything” – at the moment it only requires 10 voters to trigger the process once the above conditions are met – but I would be supportive of a situation in which gave constituents much more say in recalling their MPs.
Apart from anything else it might go some way to curbing some of their more outrageous disconnects with the population. For example, I am pretty sure that my local MP would have been deselected thanks to their insistence to agree with Tony Blair’s decision to join the second invasion of Iraq.
However, I don’t think we can really leave this topic before considering how this would work given a full swing of the pendulum. The system of representative democracy in the UK goes all the way back to the 15th century – a point in time where the fastest means of communication from say London to York took 8 days and required a rider on a series of fast horses.
Given we live in the 21st century and have modern communications technology at our disposal, there is no reason why the public could not be given much greater direct participation in our democracy. Of course there are other reasons why completely migrating to this model might be a bad idea (paying zero income tax might be popular, but you can’t run a country that way).
At the core of the question, however, is: what are the alternatives for citizens when their elected representatives fail to represent their interests?
The answer is: not a lot.
Direct democracy is simply and fundamentally an irretrievably bad idea.
There is no way around the fact that the vast majority of the population are not very intelligent.
Thank you for an excellent blog and the clarification of this complex situation.
Is it possible that the Gov’t decision to bring their own no confidence motion on Monday is the result of a realisation that denying Labour’s motion was constitutionally unacceptable?
I think Riktol’s suggestion above is more likely.
If he wins the vote of confidence, then how can the party claim to not have confidence in his leadership?
By the time the vote comes along, the contestants will have demonstrated how fit they are not for the role and Boris will just pick up where he left off…
From the Erskine May section cited in the original post:-
“In allotting a day for this purpose, the Government is entitled to have regard to the exigencies of its own business, but a reasonably early day is invariably found. This convention is founded on the recognised position of the Opposition as a potential government, which guarantees the legitimacy of such an interruption of the normal course of business.”
And there’s the rub. When the party in power believes that for any other party to be the government is not merely bad but a disaster of nuclear proportions, a Sin Against the Holy Ghost, unforgivable, (as we find with, say, the Republican Party in the United States of America), Erskine May can go and
Sorry about that. I had to change my typewriter ribbon, but you get my drift.