Kemi should stop playing political games
After the Prime Minister's latest U-turn, Tuesday's vote on the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill may not now be as traumatic for the Government. It does though still pose a challenge for the credibility and future electability of the Conservative Opposition.
In the next few days, the Government's whips will be counting the votes to see if the Government's concessions will be enough to avoid defeat. As I write, the rebellion looks to have been quelled and so it is unlikely that the votes of Conservative MPs will make a difference. But the dilemma for the Tories remains: vote against the reforms in a vain attempt to defeat the Government or vote for reforms they believe in.
Kemi Badenoch has said the welfare cuts don't go far enough. Her party would only vote with the Government if they pledged further cuts in welfare spending, created more jobs in the economy and ruled out tax rises in the next Budget. These sound like impossible conditions to fulfil, particularly by Tuesday. Kemi knows this. Her conditions were not designed to be met. Their purpose was purely to provide an excuse for Conservative MPs to vote with the Labour rebels to defeat the Government. Or put it another way, Conservative MPs would be whipped to vote against cuts they knew they would have to make if they were in government. There is no excuse for such cynical politics. As a result, the reforms will now yield smaller savings for the Exchequer.
I have been in the position of Conservative MPs. I understand their dilemma. I'm also convinced that recent political history demonstrates why the Conservative Party needs to vote with the Government in these circumstances.
I was a new Conservative MP with just three years of experience in the year 2000 when the Conservative Opposition faced a similar predicament. Tony Blair's Government was proposing to reform the air traffic control service (NATS) and turn it into a 'public private partnership'. The previous Conservative government had similarly planned to privatise NATS but they ran out of time. Just like today, a rebellion was stirring amongst Left-wing Labour MPs hostile to any form of private sector involvement in managing our skies.
To my shame, I voted with my Conservative colleagues as we were whipped into the same voting lobby as those Labour rebels, in an attempt to stop something we actually thought was good for the country. We claimed it wasn't the right kind of privatisation; it didn't go far enough. Just as today the Conservatives are arguing that the Government's benefit cuts are the wrong kind of cuts. What we meant was we wanted to defeat the government. Still smarting from an historic defeat, we were playing political games, and everyone knew it.
As it turned out the Blair Government defeated the rebels and won the Nats vote with a majority of 93. The Conservatives went on to another historic election defeat at the 2001 General Election.
Fast forward to 2006. Blair's flagship Education Bill sought to redefine the role of local authorities in the running of our 23,000 state schools, giving schools more autonomy, freeing them from the dead hand of local council bureaucracy. These were reforms that the then leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron, strongly believed in and they were an important element of our emerging education policy.
But many centrist and Left-wing Labour MPs were deeply unhappy and, like this week's welfare reform measures, it looked like it was headed for defeat. On Second Reading 52 Labour MPs voted against the Government but, because David Cameron took the principled decision to support the Bill, it passed. And at each subsequent vote Conservative MPs voted with the Labour Government and against the rebels and thereby secured its safe passage into law. Labour had its Bill. The Conservatives had credibility because we had voted for what we believed in.
This was a seminal moment for David Cameron and the Conservative Party. It showed an Opposition serious about its role and ready for government.
So, it's decision time for Kemi. They can follow Reform down a road of dishonest populism – making promises that cannot be delivered and offering false hope – or they can stake out a position that is all their own. They can tell the truth about the choices the country faces and set out policies to deal with them. They can demonstrate principle, integrity and seriousness about what's right for our country. They can demonstrate in Kemi's words that her Conservative Party has changed. Or they can try to score cheap political points. For the sake of the future of the Conservative Party I hope they make the right choice.
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