20th October 2022
I have been a constitutional geek since about 1987 – from the time of the conflicts about the “community charge” legislation and then Maastricht up to the Brexit showdowns in parliament and the Supreme Court.
But I have never seen political chaos like yesterday – which is carrying on into today.
On the face of it, it could seem nothing much happened: there was a parliamentary vote which the government won.
There was yet another cabinet resignation in a year packed with ministerial resignations, and a Downing Street aide was suspended.
All pretty normal in these not-normal political times.
But.
The details from yesterday were extraordinary: a confidence vote which was not a confidence vote; the opposition party almost taking control of the parliamentary timetable; a three-line whip for the governing party to vote against a manifesto commitment; a large backbench rebellion; a former minister not asking a question in parliament in return for a suspension of that aide; a reported standing row between the departing Home Secretary and the Prime Minister; reports of physical violence in the voting lobbies; a Prime Minister wandering almost-lost through the same lobby unable to properly register her vote; the Chief Whip and Deputy Chief Whip resigning and un-resigning, and then reportedly threatening to un-un-resign unless a statement was put out by Downing Street in the middle of the night (at 1.33am); and so on.
A Tory MP says the deputy chief whip, Craig Whittaker, just exclaimed as he exited the voting lobby: “I am fucking furious and I don’t give a fuck anymore.”
— Aubrey Allegretti (@breeallegretti) October 19, 2022
Conservative MP Charles Walker seems broken by tonight's events – tells @BBCNews he is livid with colleagues pic.twitter.com/H5ns9iWV3T
— Dan Johnson (@DanJohnsonNews) October 19, 2022
Even Wikipedia could not keep up:
2022 UK govt crisis (July)
2022 UK govt crisis (September)
2022 UK govt crisis (October)
2022 UK govt crisis (Early-Nov)
2022 UK govt crisis (Nov 13th)
2022 UK govt crisis (17/11 am)
2022 UK govt crisis (17/11 2pm)
2022 UK govt crisis (17/11 3:30)
2022 UK govt crisis (17/11 3:34) https://t.co/a164PKRxBb— 🤦♂️ Andrew James Carter (@Carter_AndrewJ) October 19, 2022
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Well.
All the drama from yesterday points to one thing.
There has been an absolute collapse of Prime Ministerial power.
The details from yesterday (and today) are effects, not causes.
They are the effects of there being an implosion in Downing Street, of there being a gap where a functioning Prime Ministership should be.
One way of reckoning the significance of a thing is to imagine what would happen if that thing did not exist.
But now we no longer have to imagine what would happen if we ceased to have a functioning Prime Ministership.
We can now see.
*
This is not – yet – a constitutional crisis.
It is certainly a political crisis – indeed, it is an exemplar of a political crisis.
And it certainly is a constitutional drama.
But not all political crisis tip into constitutional crises.
This is not a constitutional crisis – but unless Parliament and the Cabinet sort it it out, it well could do
The essence of politics is conflict – and it is the failure to resolve those conflicts that can trigger a crisis.
Parliament and the Cabinet now need to act – swiftly – to restore a functioning Prime Ministership.
Until and unless a functioning Prime Ministership is restored there will be an accumulation of more unfortunate and dramatic political details.
And there will be worse: because once a Prime Ministership fails, the government itself will tend to fail; and unless Parliament can check and balance that failure, then Parliament itself could be seen to fail.
*
Brace, brace – as this blog often says.
But alas that warning is too late for the Prime Ministership of Elizabeth Truss.
That has already crashed.
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Not to mention the economic consequences, just looking at the markets this morning.
“The essence of politics is conflict – and it is the failure to resolve those conflicts that can trigger a crisis”
Is that necessarily true? Perhaps in the adversarial UK Parliament and under a FPTP system. But elsewhere a more collegiate approach perhaps avoids the overt conflict? Critics of some form of proportional representation often claim that it will result in chaos and lack of decisiveness. Well…
The convention in the UK is that the candidate PM is identified within a majority party and then presented to the King to be given the task to form a government. Other European countries have the King or the Speaker consult to identify such a candidate. At this moment, the King has to pose the question “Can you command a majority within the House of Commons?” to any candidate. This is not a political question, it’s housekeeping.
I find myself concerned that we don’t simply have a functioning Prime Minister – that has been apparent for the last few weeks – but that we don’t have a functioning *government*.
Sometimes it is all too easy to lose the import of discrete events when in the maelstrom.
For example, in the aftermath of the incredibly damaging not-Budget announcements of Kwasi Kwarteng, one narrow thread of reporting – for example see a story in the Yorkshire Evening Post –
https://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/read-this/liz-truss-admits-cabinet-not-consulted-by-chancellor-3864357
suggests that the Cabinet were not consulted on key elements. In the cited article, journalist Will Millar suggests that the Cabinet were not consulted regarding the abolution of the top (45%) rate of tax.
In other words, amid the turmoil and the resignations and the three-line whips and the in-fighting, we have a sitting government that is not operating by accepted democratic norms. We have a government which implemented a budget that, from the look of it, was agreed upon by just Liz Truss and her Chancellor.
This might seem irresponsible, but we should consider ourselves lucky.
What if Liz Truss and her Defense Secretary had decided to declare war on Russia? What if Liz Truss and her Home Secretary had decided to give Nicola Sturgeon her wildest dream and declare Scotland a separate nation? These are, intentionally, provocative extremes, offered to illustrate the point.
It is in these times of turmoil that the greatest danger lurks.
When the eyes of the nation are drawn elsewhere, like misdirection from a stage magician, actions can be wrought that might have devastating consequences.
This is when the elected occupants of the Westminster Bubble need to understand that they are employees of the nation, paid to do a job.
Not “I’m a Celebrity MP, Get Me Out of Here!”
The hysteria, the economic fallout, the political fallout, all of these have stemmed from a series of early and calamoutous decisions made by Liz Truss as she assumed the office of the Prime Minister.
The element of this that should worry us is that the systems of checks and balances that we thought we had to curb rash, irresponsible actions on the part of a Prime Minister [or other senior cabinet officials] have been proven to be completely ineffective.
So I respectfully disagree with David. This *is* a Constitutional crisis. It’s just that we don’t seem to have recognised it as such.
Actually the Chancellor does not typically consult widely (if at all) with cabinet colleagues on the contents of a budget. It is clear however that he was acting in concert with the PM, which makes his sacking for doing precisely what his boss wanted all the more ridiculous.
I think we might have to agree to disagree on this.
When a department is seeking a budget increase, they can’t rely on mental telepathy to communicate that to a Chancellor.
Similarly, if the Chancellor has to make decisions that includes budget cuts for a department, the thought that they would act in isolation, without ascertaining the likely impact of that change, is pretty much unthinkable.
Even for this incompetent omnishambles of an administration.
“What if Liz Truss and her Defense Secretary had decided to declare war on Russia? What if Liz Truss and her Home Secretary had decided to give Nicola Sturgeon her wildest dream and declare Scotland a separate nation? These are, intentionally, provocative extremes, offered to illustrate the point.
It is in these times of turmoil that the greatest danger lurks.”
I wish I didn’t but do overall agree with your analyses generally. However, so far this country has proved to be not wholly unbalanced because Johnson did go (hope not imminently back again) without the trumpery of Trump and the populace generally won’t tolerate the absolute extremes.
Looking across a modest selection of blogs I can only say most people are idiots. Mostly because they don’t agree with my opinions…
More seriously I think we have not so much a constitutional crisis or a prime ministerial crisis but a case of Parliamentary bipolar disorder. The ideas that seem workable to me don’t seem at all acceptable to many of my fellow citizens – or at least those who stick their oar in. And those ideas that are acceptable are not workable. Opinions are like fundaments – everybody has one.
Now this might be resolvable if Ms Truss was able to come up with some workable compromise. But so far the parties concerned are not sufficiently exhausted or desperate as to agree to anything other than their own opinions. Which is wonderful, we can keep on squabbling until the financial markets get fed up and walk away. As it is I think even God would find Parliament rather hard to bear.
The snag is that so far as political parties are concerned the squabbling can go on and on. Every reason not to compromise. The UK taxpayer can keep on funding this one for ever and ever.
Well, there is that urban legend out there to the effect that, “When surveyed, 98% of drivers claimed that their driving skills were above average…”
I rather suspect, without proof, that today we apply the noun “politics” would in ages past be described as “extremist ideology wrapped up in dogma and given a coating of marketing to make it easier to swallow”.
It was Mahatma Ghandi that said, “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.”
Which says a great deal about us. None of it good.
The next resignation should surely be Truss. According to the Guardian yesterday, Downing Street sources said the move to replace Braverman with Shapps was at the behest of Hunt. Even Downing Street are undermining her. I can’t see how she can carry on. I’ll bet she goes tomorrow. Fridays are usually when major things like this are executed so that the body politic has the weekend to digest it and all the talking heads can go on their television and radio interviews to sell whatever daft talking points have been devised. I can see Rees-Mogg now.
“It’s time to put the turmoil of the last couple weeks behind us and get behind the new Prime Minister. Me.”
Oh God.
She’s gone. Already. Not even on a Friday.
A couple of weeks ago I gave Kwarteng until Halloween and Truss until Christmas. I was far too generous.
None of it is working. We are broken, politics is broken. The whole system needs renewal, urgently – or the people in this country are totally shafted. The reality of people’s lives is what matters, we need to get this into the real world and out of hypotheticals about our irrelevant (non-existent?) constitution. We need PR and we need a coalition of progressives to work together. That’s the only way to get a forward vision and consistency and nix this adversarial system that encourages the blame game. It’s so juvenile. Watching the Speaker of the House chide the MPs like Matron from their private school. It’s embarrasing and dangerous. This culture needs ripping out and Westminster politics needs to grow up and stop mimicking a private boys school. Why do we allow this – are we so cowed we think we can’t change this?
The problem is that we have too many advisors giving advice without any sort of democratic process. It is government by SPAD diktat as the senior politicians no longer have regular contact with their respective colleagues. In the past a senior politician would have climbed the greasy pole and collected as many supporters along the way. They would then have some political nouse.
“It is government by SPAD diktat”
You can’t possibly be complaining about the undue influence of unelected bureaucrats, can you?
I thought only the EU had them…
We are victims of the old Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times”.
It seems obvious that Truss cannot (and indeed, should not) survive, yet unless the Tories change the rules, she is nominally safe for her first year (as Groucho might be paraphrased “these are the rules; if you don’t like ’em, I can change ’em…). So “they” intend to ignore the will of “their people” (Tory members) and defenestrate another PM although it is unclear who would replace her (and with what authority).
What Truss tried to impose (with catastrophic results) did not feature in the 2019 manifesto and she was keen to dispense with items that did which she found irksome. The electorate gave Johnson a mandate based on his manifesto (and fear of Corbyn), yet the party defenestrated him (good thing) for excesses which had little to do with the manifesto.
Morally, the Tories need to seek the endorsement of the electorate for whomever they choose to coronate (King Charles the third, they aint!), yet it seems that there is no mechanism (short of a Tory civil war) for this to happen. They are unlikely to do the decent thing, since current polling suggests that they will be nearly anihilated.
The appointment of Hunt (patently not Truss’s choice) and the reversal of her personal manifesto does have all the halmarks of a bloodless coup. It is difficult, therefore, to see any real democratic mandate for whomever is lucky/stupid enough to pick up the premiership once Truss is gone.
“They are unlikely to do the decent thing, since current polling suggests that they will be nearly annihilated.”
And since “doing the decent thing” is self-evidently not in the DNA of most of the current government…
I strongly expect Charles Walker to cross the floor, to be honest – he’s clearly not in the right party to suit his integrity and sensibilities.
Charles Walker is on his last term as an MP. Hard to be impressed by a Tory MP who voted for Brexit and obviously tolerated the whole circus since then.
And now? Another leadership contest clogging up the intestines of the British Media? For a sh*tshow it is…
It’s all relative, Peter – compare him to, say Nadine Dorries and the self-serving, ignorant tripe she’s been tweeting, about BoJo having to come back because – I kid you not – he’s the only recent Prime Minister who was voted in by the electorate and therefore has a mandate.
That a one-time cabinet minister is of the impression that we have a President, is horrifying: either she’s clueless; a liar; or clueless and a liar.
Walker is a positive paragon in comparison, even taking his past deeds and (in)action into account.
I’m not remotely excusing his past choices and decisions, but I think it’s fair to give credit where it’s due, late as he is to his epiphany.
God loves a sinner who repents.
Charles Walker and many others.
In a de facto two party system the range of views and ideologies have to fit into one or the other parties.
This “broad church” results on a splintered party the members of which constantly disagree and cause serious harm to the smooth running of government.
Clearly a sensible PR system is preferable and in most countries so blessed removes the excesses of extremism.
Truss has resigned.
Have we irrevocably lost England?
I suppose it depends which England you’re asking about, John – I’m sure that the Tufton Street mob and their Cabinet placemen would argue that their Singapore-On-Thames wet dream would be an even better “England” than the one we have now.
That’s the trouble with vague concepts like “Nation” – they’re meaningless and unhelpful, because they mean different things to everyone you ask.
If Charles III believes the next hapless Tory who rocks up can command the confidence of the current house, surely he would stand accused of being barking mad.
my concern is that we’ve drifted into a political culture where it’s assumed that the internal politics of the majority party decide who should be PM. In effect, it’s no longer a question of who can command a majority of the House. I guess that’s after aeons of having two major parties each assuming their natural role is to form a single-party majority government.
In other words, the constitution, as far as establishing a functioning PM / Executive is concerned, has become party-centric rather than Parliament-centric. In another polity, more used to coalitions (Germany, Belgium, any number of others ..) this would trigger a new round of negotiations to form a new governing coalition – still a political drama, but without the same sense of imminent cataclysm.
I know you’ve at times surveyed the development of the role of PM, and noted that it has relatively little formal standing in constitutional law. I’m wondering how you’d factor in ‘the party machine’ as an emergent locus in the de-facto governance of the UK.
How do things like constituency selection procedures, the payroll, and perhaps particularly the Whips’ office function to constitute / maintain a particular PM / Executive? Has anyone, for instance, ever written a history of the development of party whipping?
“my concern is that we’ve drifted into a political culture where it’s assumed that the internal politics of the majority party decide who should be PM. In effect, it’s no longer a question of who can command a majority of the House.”
Not to be argumentative Harry, but wasn’t it ever thus?
That is, the party picks the leader (and by extension, the PM – Nadine Dorries take note), and then we find out whether they can command the confidence of the House?
As Liz Truss has handed in her resignation to the King, could he not invite Starmer to form a Government and immediately call a General Election? This would establish the mood of the country.
If the governing party’s rules on leadership elections reequired candidates to receive nominations from a high percentage of its MPs rather than a fixed number of them, and no candidate succeeded in attaining that percentage, the monarch could quite properly dissolve Parliament. But so long as the governing party were still able to send a reasonably convincing successor to the Palace his intervention would be controversial, to say the least.
Within a span of less than 20 years Blair Cameron May Johnson and now Truss have been removed as PM without any input from the Electorate.
Four of those named have also been replaced without immediate Electoral scrutiny and Truss appears likely to make it five out of five.
Perhaps to stop this trend in the future some written rules could be drawn up to show how a resigning or dead PM should be replaced possibly involving an interim caretaker Government prior to an early General Election.
Such an arrangement could even be “enshrined in law”.
It is unlikely though that this could catch on.
What japes, what games to play and yet to be played.
The FT has invented the MRP – Moron Risk Premium – details need not detain, suffice to say if you have morons in charge the markets will charge rather a lot for money lent. The graph went up steeply and has come back down – for now.
I fear things may not change all that much, the ERG brigade will fight their corner pretty hard. Dare I mention the Guido blog – has some intriguing pointers to the next few day’s squabbles. Ably assisted by the DM/DT axis. We do live in interesting times.
As for a general election, personally not in favour nor convinced the UK’s political boil is quite ready to be lanced. Let the Tories stew in their own juice a little longer and prepare the ground for the next change.
Been reading a life of Joseph Banks and his time at Eton in the mid 1700s. What a place, abuse of all kinds, cruelty and brutishness, the flogging of boys and some poor goat and very little education. Things have they say improved but shades of that tradition do seem to live on among our Parliamentary classes.
Dario Perkins is credited by the FT as coming up with the idea of the MRP, the FT simply popularised it.