Ellwood jumps rather than risk being pushed
The chair of the House of Commons Defence Committee was facing a vote of no confidence from his colleagues, and has decided to step down in advance
It started back in July, or at least that was when the smouldering burst into flames. Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative MP for Bournemouth East and chair of the House of Commons Defence Committee, tweeted a video statement he had made in Afghanistan while on a visit with the HALO Trust, the landmine-clearing NGO. The video was intended to reinforce his calls for the UK to re-open its embassy in Kabul (the chargé d’affaires, Robert Chatterton Dickson, and the rest of the mission currently operate from Doha in Qatar), but had a strangely upbeat atmosphere with jaunty Afghan music. Ellwood described Afghanistan under Taliban control in positive terms, calling it a “country transformed”, and noted that, since the group had regained power after the fall of Kabul in August 2021, “security has vastly improved, corruption is down and the opium trade has all but disappeared”. He wanted the UK to re-engage with the Taliban because he feared that Afghanistan might otherwise become a “Chinese vassal”.
It is easy to see what Ellwood was getting at (and, for what it’s worth, I tend to favour engagement, with however long a spoon, to simply freezing other countries out). But it is at least as easy to see the reputational foolishness in his actions. Our withdrawal, in humiliating circumstances, from Afghanistan after a catastrophic failure of intelligence—the best estimates 48 hours before Kabul fell were that the Taliban would probably not seize the capital before the beginning of 2022—is still, rightly, a very sensitive issue and one for which there is a great deal of guilt and anger. It was no surprise that what Ellwood thought was the core of his message was lost in praise and compliments about the effect the Taliban had had. This was difficult to swallow given the enormous restrictions which the Taliban had (re-)imposed on women and girls, banning them from secondary education and enforcing strict Islamic dress codes. Indeed, the restoration of Taliban control seemed to suggest that all progress made since the beginning of the coalition’s presence in the country 20 years before had been lost.
Critics swooped swiftly and savagely. Former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith described the video as “not a very welcome statement”, while Rayleigh and Wickford MP Mark Francois, a man always reassured of his own significance, spared nothing.
Last night, following a visit to Afghanistan, he [Ellwood] posted an utterly bizarre video lauding the Taliban’s management of the country—something which was described by a fellow member of the defence committee to me barely an hour ago as a ‘wish you were here’ video. He made no mention of the fact that the Taliban was still attempting to identify and kill Afghan citizens who helped our armed forces, and also makes no specific mention of the fact that young girls in Afghanistan don’t even have the right to go to school under that government. I wish to make plain on behalf of the committee that he was speaking for himself even though he used the title as chairman of the committee in a number of associated articles. Not in our name.
It was bombastic and enormously over-the-top, but it was also a demonstration of the fact that a select committee chair uses his or her title and authority on sufferance, to an extent, and should always exercise caution. Johnny Mercer, veterans’ minister, remarked “It is clear that as the Taliban currently stands it represents a serious threat to human rights, and to the treatment of women, and all those things we fought for.”
A Labour member of the committee, Kevan Jones, was also unhappy. “His video is breathtakingly naive and great propaganda for the Taliban. It airbrushes out the ongoing cruelty of their regime. It does not represent my views and I doubt other members of the Defence Committee.”
Parliament was not the only source of criticism. Shaharzad Akbar, former chair of the Afghanistan Independent Human Right Commission and now a fellow in human rights at Chatham House, noted acidly “I guess critical thinking skills is not a requirement for MPs”. She went on “It is past time for the visiting officials to talk to women, to detained and tortured journalists and activists, to members of marginalised groups when they visit Afghanistan”. Zehra Zaidi, an Afghan lawyer and activist, asked angrily:
Were Afghan women spoken to before the trip to Afghanistan and did they engage with women whilst there? This video comes across as promotional material for the de facto authority. Women are erased from public life. Safety where the terrorists are now in charge.
I suspect it did not take Ellwood very long to realise that he had made a terrible error of judgement. Within days, he had apologised for his “poor communication” and said “I’m very, very sorry that my reflection of my visit could have been much better worded and have been taken out of context”, a slightly weaselly formulation, but trouble was rumbling inexorably towards him. When the Defence Committee next met, on 19 July, a motion of no confidence in him as chair was tabled by Francois and fellow Conservative Richard Drax, and Labour MPs Kevan Jones and Derek Twigg. However, as the House of Commons was about to rise for its summer adjournment, the next committee meeting would not take place until 14 September, leaving Ellwood in limbo, charged but neither tried nor convicted, over the break.
The evening before the fateful committee meeting, Ellwood announced that he was resigning as chair of the committee. In a statement, he said that he felt he retained the support of the majority of the committee (though with four members having supported the motion, that means a maximum of six others backed him), but he didn’t believe that he could proceed as chair without the support of “all in the room”. He explained that he was outspoken and said what he thought, but that it was appropriate to be accountable.
I don’t always get it right—so it’s right I put my hand up when I don’t. Poor communications, during the summer, in calling for greater international engagement in Afghanistan was understandably criticised at the time and reflected poorly on the committee.
Again, the apology is slightly qualified, and blamed on poor communications, but that is in part a reflection of political culture (it is also, for once, slightly true). There have already been anonymous suggestions that Ellwood resigned rather than be unseated, but it is also true that remaining as chair even if he had won the vote 6-4 would have been nigh on impossible.
It is worth saying a few words about the atmosphere and dynamic of a select committee. There is a Platonic ideal that MPs leave their party labels at the door and co-operate to perform rational, evidence-based scrutiny without any prejudices or preconceptions, and under the best circumstances that is almost true (the Health Committee was quite like that in my first year in the Commons). More generally, partisan feeling is muted and softened but remains under the surface. It is a quirk of the Defence Committee in particular (at least this was true in my time in 2006-08) that the “national security” aspect of a lot of the committee’s work tends to defuse the worst partisan rancour. But committee dynamics are influenced by many factors, not least the personality of the chair and of the members.
It’s also worth saying that the relationship between the chair and the other members of the committee has changed since 2010. Standing Order S.O. No. 122B sets out the process for election and the committees to which it applies; before that standing order was introduced, all members of a committee were nominated by the Committee of Selection (effectively the party whips) and appointed by the House, then the committee elected its chair from among its members, though in effect it was usually agreed by the Usual Channels beforehand who would be nominated. But the House of Commons Reform Committee, set up in July 2009 to consider changes to the way the House considered its business and chaired by Dr Tony Wright, Labour MP for Cannock Chase, produced a report entitled Rebuilding the House, one of the recommendations of which was that there should be “an initial system of election by the whole House of Chairs of departmental and similar select committees”. The Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government formed in May 2010 agreed to implement the Wright reforms in full and the mechanism was first used to choose committee chairs in June.
There is an obvious mandate and transparency about the House as a whole electing chairs for select committees. But there is a down side: there has been a sense that chairs are now “imposed” on committees rather than chosen from among their number. This feeling of separation between the chair and the other members has been deepened because the chair can claim and leverage his or her electoral mandate from the House of Commons, which the other members do not possess in the same degree. A good chair will work hard to diminish this separation; a careless or awkward one may either neglect or exacerbate it.
It’s a long time since I worked for the Defence Committee and the only current member who served when I was there is Kevan Jones. I know Ellwood a little and worked with him on the UK delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. So I can intuit some things and have picked up rumours but cannot state with certainty what happened. I do, however, think it is significant that both Francois and Jones were keen to stress that the video statement Ellwood made did not speak for or represent the view of the committee as a whole. This may, I suspect, denote a wider unease that Ellwood has been using his position as chair and the authority it implies to make statements and propose policy positions which are controversial and do not command the support of the other committee members.
Certainly he has spoken in apocalyptic terms about the future of the armed forces. When the House debated Global Military Operations in June, Ellwood’s remarks were very critical of the government’s plans for reducing the size of the services and he warned of potentially serious consequences. He has been a frequent critic of the government under this prime ministers and his two predecessors, which may have irritated his Conservative colleagues. But Ellwood is also impulsive and headstrong: he can act without considering the consequences, so he may have acted in ways the committee did not like, or at least found annoying, without considering what effect it might have on his position as chair.
I also notice that, since the beginning of this session of Parliament in May 2022, Ellwood has been authorised by the committee to travel to seven different events round the world “in a representative capacity”, that is, paid for by the House of Commons and with the authority of the committee. This kind of travel by a committee chair is not unusual: they are often invited to attend or speak at conferences and seminars, and it would clearly be impractical for the whole committee to attend. So I’m not suggesting for a moment he has done anything wrong, and all the decisions were properly recorded in the minutes. However, it could easily have inflamed tensions between a chair and other members if they already existed.
In short, it is my suspicion that the Defence Committee was not a happy ship before Ellwood’s misjudged video statement. There was enough fuel to catch firmly alight at that point, which is probably why a motion of no confidence was tabled within two days and four members of a committee of 11 were ready to dislodge Ellwood. He has done the right thing in resigning, given the circumstances; no chair has been pushed out since the new election arrangements were brought in, and, in any event, a narrow win would still have left him, the committee and (I say this with feeling) the committee secretariat in a very difficult position. The practices of the House rely on no-one pushing a deterioration of the harmony between chair and members to breaking point, and this is the closest we have come.
Does this matter, except to those who chronicle the workings of select committees? Not a great deal, as I am sure Ellwood will remain outspoken on defence and other issues, though the loss of the position of chair will diminish his impact somewhat. Much will depend on who is elected to replace him, as defence is still high on the agenda, given the war in Ukraine and the forthcoming reduction in personnel across all three services. But that is for another day.