Why a large Commons majority doesn’t make Boris Johnson safe from Tory rebels

A big election win doesn’t stop a prime minister facing a turbulent time in the House of Commons, writes Sean O'Grady

MPs want to time-limit the Chinese firm’s access to the UK’s planned 5G network (Reuters)

Whatever the opposite of the gift that keeps on giving is, that is what Huawei represents to the Johnson government. It is both cause and catalyst for the first Conservative parliamentary rebellion since the general election.

A group of former minsters and other backbenchers, mostly tending towards the Eurosceptic, Atlanticist wing of the Tory party, are so upset by the Chinese company’s access to the UK’s planned 5G network that they plan to lay an amendment to the draft legislation next Tuesday that will time-limit Huawei’s involvement (ie not beyond 31 December 2022).

They are perhaps motivated in part by the prospects for the putative UK-US trade deal, which may be hampered by this Chinese complication. Donald Trump was reportedly “apoplectic” when Boris Johnson called the US president to tell him the news about the UK government’s plan. The Huawei issue seems destined to haunt ministers for years to come.

Will the rebellion succeed? And what does it tell us about the next few years of parliamentary life?

The rebels include such luminaries as Iain Duncan Smith, David Davis, Owen Paterson, Damian Green, Tom Tugendhat (chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee) and 1922 Committee chair Graham Brady. However, they might not reach the level of support needed to defeat the government and they cannot assume every opposition MP will vote with them. The Tory rebels appear to want to “put down a marker” as much as anything.

But that does not mean the Johnson government will find things plain sailing. In contrast to Theresa May’s 2017-19 government and the first Johnson administration, which were at times very far away from any kind of parliamentary majority, superficially the “new” Johnson government looks in a better position to get its business (eg Brexit) done.

To be fair, this would certainly be the case compared with the stonking parliamentary defeats suffered by May over Brexit – a loss by 230 votes in the 16 January vote on the withdrawal agreement was an all-time record.

Johnson can also look to 108 new Conservative MPs, who may (to varying degrees) credit the prime minister personally for their arrival in the House of Commons. The Tories’ significant gains and so many departing incumbents (Philip Hammond, Ken Clarke, Amber Rudd, Dominic Grieve, David Gauke, Nicholas Soames…) has produced a bumper crop of new faces. Johnson may also find the new speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, more amenable than John Bercow and less likely to facilitate awkward procedures.

Yet MPs can be a fickle and ungrateful bunch too. As John Major once observed, the backbenches are full of the “dispossessed and the never-possessed”. Although many of the prime minister’s foes were cleared out last December, as time goes on he too will accumulate a cabal of “bastards” (in Major-speak) ready to cause trouble for him. Some issues, such as the BBC or NHS, are especially sensitive to public opinion.

There is a paradox, though. A large majority can tempt some MPs to rebel when they know there is little chance of the government actually losing in the Commons, let alone falling from power. And some issues can overwhelm even the most apparently secure parliamentary positions. Tony Blair was the last prime minister before Johnson to enjoy healthy majorities, but in 2005 he found himself on the wrong end of a vote on detaining terror suspects for up to 90 days. The entire opposition and dissident Labour MPs voted against him to overturn the plan, his nominal majority of 66 from the 2005 election definitively submerged. Even though he was sustained by large majorities between 1997 and 2005, Blair also suffered major, though not fatal, embarrassments over benefits reform, tuition fees and the Iraq War. Politics does not simply cease when the arithmetic in the Commons alters.

If the issue is compelling enough, and maybe non-partisan, a government can be powerless to prevent defeat. Margaret Thatcher suffered her share of close shaves, even after her landslide general election victories, but she mostly survived them. The peculiarly emotive, theological issue of Sunday trading did move sufficient god-fearing Tories to defeat her in 1986, demolishing her 140-plus overall majority. Oddly, that Thatcher defeat was echoed again in March 2016, when David Cameron’s slim majority was insufficient to prevent a similar defeat, suggesting that the nature of the issue at stake can be far more relevant than mere calculus.

Conversely, a slim majority can help government (and opposition) whips maintain and enforce discipline. This was the case with the Wilson and Callaghan governments of the 1970s, and again, at times, with Major’s government after 1992. Rebels were threatened with a general election and (in the case of those in marginal seats) the loss of their own jobs if they did not toe the line. Thus, against the odds, Major did manage to get his Maastricht Treaty bill through parliament.

So the chances of the Johnson government managing to get through the next four or five turbulent years unscathed are slim. There will probably be defeats, not least because so many Tory MPs have acquired the habit of rebelling “on principle” when they don’t like the look of things. Mostly, though, even the most “Spartan” of backbench warriors fall into line when a formal vote of no confidence is called (as they did in May and Major’s day). The real danger for Johnson – himself once a bit of a rebel – is if his MPs decide they need a new leader, rather than an early election. That should never be ruled out.