Keir Starmer Needs Checks and Balances. Britain Has Few

On Tuesday, Keir Starmer suspended the whip from seven Labour MPs because they voted for an amendment regretting that the Kings’ speech didn’t include a promise to scrap the two-child benefit cap.

In itself, this act is extraordinary. I don’t think Tony Blair or Gordon Brown ever suspended the whip because an MP rebelled on a policy matter. When John Major and Boris Johnson withdrew the whip from Tory opponents during battles over the Maastricht treaty and Brexit, this was only after long-running rounds of rebellions which threatened government strategy over major constitutional matters – not a little amendment expressing regret.

It’s true that prime ministers have only occasionally faced rebellions on their own benches in response to a monarch’s speech, but it’s not unknown. David Cameron did in both 2013 and 2016, and Blair did in 2004. In 1946, 45 Labour MPs voted against Clement Attlee on an amendment on conscription. The whip wasn’t suspended in any of these cases. 

But Starmer’s unprecedented parliamentary authoritarianism also needs to be seen within a broader context: that he’s the most powerful prime minister in modern times.

Technically, Starmer’s majority is only the second biggest since World War Two (he was just pipped by Blair in 1997). But he faces much more fragmented opposition benches than Blair, with many fewer Tories, and 98 Lib Dem, SNP, Green, Plaid Cymru, Reform and independent MPs compared to 56 in Blair’s first term (not counting NI MPs). The gap between Starmer’s Labour team and the Tories’ – 290 seats – is much larger than Blair’s 246.

Britain’s political system fuses the executive with the legislature, creating a very powerful central government. When this system was developed in the 18th and 19th centuries, parties were looser alliances of MPs. Already, over the last century, prime ministers have used their positions as party leaders to exert increasing control over the legislature. Starmer’s boot in the face of a minor rebellion in his party is a step towards central government being even less accountable than it already is.

In the British system, there is meant to be a second check on prime ministers. Officially, the executive isn’t just the prime minister, it’s the whole cabinet. Before Blair, this was still the case in practice. Even under Margaret Thatcher’s robust leadership, cabinet meetings could be raucous affairs, with ministers arguing over policy.

As Anthony Barnett recounts in his book The Lure of Greatness, at Blair’s first cabinet meeting, two colleagues asked questions about matters they thought important. Blair was furious, and let it be known this wasn’t to happen again – in future, all questions should be sent in advance. As then cabinet secretary Robin Butler told Barnett, this was the moment effective cabinet government was killed in Britain. Had collective decision-making still been a thing, it’s unlikely the Iraq war would have happened. But that’s another story.

However, while Blair didn’t have to contend with a full cabinet, he did have Brown to get past: a powerful second pole in his cabinet who he couldn’t sack (Brown had his own networks of loyalty in the party, and may have been able to take the leadership from Blair). Likewise, in Thatcher’s early years, when she had a large majority, she had to carefully balance her cabinet with ‘wets’.

Starmer, on the other hand, has arrived in office in the era of the presidential prime minister Blair created, and has no heavyweight counterbalance in his cabinet. 

The most obvious analogy is with the only other prime minister to have had a chunky majority since Blair left office – Johnson after the 2019 election. But he was so quickly gummed up (and laid down) with Covid that we only got a slight taste of what that would have looked like in normal times.

With Starmer moving to crush dissent in his parliamentary party – both with deselections before the election and now suspensions after – we’re entering new constitutional territory. Britain’s lack of a codified system of government means we don’t have the protections you would expect in a normal democracy. Starmer is way too boring to be a demagogue. But, as his home secretary announces a new crackdown on migrants, we should be equally wary of the dull disciplinarian.