21st June 2024
The greatest prize that the constitution of the United Kingdom can bestow is a substantial parliamentary majority at a general election.
With such a majority you can be confident to pass major legislation, not worry too much about backbench opposition, and even face down the House of Lords.
And so one of the most remarkable things about the current government – which brought about its own emphatic general election victory in December 2019 by (among other things) “Getting Brexit Done” is how little use it has made of this great prize.
Some people are suggesting that after this next general election (in less than two weeks now) the Conservative may now be out of government for a very long time. Who knows? But if so, that will be a lengthy period for the politically-right-of-centre to kick themselves for not having used their chance to drive through fundamental reforms when they had it.
Many people would find it difficult to name – other than Brexit – one fundamental reform which current government has driven through with primary legislation. The last few Queen’s and now King’s speeches have been limp affairs.
All that political and legislative power – as close to absolute power that our constitutional arrangements can admit – and nothing, or close to nothing.
Given that part of the reason for the Brexit referendum and for then “getting Brexit done” was for the political advantage of the Conservatives, it seems odd. What was the (party political) point? All that chaos and dislocation, for this?
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In the early 1990s the Conservatives lost their overall majority under John Major and then were out of office from 1997 – and in a long haul, and via a coalition, they eventually gained an overall majority only in 2015.
They promptly threw that away in 2017.
They then exploited an exceptional political situation in December 2019 and got that majority back, and then did nothing much with it.
And now that second chance at an overall majority is about to end.
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Over at Prospect – please click here to read – I have done a post on the fears of a Labour “super majority”.
But what Tories should fear is not the use of a “super majority” but just the effective use of a sustainable and substantial parliamentary majority.
And that can be quite the forceful thing, not that the outgoing government ever really cared to use it.
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A feature of the Conservative Government in recent years is that they have not wished to govern
The majority was not used for anything useful. It could not be used to address the ailments of the state which led to the longing for Brexit and, having got Brexit done, not only was there no requirement for anything else but, of course, the Pandemic did dominate thinking for a considerable time. After that, the discussion was about seeking a competent leader. No such luck. So now, for the first time in years, there is a chance that a government with a good majority could do something useful with it.
Elections are fought and won on many things, but the manifesto should be considered one of the primary tools a party uses to win votes and change minds and if a party wins it is the main resource for measuring their success or otherwise whilst in office.
The Tory manifesto of 2019 was nothing more than a set of contradictions, promising to “level up”, deliver world class public services all while not increasing taxation and, of course, Getting Brexit Done with, apparently, no thought as to the financial implications of this and how it might hamper their other promises.
Their key pledge was achieved (after a fashion) but the fulfilling of it largely prevented any of the other vague, ill-defined promises to be realized, majority notwithstanding. Of course, Covid was a big factor in the parliament, but it could be argued that this exposed the feebleness of the Tory government as well as revealing their perennial self-serving nature.
They could have had a majority of 200, it would not have helped because the underlying financial and social problems this country has been storing up for the last few decades would still have come to a head, and now a more “acceptable” opposition are in the wings they are finally going to get their reward.
To put against that, David, you did say in an earlier post “We already have coalition Government” owing to the fractured and fractious “cabals” within the Conservative Party.
Owen
Can you expand why that truism is against me?
Forget about fundamental reform – that isn’t the Conservatives’ game. They are quite happy enriching themselves and their friends by using existing, or opportunistically relaxed, methods. In any case, they have been responsible for quite enough damage to our societal and constitutional fabric with their record of non-fundamental legislation.
The dog who caught the car is an interesting analogy for Brexit, but I wonder if the Indiana Jones villains who seek the Ark of the Covenant (or the Holy Grail or the secret of the Crystal Skulls) is now a useful metaphor. These characters have an all-consuming desire to possess something, but when they achieve that, it destroys them.
The Tories achieved their all-consuming mission, but after they did, it proceeded to destroy them. There was no time for doing anything else.
A good comparison.
Analogously with youngsters who want to be a celebrity for the sake of being a celebrity.
Yes, “super majority” is the wrong term to use. A super majority is the majority to win a vote if a higher majority than the usual simple majority, 50%+1, is required. Maybe it’s a hangover from the Brexit referendum arguments, in that a super majority is usually required for constitutional change referenda, rather than the simple majority applied to the 2016 vote?
Whatever the reason, super majority is not what they appear to think it is. Boris Johnson’s 80 seat majority was more than enough to pass any legislation the Government wished enact. A 200 seat majority doesn’t make any difference to the passage of a bill compared to a majority of 1.
The combination of over-centralisation, ideology over practicality, and mediocrity over talent, have proved fatal to the Tories, whatever majority they had.
In animal behaviour there is a concept called displacement activity, where an animal does something aimless because of the inability to do anything effective. Sounds familiar?
Canute understood the limits of political power better than the modern Conservative party: Popular policies are often based on fatally flawed assumptions about how the world works in practice. The old Viking must be rolling his eyes in Valhalla at the abandonment of an approach that had at least done away with some of the practical problems caused by our oceans, if not the tide itself.
I think that the main reason that the Tories wasted their majority is that Johnson got rid of anyone with an iota of competence and expertise from the party leaving behind a trail of complete useless failures in ministerial positions – no wonder that tweet was leaked from the civil service!
So I suppose we should thank God for small mercies!
Johnson’s majority was squandered quickly by his purge of solid expertise in government & legal affairs & the promotion of loyalty at the expense of competence, all followed by a series of stupid blunders, such as proroguing parliament, many of which were quickly deemed unlawful.
Worst of after “getting brexit done” (badly) they had nothing else to offer and as we’ve seen to our cost with the handling of the pandemic, incompetence won the day.