How much trouble will the Tory rebels cause David Cameron?

Rebellion is a hard habit to break, and there's more than enough of them to give the PM a headache

Prime Minister David Cameron
Prime Minister David Cameron Credit: Photo: Alan Davidson

For those interested in the ways MPs vote, this all looks like it might be fun. A majority of 12 – the smallest government majority since October 1974 – makes the government vulnerable to just a handful of its MPs defying the party line.

Anyone who thinks this small majority will itself act as a deterrent – by concentrating the minds of Conservative MPs – has forgotten what happened to John Major after 1992 or to Tony Blair after 2005. Rebellion is a hard habit to break, which is why whips are always keen to stop MPs voting against their party for the first time.

And this parliament follows from the most rebellious in post-war history. Government MPs over the last five years voted against their party line in more than a third of Commons divisions (35 per cent). That easily beat the previous record of 28 per cent, held by the Blair/Brown government from 2005-2010. There were a total of 110 occasions during 2010-2015 when seven or more Conservative MPs voted against the party line. Of the top seven most rebellious MPs in the last parliament, all have been re-elected. Philip Hollobone, David Nuttall, Philip Davies, Peter Bone, Christopher Chope, Andrew Turner and Zac Goldsmith. Indeed, of the top 30 Conservative backbench rebels in the last parliament, all but three – all of whom retired – are still around. They are unlikely to become bovine in behaviour just because the government has a small majority.

Kettering MP Philip Hollobone in the party office in his contituency,

Philip Hollobone

The good news for the government whips is that in practice, the new government will have a larger majority than 12. Add in the fact that Sinn Fein don’t take their seats, and the nominal majority rises to 16. But more important, in terms of day-to-day business, is that the opposition parties will not coalesce against them on every vote. The SNP and Labour will not always vote together; and even if no formal agreement is reached with the DUP or UUP, an informal one might be, and anyway the attendance of Northern Irish MPs is always low. Moreover, for backbench rebellions to threaten the government they have to be on issues where the rebels are willing to vote with the opposition. By definition, that is not true of most rebellions by MPs on the right of the Conservative Party (or, similarly, when in government, for MPs on the left of the Labour Party). All of this gives the whips slightly more wriggle room than the government’s nominal majority indicates.

More substantial still is that the prospect of an EU referendum will prevent Conservative backbench critics from doing anything too destabilising, at least until that referendum is delivered. It is this that will stop the early years of the parliament resembling those of 1992 too much. But not doing anything too destabilising is not the same as not doing anything, and the potential for Conservative MPs to act as a serious constraint on the government remains considerable once the honeymoon caused by the election result fades.

2010 vs 2015 results

There is a story during the Thatcher years of Nicholas Winterton once being curtly dismissed by a whip with the words: "I'm too busy to waste my time with a tosser like you". With the sort of majorities Mrs Thatcher enjoyed for much of her time in office, you could (just about) get away with that. But that attitude hasn’t worked for a while – and it certainly won’t work now.