Corbyn’s no-confidence vote could backfire quite spectacularly on the Labour leader
IT ALL depends. Those three words could be etched onto the gravestone of this peculiar political era once it has shuffled off this mortal coil. What will happen next? What will happen tomorrow? Will Britain ever leave the EU? Will there be another referendum? Will Theresa May resign? Will Jeremy Corbyn win his no-confidence vote.
It all depends. The last of these questions will be dominating the thoughts of the Labour Party leadership, arguably more than the nature or scale of the prime minister’s defeat over her Withdrawal Agreement. There is no political crisis so large and dramatic that Labour cannot manage to be splattered with some of the accompanying debris.
This looks like an irresistible opportunity to kick a miserable excuse for a government while it’s down and to raise the possibility of a general election.
But as with all political issues these days, it’s not quite so simple. When Neil Kinnock, as Labour leader in 1990, tabled a no-confidence motion in Margaret Thatcher’s government at the height of the Conservatives’ travails over Michael Heseltine’s leadership challenge to the prime minister, he felt he had little choice, given the circumstances.
But the government still had a majority of about 100, and by the time the motion was debated, Thatcher had already announced her resignation. The benches behind her, although still in a state of shock at recent events, roared their unanimous support and the occasion became Thatcher’s last great triumph in the House. The government survived and, under Thatcher’s successor, went onto win the election 18 months later.
The Tories are a lot more divided today than they were 30 years ago. Nevertheless, Mr Corbyn will be aware of the dangers of uniting them just as those divisions look set to rupture irreparably. The danger is intensified if May resigns in the wake of her agreement’s rejection: there is always a deep well of hypocritical support for a fallen leader.
Mr Corbyn has stated often he will call a no-confidence vote only when he’s confident of winning it. This is both sensible and illogical. It’s sensible because no one wants to invite an unnecessary defeat upon oneself. But it is illogical because no-confidence motions have been regularly tabled by oppositions even when the outcome was known well in advance: the aim is not always to defeat the government and hasten an election – that has happened only once since the end of the World War II – but to provide a bit of political theatre and to attract some coverage for the opposition’s relevant grievances against the current administration.
On this last point, however, it’s difficult to see what previously unmined source of criticism Corbyn could expose to daylight that hasn’t already received adequate coverage.
Nevertheless, this government deserves to have a no-confidence motion against it at least debated. The degree of incompetence among ministers and backbenchers in recent years has been obnoxious and deserves to be humiliated.