A Level Politics This Week
Week commencing 23rd June 2025
“They just look like a mess.”
That was the judgment of Sky/Politico podcasters on the government’s u-turn this week on planned cuts to certain disability benefits. Details of the planned changes are here but the political significance is largely in the questions it raises about the PM’s political judgment and in the erosion of his authority. As one BBC journalist put it, “For the Prime Minister to have backed down to avoid defeat on this so soon after the winter fuel reversal raises questions about his ability to get his way on plenty else besides.”
For A-Level Politics students, this last week provides a super case study for the role and power of backbenchers. (Parliament’s own definition: backbenchers are MPs, “that are neither government ministers nor opposition Shadow spokespeople.”) Consult the textbooks and most will tell you that scrutiny is at the core of the role of backbenchers and that they can ask various forms of questions, and take part in various committees, to do so. They also, of course, are needed by governments to help vote on draft legislation, which is why they have often been referred to as ‘lobby fodder’.
Since the later years of the New Labour governments (1997-2010), however, there has been a growing sense that backbenchers have been increasingly independently minded. The 2010 Wright Reforms removed the ability of party whips to select the members and chairs of Departmental Select Committees, creating autonomy and authority for the members of those Committees. More broadly, in August 2013, 30 Conservative MPs voted against Tory PM David Cameron’s plan to take military action against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Asad, causing a government defeat and change in policy. And Theresa May suffered a much larger rebellion when over 100 Conservative backbench MPs voted against her proposed Brexit deal in January 2019.
Analysing that trend – of which this week’s rebellion by Labour backbenchers arguably needs to be seen as part - a report this week by the Institute for Government suggested that there has also been, “a long-term trend across all parties towards MPs becoming more focused on their constituency role, and less focused on passing government legislation and campaigning in parliament.” The large number of Labour MPs elected in 2024 means most will never get a ministerial job and their incentive to be loyal (in the hope benefiting from the PM’s patronage in return) is therefore reduced. In addition, many have such slim majorities that they expect to lose their seats at the next election anyway. As a result “[B]uilding a career as a principled backbencher and constituency defender looks like a more realistic option for many.”
“It’s not an excuse but I was distracted.”
In an interview for ‘The Sunday Times’ [paywall] this weekend, Keir Starmer was notably upfront in taking responsibility for the welfare payments debacle: “All these decisions are my decisions and I take ownership of them.” Interestingly, he went on though: “I’m putting this as context rather than excuse: I was heavily focused on what was happening with Nato and the Middle East.”
Many commentators – including some not generally supportive of Labour - believe that Starmer is actually proving a better PM when it comes to foreign policy than domestic matters. As the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg summarised: “[T]here is a risk that all this very visible international activity creates the impression - as one Labour veteran notes – ‘He’s alright over there, but he’s not around over here.’ Ouch!”
Few PMs have the luxury of deciding how much time to spend on foreign affairs: ‘events’ happen overseas and the PM is often expected to lead the UK response. But is involvement in foreign affairs generally helpful to the reputation and standing of a PM, or an unhelpful distraction?
On the one hand, Margaret Thatcher’s reputation rose after she sent a UK military task force to reclaim the Falkland Islands (in 1982) after the UK-owned islands in the South Atlantic had been invaded by nearby Argentina. Thatcher faced challenging economic conditions at home, and opposition from within her own Conservative Party, but appearing as a strong ‘wartime leader’ boosted her image with many voters and she won a landslide victory in the General Election of 1983.
On the other hand, Tony Blair controversially decided to join US forces in the invasion of Iraq (in 2003). The basis in international law for the invasion was deeply contested at the time (and since). The muddled and bloody aftermath to the invasion, a failure to discover any chemical or biological weapons (which had been used as a justification for the war), and opposition from both Labour MPs and the wider public, all contributed to a dent in Blair’s popularity. While Blair led Labour to a historic third general election win in 2005, it was with a reduced majority, and the ongoing controversy was one key factor in the resignation forced on him by Labour MPs in 2007.
Composition of the Executive
Along with Keir Starmer himself, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, there are also those pointing the finger this week at Morgan McSweeney, who is Starmer’s ‘Chief of Staff’. McSweeney is neither a Minister, nor even an elected MP, but the power that some claim he – and other recent holders of the Chief of Staff role - wields begs the question as to who exactly comprises the Executive nowadays?
Most textbooks give a standard response that the Executive includes the PM, Cabinet Members and more junior Ministers, and also the unpaid but vital Private Parliamentary Secretaries (‘first rung on the Ministerial ladder’) who act as a bridge between Ministers and the wider party.
Some might argue that the list should also now include the most senior civil servants in the country, given the complexity of government and the number of decisions that are now taken by those unelected officials. Each government department, eg. the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), is headed by a senior civil servant known as the Permanent Under Secretary (PUS). Interestingly, ‘The Cabinet Manual’ – the formal handbook to government and, therefore, a key insight on the UK’s uncodified constitution, states, “The Executive comprises the Sovereign, government ministers (who are supported by civil servants), and non-ministerial departments and agencies.” Simon Case, the recently-retired Cabinet Secretary – the most senior Civil Servant of them all – recently noted that Starmer, for example, treated him, “as his sort of core team.” A counter-argument is that civil servants are, nonetheless, simply supposed to implement the decisions of Ministers (not actually to make them).
A stronger argument, however, could be made that the Chief of Staff role needs nowadays to be considered a formal part of the Executive. Tony Blair was the first PM to have a Chief of Staff (in the person of Jonathan Powell), who was even given formal power to direct the work of Civil Servants. While that power was rescinded by Gordon Brown (when he succeeded Blair), subsequent Chiefs of Staff have continued to wield considerable informal and political power, and influence over the direction and management of government. Theresa May’s first joint Chiefs of Staff, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, were considered so influential (and to blame) that they were forced to resign when May lost her majority at the 2017 General Election. Starmer’s current Chief of Staff, Morgan McSweeney, is now himself under fire for, so critics claim, failing to appreciate the strength of feeling among Labour backbench MPs on the issue of the proposed welfare cuts. As ‘The Guardian’ Political Editor put it, “Being the prime minister’s right-hand man is a position of extraordinary power and privilege. But when things start to go wrong, you are directly in the line of fire.”
Politics ‘Shorts’
YouGov’s latest opinion poll predicts Reform UK would win the most seats if a general election were held today – and Nigel Farage, therefore, as the party leader most likely to be called upon by the King to try to form a government. On the poll results, Reform would have 271 MPs, but short of the 326 seats needed to have a majority. The Conservative Party, based on the same poll, would crash further to just 46 MPs, into fourth place behind the LibDems. (The YouGov detailed breakdown is worth a read for its insights into the demographic factors that now seem to be shaping voting intention.)
Lucy Powell, the Cabinet Minister and Leader of the House of Commons, has indicated that she is in favour of modernising some of the language of Parliament to make the workings of democracy more accessible to voters. Much of the current terminology dates back to the 19th century when Erskine May, who was clerk of the House of Commons, codified them in his famous (1844) work ‘A Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings and Usage of Parliament.’ A Modernisation Committee of MPs, set up to modernise parliamentary procedures as a whole, has listed terms such as ‘bill’, ‘division’ and ‘early day motion’ as words and phrases that potentially need change.
And finally, a longer quotation from Lord Glasman, Labour peer and the inspiration behind the ‘Blue Labour’ movement, formed as a counter to Blair’s New Labour. Glasman has longed wanted Labour to reconnect with its traditional working-class support base, arguing that, “The working class believed for over a hundred years that the Labour Party was fundamentally on their side. And now they think we’re not…[O]ur working classes are completely p***ed off. The genie is out the bottle. Globalisation, mass migration, social mobility — they’re not taking it anymore. We are facing a disaster, unless there is a significant change in the understanding and the direction of the government, because the world is not what it was.” Your thoughts? (FWIW, Glasman is reputed to see Morgan McSweeney as an ally to his cause. I wonder if Keir Starmer has read the interview with Glasman, here.)
Going Deeper
Listen to… ‘Starmer’s Stormy Year’ , a 40-minute BBC documentary, attempting to explain the most spectacular fall in electoral popularity, so soon after a major election win, of any recent PM.
Watch…A 1986 episode of the classic comedy ‘Yes, Prime Minister’ which satirised the constant power struggles between an elected fictional PM, Jim Hacker, and his wily civil servants who considered that they wielded the real power. A little dated? Yes. But read the memoirs of any recent PM and you realise there may still be truth to the myth.
Read… For a little light relief from UK Politics, an opinion piece in TheGuardian on Zohran Mamdani, the self-confessed ‘democratic socialist’ setting New York politics on fire, who has just won the city mayoralty and who some are talking about as ‘the next Obama’.