Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

A lesson for all new MPs

Ed Miliband has given a surprisingly good speech this morning: free from all the junk language that his older brother has a weakness for. But he raises an interesting question:

Why did Gisela Stuart win in Birmingham Edgbaston? Why did Karen Buck win Westminster North? Why did Andy Slaughter win in Hammersmith?

Might it have been because all three of these politicians were, at one point, thorns in the flesh of their government? That they all at times campaigned, on principle, against the Labour government? As I said in The Times yesterday, the German-born Ms Stuart was a committed foe of the EU Constitution – who denounced it, and the Lisbon Treaty, as loudly as she could. She shared platforms with Conservatives fighting it, she supported calls for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty which she said would create a “democratic deficit”. Ms Buck withdraw her son from one of Labour’s flagship City Academies saying the standards there were too low and that her son had lost an “entire year” of education. Andy Slaughter has defied the government on Heathrow expansion. (That, and the local Tory-run council was accused of taking away secured tenancy on council houses, provoking a massive backlash which conspired to keep Shaun Bailey out of the House of Commons – for me, one of the most disappointing results of the evening)

There was no uniform swing on election night. The British electorate rendered redundant the BBC swingometers. It was a victory for principled politics. Being a rebel, rejecting the party machine, seemed to protect you. Graham Brady, the only Tory to resign over a Cameron policy, almost doubled his majority and may well be elected to the chairmanship of the 1922 Committee (ie, chair of the Tory backbenchers) next week.

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