At the end of the last Parliament, I was the only MP who had previously been in the Lobby – the elite cartel of political journalists, who rejoice in having a parliamentary pass (I was once the chief political correspondent of the Times). I used to be in the Press Gallery looking down at the Chamber, but as an MP I was in the Chamber looking up at the Press Gallery. Famously, journalists have power without responsibility – you can shift national debates and kill off careers without having to worry about the consequences. As an MP, you have responsibility without power: you are held accountable for pretty much everything, with virtually no power to do anything about any of it.
As an MP, you have responsibility without power
I was smug arriving at Parliament, thinking I knew all about it, having worked there before and written about it. But switching from poacher to gamekeeper, and now back again (I just lost my seat), I did learn a few things. Here are ten random lessons from my time as an MP:
1. No company would treat its staff in the way that MPs are treated. MPs are given virtually no support by Parliament and just expected to get on with it. They are allocated a budget of around £250,000 a year to cover their operational costs, and expected to know how to build a team and set up an office in the constituency. I have been CEO of two organisations, and so had experience of building teams and managing big budgets, but many MPs had never managed any budget or hired a single person. In the early days, frightened MPs were asking each other how you hired someone, and how to negotiate leases on commercial properties.
2. It is not a meritocracy. OK we know this, but it was slightly scary seeing it up front. Experience before Parliament counts for very little: we are all back to square one. Some of the least qualified people were put in positions of power because they happened to be friends with the right person, tick the right box in terms of constituency location, gender, political positioning – or are just simply lucky. However much planning goes into the reshuffle process, there is always a whiff of anarchy. Many talented MPs are left kicking their heels on the backbenches watching on as less talented ones make a hash of their ministerial roles. There is often little rhyme or reason about which minsters get cars or are made Right Honourable: many drive themselves mad thinking they have been hard done by.
3. Backbench MPs have more influence on government policy than ministers do, outside their area of responsibility. This is because (at least below cabinet) there is no structured mechanism for ministers to feed into policy making other than privately expressing their probably unwelcome views to fellow ministers, and they will always publicly support the government whatever it does (unless they resign). In contrast, backbench MPs can ask public questions, write articles and reports, convene roundtables, corral external stakeholders, administer WhatsApp groups, make a nuisance of themselves, demand meetings with cabinet ministers to put across their views, and ultimately rebel. As a backbencher, I was summoned to Number 10 with other backbenchers fairly regularly to meet successive prime ministers to talk about a range of issues, but that stopped when I became a minister.
4. Whipping matters a lot more in government than in opposition. Governments have to win every single vote, and their MPs bunking off (or rebelling) might mean the government will lose. In contrast, opposition parties lose every single vote, and if a few of their MPs disappear on foreign trips it won’t change the result: they will still lose. The Labour party would often put its MPs on a one-line whip, and they would go back to their constituencies, while the Conservative government retained a three-line whip insisting all its MPs remain in Parliament, just in case a vote was called which they needed to win.
5. The most important decisions are made behind the scenes, or in the House of Lords, not in public. The actual public votes in the Commons virtually never make a difference. Will the government accept this amendment, or do a deal on that one? By the time an issue emerges in public, whether on the floor of the house or in a Bill Committee, its fate has already been decided. Lots of lobby groups try to get amendments inserted at Bill Committee stage – when the legislation is voted on clause by clause – but the government has an overwhelming majority in Bill Committees, so it will always vote down an amendment it has not already decided (in private) to support. Bill Committees basically decide nothing.
6. Opposition parties put down a lot of amendments purely for social media purposes. They will put down an amendment along the lines of ’It is a crime to torture kittens’. But the government would oppose it because there are already laws covering this issue, and the government has a responsibility to ensure that legislation is as tidy as possible without many different laws saying the same thing. But the opposition party could then pump out social media posts saying: ‘Your Tory MP voted to let kittens be tortured.’ The point of legislation should not be to create misleading social media campaigns. The Speaker should do more to stop this happening.
Former special advisers are in a very privileged position
7. Former special advisers are in a very privileged position. Many new MPs will be former spads, who may not have a lot of life experience, but they have close working relationships with key decision makers in government. Many of the most meteoric promotions are former special advisers – jokingly dubbed the spadocracy.
8. At least on the Conservative benches, there is a fantastic camaraderie amongst MPs, far better than I have ever experienced in any other place I have worked. We all do a highly unusual and demanding job, which virtually no one else really understands, and we are all each other’s support network. Although MPs do compete on occasion – such as for spots on select committees – basically the default mode for most MPs within the same party is collaboration. We all call each other ‘colleagues’, and go out of our way to help each other. It is not just with advice, but practical things like covering another MP for a piece of delegated legislation. By comparison, journalism is a nest of vipers.
9. There is far less hierarchy amongst MPs than I expected: from the lowest backbencher to the most senior cabinet minister, we are all equals. Having lunch in the tea room, I would often find myself sitting next to the Chancellor or Home Secretary. Everyone knows that their position on the greasy pole is temporary – it seems almost everyone on the backbenches has been a minister at some point – so basically we learn to be respectful to everyone. Be nice to people on the way up because you might meet them on the way down. Besides, you might need their support for your leadership bid.
There is far less hierarchy amongst MPs than I expected
10. There is no such thing as a standard MP. Almost all are really interesting characters. They all do their job in different ways, some dedicated to constituency work, others putting their energies into parliamentary campaigns on issues of concern, some love speaking in every chamber debate (Jim Shannon, yes I am talking about you), and others rarely do, some have decided to do politics like a team sport (don’t play against your team), while others have decided just to be rugged individualists. I remember when I first planned to rebel being asked by a more experienced colleague what my rebelling strategy was – would I rebel often and lose influence with each one, or rarely for greater impact? I remember saying to one MP that I admired how he played the role (informative critical friend of the government) and he loved the acknowledgement. Just as football fans can talk about how footballers play the game, MPs can discuss how other MPs play their role.
It has been an enormous privilege being an MP and a minister, and obviously I did not get the result I wanted. But will I do it again? At this point, it is difficult to tell. But politics is an addiction with no known cure.
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