Election '24: some observations
The waiting is finally over and the country will go to the polls on Thursday 4 July, so I offer some preliminary observations and explanations as we brace ourselves
The prime minister has lit the blue touch paper. On Wednesday afternoon, Rishi Sunak went to see the King to ask for a dissolution of Parliament, then briefed the cabinet and made the public announcement in pouring rain in Downing Street. The United Kingdom will go to the polls on Thursday 4 July after a parliament lasting four-and-a-half years, with a pandemic, three prime ministers, the death of a monarch, a war in Europe and an ongoing crisis in the Middle East. There will be a great deal to say and write over the coming six weeks, but I thought it was worth setting out some initial thoughts at this early juncture.
Ending the current parliament
Parliament will be prorogued on Friday 24 May. This brings the parliamentary session to an end and will be carried out under the King’s authority by a Royal Commission consisting of three, four or (likely) five privy counsellors: at the last prorogation in October 2023, the lords commissioners were the leader of the House of Lords (Lord True), the shadow leader of the House (Baroness Smith of Basildon), the leader of the Liberal Democrats (Lord Newby), a representative of the crossbench peers (Lord Laming) and the lord speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith). The cast will be similar this week, though Lord Laming will likely be replaced by the convenor of the crossbench peers, the Earl of Kinnoull.
The commissioners will explain why they are there:
My Lords, it not being convenient for His Majesty personally to be present here this day, he has been pleased to cause a Commission under the Great Seal to be prepared for proroguing this present Parliament.
The main order of business will be to signify Royal Assent to any bills which have completed their passage through both houses. This is the time of year when fans of Norman French celebrate: the clerk of the Crown in Chancery, Antonia Romeo, who is also permanent secretary to the Ministry of Justice, will read the titles of the acts, and one of the clerks of the House of Lords (usually the clerk of the Parliaments, though last year it was the clerk assistant, his deputy) will indicate Royal Assent with the words “Le Roy le veult”, the Norman French for “The King wills it”.
(Were the monarch to decline to approve a bill, the formula would be “Le Roy s’avesira”, or “The King will advise himself”, but that has not happened since Queen Anne refused to give Royal Assent to the Scottish Militia Bill in March 1708.)
As of Wednesday evening, there were 16 government bills still before Parliament. These must be agreed before prorogation or they will fall: Thursday will see frantic horse-trading between the government and opposition to find provisions which can be agreed and rushed through the remaining stages of their scrutiny before being presented for Royal Assent on Friday. This process, known as “wash-up”, is a frantic and sometimes brutal affair, and it will be interesting to see what the government manages to salvage and what it has to sacrifice.
Prorogation marks the end of parliamentary business and the 2019 Parliament will then be dissolved on Thursday 30 May. Again, this is done by the King’s authority, and means that MPs cease to hold their seats and the House of Commons is dissolved. Peers retain their status and ministers remain in office, but there is effectively no parliament for the following five weeks. MPs are now merely candidates for election and must not use the post-nominal letters “MP” for any purpose.
It has been a long parliament. After the general election on Thursday 12 December 2019, Parliament met for the first time on 17 December and was formally opened on 19 December. By the time of dissolution, therefore, it will have lasted for four years and five months, among the longer post-war parliaments. So far it has passed 208 public acts and three local acts (which only affect individual groups), though that tally will rise on Friday.
It was also the 58th Parliament of the United Kingdom, the first being constituted on 22 January 1801 from all 558 members of the House of Commons of Great Britain, 100 members of the House of Commons of Ireland, all members of the House of Lords of Great Britain and 28 representative peers elected from the Irish House of Lords. The new parliament, the 59th, will also be the first to begin in the reign of the current sovereign Charles III, although acts of Parliament are no longer catalogued by regnal year (since the Acts of Parliament Numbering and Citation Act 1962).
Purdah
Between now and the general election, the distinction between party political work and government business becomes even more delicate that it usually is. This is now officially designed the “pre-election period of sensitivity”, though is more usually known by the traditional term, “purdah”. The Cabinet Office sets out detailed guidance for civil servants: essentially the principle is that official announcements by ministers relating to government business should not be used for political advantage. Inevitably, activity in Whitehall will decrease as ministers engage in the election campaign.
“Purdah”, like so many terms in British administration, is originally an Indian word. Derived from the Hindi-Urdu pardā., it means “curtain” and came to denote the physical segregation between the sexes in both Islamic and Hindu culture in India during the period of British rule.
It’s goodbye from him…
So far, 105 MPs have announced they are standing down at the election, the most recent to declare being the Northern Ireland secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris, who has been MP for Daventry since 2010. Other MPs will of course be defeated, but the faces we know are leaving the House of Commons include:
Dame Margaret Beckett DBE, Derby South (Lab)
Mhairi Black, Paisley and Renfrewshire South (SNP)
Sir William Cash, Stone (Con)
Chris Grayling, Epsom and Ewell (Con)
Matt Hancock, West Suffolk (Ind)
Harriet Harman KC, Camberwell and Peckham (Lab)
Dame Margaret Hodge DBE, Barking (Lab)
Sir Sajid Javid, Bromsgrove (Con)
Dr Caroline Lucas, Brighton Pavilion (Green)
Theresa May, Maidenhead (Con)
Dominic Raab, Esher and Walton (Con)
Colonel Bob Stewart, Beckenham (Con)
It is extraordinary to note that Mhairi Black leaves the House of Commons at the age of 29, while Dehenna Davison (Con, Bishop Auckland), a former minister, is stepping down at the age of 30.
Welcome to Westminster
If the Labour Party wins a substantial majority, it will contribute to a very high number of new Members of Parliament: there are currently 205 Labour MPs, of 19 have announced they are standing down, but the opinion polls suggest the party may win more than 400 seats. That would mean more than 200 new MPs in the Labour Party alone. The record for newcomers is the general election of 1945, when 324 of 640 MPs were novices. However, there were 243 first-timers in the Labour landslide of 1997, and 227 at the 2010 general election. In recent decades it has been unusual for new MPs to number fewer than 100.
I have looked at some of Labour’s likely new stars here and here (although some have previous parliamentary service). Since I joined the House of Commons Service in 2005, the authorities have become a great deal better at offering training, guidance and support for new Members: this ranges from technical parts of their parliamentary duties like how to table questions or make best use of the Library and its research services, to important but quotidian issues like their financial arrangements (mainly administered by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority now) and finding their way around the sprawling Parliamentary Estate.
There are some recurring common features of new MPs, in my experience. Most want, need and appreciate advice, and arrive bristling with energy and keen to begin their parliamentary duties. They will—and this is a benefit for the House as a whole—ask questions about practice and procedure that MPs who have served for a few years no longer ask because they take things for granted, and it is worth listening carefully to those questions. Some will arrive determined to seek radical changes and predisposed to dislike the House, though most do not.
An issue for party managers is that, if there is a large government majority, backbenchers will relatively quickly become bored and restless. However large the governing party, the Ministerial and other Salaries Act 1975 stipulates that there can only be 109 paid ministers, while under the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975 only 95 ministers can sit in the Commons. In addition, it is now common to appoint some additional, unpaid ministers (there are currently 18). Another 40 MPs or so will be appointed as parliamentary private secretaries, unpaid aides to ministers who are expected to vote with the government at all times. There are also 35 select committee chairs, and these are allotted on the basis of party balance in the House so a government with a large majority would expect to take most of those.
Nevertheless, that only amounts to something like 150 MPs. So government backbenchers will find a variety of activities to fill their time at Westminster. Many will serve on select committees, and whips will make sure that legislative committees are populated with reliable foot-soldiers. But the government will not want MPs to have too much time to stretch their intellectual legs or create mischief.
What kind of campaign will it be?
The public mood, insofar as I can judge it, is weariness and disenchantment. We know that trust in politicians and political institutions is at an historic low. We also know that, while Rishi Sunak’s approval ratings are very low, Sir Keir Starmer’s are not objectively high and remain negative overall. In December I wrote in City A.M. that “the electorate seems to be sleepwalking into a Labour administration”, and warned of potential disappointment. We will see.
The prime minister’s rain-sodden speech in Downing Street suggested that the Conservatives will campaign on a contrast between a government with a plan for national renewal which is beginning to deliver and an opposition which has no real compass.
I’m guided by doing what is right for our country, not what is easy. I can’t say the same thing for the Labour Party because I don’t know what they offer. And in truth, I don’t think you know either. And that’s because they have no plan.
He alleged that the leader of the opposition “has shown time and time again that he will take the easy way out and do anything to get power”. This suggests we are fated to have a grim campaign of claim and counter-claim, and we have seen enough over the past year or two—on both sides; there are no angels here—to suspect that it will have more than its fair share of personal attacks. We may be spared the more cringe-inducing nicknames of the Boris Johnson era, like “Captain Hindsight” and “Captain Crasheroonie Snoozefest”, but “Sir Softie”, coined for the Labour leader by The Sun, has long been taken up by Sunak and other Conservative MPs; at the same time, expect pointed attacks on the prime minister’s personal wealth or, in the case of Angela Rayner’s recent use of “pint-sized loser”, his height.
A vital indicator will be turnout. Historically, the British electorate has gone to the polls at general elections in more than respectable numbers. Between 1922 and 1997, the turnout was never less than 70 per cent, and in 1950 it reached the extraordinary figure of 83.9 per cent (interestingly, at that election, nine out of 10 voters cast their ballots for the two main parties, with the Liberals gaining nine per cent and no other party reaching even a single digit). In 2001, however, when Sir Tony Blair won his second landslide, turnout collapsed, falling 12 points to only 59.4 per cent. While it has rallied in the subsequent five elections, it has yet to climb back above 70 per cent.
My guess is that it will be low at this election, partly because there is a significant proportion of the electorate which is disenchanted with the system as a whole, and partly because the result is seen as a foregone conclusion for Labour. Realistically, it would be at least reassuring, though hardly cause for cheer, if it remained above 60 per cent, but I would not be surprised to see it dip below that. The lowest turnout figure since women became eligible to vote was 57.2 per cent in the “Coupon Election” of December 1918. If turnout this July falls below that, we have a serious problem.
(We can take some small solace from the fact that we vote in greater numbers, proportionally, that American citizens: turnout at presidential elections has only exceeded 60 per cent three times in the last half-century, and in 1988 and 1996 was barely more than half.)
Things to look out for
Finally, while centre stage is understandably occupied by Sunak v. Starmer, remember that a general election is a patchwork of 650 individual elections which are pieced together to form a national picture. So here are three issues which will generally be crowded out but are worth coming back to occasionally as the campaign wears one, both for a change of scene and because they do matter.
The picture in Scotland: the travails of the Scottish National Party over the last year or so are well known, with the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon as first minister and the 13-month tenure of her successor, Humza Yousaf. The SNP have been in government at Holyrood for 17 years and the fatigue is showing, so their performance at the general election will be fascinating to watch. I took a snapshot of the situation in February but much has changed since then. The polling data are starting to look bad for the Nationalists: while Anas Sarwar, who has now led Scottish Labour for more than three years, had dragged his party to something like level-pegging by the turn of this year, Labour’s lead has increased noticeably since Yousaf announced his resignation as first minister and a YouGov poll last week put it at 10 points. That would translate into the SNP dropping from 43 MPs to just 11, while Scottish Labour would go from just two to 35. However, the parties were more or less even only a month ago, so it is hard to say if this is a blip or a trend. But it could make a real difference to the shape and character of the Labour Party in the next parliament.
The Greens: there has only ever been one Green Party MP, Dr Caroline Lucas, who won Brighton Pavilion in 2010 and has held it with increasing majorities since then. In 2019 she beat the second-place Labour candidate by an enormous 19,940 votes. However, Lucas, who was leader of the Green Party of England and Wales from 2008 to 2012 and co-leader in 2016-18, is standing down from the Commons, and the candidate to succeed her is Siân Berry, co-leader from 2018 to 2021. Berry was a councillor in Camden from 2014 to 2023 and a member of the London Assembly from 2016 until earlier this month, although she was born and raised in Gloucestershire. The Greens performed badly in the local elections in Brighton last year, losing 12 of their 20 seats, while Labour took control of Brighton and Hove Council; however, recent polling suggests Berry will win the parliamentary contest. The party also has hopes of winning the new constituency of Bristol Central, largely formed from the old Bristol West seat. Labour’s candidate is the sitting Bristol West MP Thangam Debbonaire, shadow culture secretary, while the Greens are fielding their co-leader Carla Denyer, who was a councillor in the city for nine years. Denyer was a very distant second to Debbonaire in 2019, some 28,219 votes adrift, but the Greens are the largest party on Bristol Council and at last month’s local elections won every ward in Bristol Central which was being contested. It will be a test of national versus local electoral tides.
Labour and Muslim voters: in February’s by-election, George Galloway, now representing the Workers Party of Britain but only ever representing himself, won Rochdale by 5,697 votes after Labour’s candidate, Azhar Ali, was disowned by the party and a large number of Muslim voters, seemingly dismayed at the Labour Party’s stance on the conflict in Gaza, switched from Labour to Galloway. At last month’s local elections, Labour’s support among Muslims seems to have fallen significantly, but it is a perpetual truth that voting behaviour at general elections is often different from that in local elections and by-elections. With national issues like the economy and public services dominating the campaign, it may be that individual subjects like Gaza lose some of their prominence as voters accept they are choosing a government. However, senior figures in the Labour Party acknowledge that their relationship with Muslim voters has come under enormous strain, and those constituencies with large Muslim populations will be watched keenly. Three seats have majority Muslim electorates—Birmingham Hodge Hill, Bradford West and Birmingham Hall Green—while in 11 other constituencies Muslims are the largest faith group though not a majority. Starmer will hope that normal service is resumed.