True scale of Tory revolt could easily have been much bigger
FAs historians like reminding us, the biggest empire the world has seen was ruled from London by a 19-member Cabinet and 60 Ministers in total
IRST, loyal readers, a seasonal apology. You’d not have expected, from a generally fortnightly-at-most columnist, a second offering after just seven days. But these are indeed exceptional times, so please excuse.
Last week, before that exceptional North Shropshire by-election result, we had an equally exceptional House of Commons vote – indeed, four votes – on new Covid restrictions.
In the most controversial, on so-called Covid passports, 100 Conservative backbenchers voted against their own Government, thereby requiring the pre-announced backing of the great bulk (142) of Labour MPs for it to pass.
Exceptional, arguably historic, stuff, but which in the temporary absence of the Post’s uniquely knowledgeable Political Editor, Jonathan Walker, was but fleetingly reported. Which seemed a pity, so I appointed myself his unrequested, definitely-one-week-only stand-in.
We’ll start, though, with Jon’s Post report of November 18th entitled ‘Midland MPs could be the Ministers of Tomorrow’, and featuring Bromsgrove MP, Sajid Javid. Sorry, I should have clarified: not the Post of five weeks ago, but 11 years ago, November 18th, 2010.
It was a prescient choice. Javid had only recently been elected for Bromsgrove, but nowadays, in his seventh pretty senior ministerial post as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, he justifies the ‘Ministers of Tomorrow’ tag on his own.
Jon’s 2010 column followed Javid being one of several new appointments of MPs not as even junior Ministers, but to work for and alongside Ministers as so-called Parliamentary Private Secretaries (PPSs) – in Javid’s case to the Minister of State for Further Education.
There isn’t really – or rather, there really isn’t – a PPS job description, which is part of their, and our, problem.
‘Dogsbody’ is probably harsh, but PPSs really are Ministerially defined and (most importantly) unpaid Ministerial assistants, who can be
asked to do almost anything their Minister suggests.
The popular phrase, though – quoted by Jon – is to act “as the Minister’s eyes and ears on the backbenches”: explaining their department’s policies to their party’s MPs, and relaying MPs’ mood back to the Minister.
It is therefore seen, and promoted, as “the first step on the Ministerial ladder”, although there are absolutely no guarantees.
It sounds pretty vague and is – enabling even considerably more scrupulous Governments than the present one to be casual about producing updated listings of PPSs.
Which prompted Jon Walker, back in 2010, to have “complained a couple of weeks ago that the Government had failed to publish an official list of PPSs. It seems only right we should know who they are.”
Indeed, and when the Post complains, Governments jump – or that one did. Enabling Jon to report, “Number 10 has now published a full list”.
Jon’s report didn’t mention how many PPSs that 2010 list contained, but my guess would be roughly what it is today – between 40 and 45.
Which sounds a lot, but reflects just how much Government has changed and grown since, say, 1900 – when, as historians like reminding us, the biggest empire the world has seen was ruled from London by a 19-member Cabinet and 60 Ministers in total.
Successive PMs increased their patronage and those ministerial numbers until in 1975 the latter were statutorily capped. Paid Ministers were limited to 109 and those sitting in the Commons to 95. They would constitute, you might think, the so-called ‘Payroll Vote’: oppose your boss and you resign.
But you’d be partly wrong. All Governments and PMs are politically
greedy, and would like a bigger proportion of more or less guaranteeable Parliamentary votes. So, far easier, rather than haggle about ministerial numbers, to add all the unpaid PPSs on to something called the ‘Wider Payroll Vote’, hoping no one would make a fuss. PPSs too should put up or… not shut up, but get out.
This all happened well before Jon Walker received his list, by which time the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition must have been searching pretty desperately for ways of securing voting loyalty from two sets of backbench MPs.
Whereupon someone thought up the brilliant wheeze of Trade Envoys. Let the PM appoint keen and/or potentially difficult MPs – from both Houses and all parties, but predominantly, obviously, Conservatives – “to engage with emerging markets [preferably in exotic countries] where the UK Government has identified substantial trade and investment opportunities”.
And yes, of course, Trade Envoys too are now part of a kind of Wider, Wider Payroll Vote, or at least the 17 Conservative MPs among the current 34 Envoys are. Just three are from other parties, with 14 from the Lords
– remember Sir Ian Botham getting Australia, qualified by playing lots of cricket there?
It’s really inspired – much more appealing than ministerial bag-carrying. You’ve got to feel pretty strongly about something to vote, knowing you’re risking trade research freebies to, say, the Caribbean or Latin America. Better still, there’s no limit on Envoy numbers.
Back, then, to the Covid passport vote that the Government won by 369 votes to 126, with 100 of the 126 being its own openly rebellious MPs. Statistically comfortable, politically the pits.
First, subtract from that 369 Labour’s 142 and 119 Conservative ‘Payroll Votes’, which include, by my count, 37 unpaid but otherwise sackable PPSs. Down to 108 ‘voluntary loyalists’.
Subtract another roughly 12 Conservative Trade Envoy MPs who aren’t already on the Payroll Vote. And you’re down to certainly under 100 Conservative MPs – barely a quarter – with any unpressured enthusiasm for a central plank of current Government policy.