The coalition’s backbenchers have already proven the most rebellious of any government. There have already been — by my count, adding the 239 rebellions up to the end of April listed in Philip Cowley and Mark Stuart’s Bumper Book of Coalition Rebellions to the eight listed on the Public Whip since then — 247 votes on which at least one Tory or Lib Dem backbencher has cast their vote against the government whip. That’s not quite the most of any parliament — there were 309 against Wilson and Callaghan in the 1974-79 parliament, 259 against Blair from 2001 to 2005, and 365 against Blair and Brown in the last parliament — but then this one’s just over two years in. There have been rebellions in 42 per cent of Commons votes since the last election, far more than the 28 per cent from 2005 to 2010.
And tonight, we’ll see rebellion number 248 on the programme motion on the House of Lords Reform Bill. We don’t, of course, yet know how big the rebellion will be. Assuming that everyone votes, and that the SDLP, Alliance and Green MPs vote with the government while all the Labour and other MPs vote against, it’d take 47 Tory rebels to defeat the motion. With 70 Tories having signed a letter against the Bill and calling for ‘full and unrestricted scrutiny’ — and others having come out against it too — it seems the coalition’s chances of winning tonight’s vote rests on persuading as many of them as possible (and, perhaps, some Labour MPs) to abstain (either by not voting or by voting both ‘Aye’ and ‘No’) rather than vote against.
The biggest coalition rebellion so far was, of course, on David Nuttall’s motion calling for an EU referendum — when 82 MPs (81 Tories and one Lib Dem) defied the government whips. In second place, we find another programme motion — this time on whether to debate the repeal of Section 5 of the Pullic Order Act 1986, which makes it an offence to use threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour. 43 MPs (41 Tories and two Lib Dems) broke with the government to vote for that debate.
Tonight’s vote may, if the higher predictions of Tory rebels (100+) come true, be the biggest coalition rebellion so far — and indeed, the biggest rebellion by Tory MPs since the war. That record, according to Cowley and Stuart, is currently held by a vote on John Major’s gun control legislation in early 1997, when 95 Tories rebelled. But it is very unlikely to be biggest rebellion of all time. That occurred when 139 Labour MPs voted against Tony Blair and the Iraq War in 2003. Here, to put tonight’s result in context, are some of the biggest ever Commons rebellions:
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