Rebels, rebels. The party’s a mess. AS Politics update: effectiveness of Parliament

When considering how effectively Parliament performs its functions, it’s worth giving careful consideration to the increased independence of MPs. Yesterday’s vote on tuition fees should work as a good example for students given that it was the biggest parliamentary rebellion in Lib Dem history.

This is what I’ve written previously:

• The idea that MPs are simply lobby fodder has been challenged in recent times, and it can be argued that this picture is misleading. New research on the voting behaviour of coalition MPs suggests rebellion is at a postwar high. In the last parliament backbench rebellions began to cause government major headaches, and the party whipping system did not seem as strong as has traditionally been the case. The rebellions clearly went beyond the usual suspects given that 112 Labour backbenchers went against the government at least once – this was nearly one third of the Parliamentary Labour Party. Reporting on research by Phil Cowley at the University of Nottingham the This week the Guardian reported that Con-Lib MPs have gone against the whip on the majority of votes: o “Backbench rebellions against the government have been more frequent in this parliament than any since the second world war, according to new research, with 59 rebellions out of the first 110 votes. This is double the rate during the last Labour government and almost nine times as frequent as the post-war average, suggesting for some MPs rebellion against the coalition is becoming a habit.”

Phil Cowley on the excellent revolts.co.uk website provides detailed analysis of the tution fee vote:

“Not only was it the largest Liberal Democrat rebellion so far this Parliament, involving some 21 Lib Dem MPs (more than double what had been the largest rebellion since the party went into government), it was the largest in the entire history of the Liberal Democrats, since their formation back in 1988-89, surpassing the 15 who voted against a levy on the mining of limestone in 2002.

In absolute terms, 21 MPs does not sound particularly impressive. But because the overall size of the parliamentary party is small, to get (crude) comparison figures, you need to multiple any Lib Dem rebellion by 7: which puts the student fees revolt on a par with a revolt by 147 government MPs in a single party government. As a proportion of the Liberal Democrats, 21 MPs is a rebellion by 37% of their MPs. That is proportionately higher even than the 2003 Labour revolt against Iraq, and gives an indication of the scale of last night’s rebellion.

Things look even worse for the Lib Dems if you compare the behaviour of the Lib Dem front and backbenches. Twenty Lib Dem members of the Coalition Government voted in favour, with Chris Huhne unable to attend due to a ministerial engagement abroad. But of the backbenchers, 19 voted against the measure last night, along with two others who stood down from the Government as PPSs in order to be able to cast dissenting votes. Only eight Lib Dem backbenchers (one of whom was ex-minister David Laws) voted for the measure, while a further seven backbenchers either abstained (including Deputy Leader Simon Hughes) or failed to attend.”