I wonder if the fall of Gavin Williamson is the latest evidence that British political parties are becoming harder to govern. It seems quite possible that his resignation is part of a story that will see Rishi Sunak struggle to command Conservative MPs to accept difficult choices on tax and spending. Any upset could even bother the bond market. Additionally, this story carries a warning for Keir Starmer.
Contrary to some of the media narratives visible today, the end of Williamson is more complicated than ‘Bad man who did bad things quits – Hoorah’. Sam Coates of Sky News has written a very good piece about the resignation of Sir Gavin, pointing out that for all the negatives of his public image, there’s a reason that four of the last five Conservative PMs considered him a useful and even necessary part of government.
In sum, Williamson is good at getting MPs to do what their leader wants them to do. In Sunak’s case, that meant making him leader unopposed. For Theresa May, it meant a confidence and supply deal that kept her and the Conservatives in office after the 2017 election disaster. You can see why leaders value the things that people like Williamson can do. He may not have held the title of chief whip in the Sunak government, but one of his main functions in that government was to do what whips do: make sure MPs do the leader’s bidding.
The process of getting MPs to follow instructions is rarely a pleasant one. Everyone knows the quote about making laws and making sausages. Well, Williamson is one of the people who stuffs the meat into the grinder. He enjoyed it too, which helps explain why he has so many enemies, who have now used his past conduct to undo him.
One perspective on this is: about time too. Politics needs to catch up with the modern world. In most workplaces, nasty messages, threats (implied and direct), coercion and fear are not considered acceptable management tools. Instead, most employers now seek to empower, support and care for colleagues, whose wellbeing and happiness is considered an important goal of management. I spend a bit of my time talking to members of the CEO-class and almost all of them name recruitment, retention, morale and development of staff as high priorities. The imperial CEO, barking at fearful underlings, is largely a myth – at least in publicly-owned companies.
So, the argument goes, politics needs to get with the programme, start treating MPs as adults and drop all the ‘dark arts’ nonsense. Then, maybe, we’ll get better people standing for parliament and politics and policy will get better.
I have a lot of time for that argument. I’ve spent most of my career in places that have a rather anachronistic approach to HR and management: fear and loathing are commonplace in parts of the media and politics, but they’re rarely the most effective way to achieve things. And undoubtedly, such a culture is exclusionary: people who can’t or won’t endure shouting and pressure don’t take part. Yes, people who can’t stand the heat aren’t in the kitchen. But that means a lot of talent goes unused.
The Williamson downfall is another sign that the culture of the outside world is slowly seeping into Westminster, changing political norms for the better. Ten years ago, Williamson’s messages to Wendy Morton wouldn’t have been news. They would have been seen as routine and unremarkable grumpiness between political colleagues. Twenty years ago, such communication would have been seen as insipid and bland; ‘bullying’ at that time meant the threat or reality of physical violence, probably involving alcohol.
And a decade or two earlier, such violence was simply part of the business of whipping. Walter Harrison, the Labour whip who kept the Callaghan government in office by keeping Labour MPs in line, famously grabbed a newly-elected Jack Straw by the testicles to explain to him the importance of following the whips’ instructions.
No one should lament the passing of such a culture. Nasty behaviour towards parliamentary staff and civil servants in particular has been tolerated for far too long, even at the very highest levels. I’ve known household-name politicians whose treatment of their staff would have got them sacked from any proper workplace. One in particular continues to enjoy a public reputation for towering moral integrity that is extremely hard to reconcile with his treatment of staff who couldn’t answer back.
But importing the norms of normal workplaces to Westminster raises some big questions, not least about how possible it will be for governments to actually govern. MPs are not employees of political parties. Technically, they’re not employees at all – they’re office-holders. The only people they ultimately answer to are their voters. That means they’re under no obligation to follow the party line. This is where whipping comes from: how do you get a large group of independent individuals (some of whom may well think they, rather than you, should be in charge) to do what you tell them to on a routine basis?
For decades, the answer has been a combination of moral suasion, charm, bribery and intimidation: vote the way we tell you to, or something bad will happen. Williamson, even his many enemies would agree, is very good at deploying that combination of tactics.
He’s not alone, of course. Really effective whips are always regarded with a measure of fear by colleagues. It is unnecessary (and unwise) for me to name them, but such MPs can be found on both the Tory and Labour benches, politicians who have done things that are at least comparable to the acts now attributed to Williamson.
No doubt members of the whip’s guild are looking at the Williamson saga with keen interest, wondering what is now acceptable and unacceptable. If a cabinet minister can fall because he sent nasty messages and said nasty things, just how much pressure can whips reasonably apply to MPs to make them fall into line? Their flocks will also be pondering the same thing.
This is how the end of Gavin Williamson increases political volatility. It says to MPs that they have even less reason to comply with the instructions of the whips and the leadership. This is likely to further accelerate the trend for MPs from newer parliamentary intakes to put their relationship with their constituents ahead of their obedience to the leadership.
Generations of MPs, who know only a political climate shaped by social media are less and likely to behave like ‘lobby fodder’, a phrase that is increasingly falling into disuse as a result. Instead, they are tribunes of their local area, willing to say no to things that might displease the voters who elected them.
For Rishi Sunak, that’s an obvious problem. His primary objective as PM is to hold together a fractious and divided Conservative party until the next general election. The path to that election leads through some very rocky terrain, starting with the Autumn Statement next week. A political environment in which Gavin Williamson is a weapon that cannot be deployed is an environment in which it will be even harder for Sunak and his team to make Tory MPs to accept a fiscal tightening programme that could include raising more money from inheritance tax.
This is why I think Williamson’s departure should be seen as a small negative for gilts. It means Sunak’s challenge in implementing his fiscal plans will be greater than it might currently appear.
And this is where the warning to Keir Starmer arises. It’s a reasonable bet that he’ll be PM after the next election, but probably without a huge majority. He will also inherit those same dismal public finances, forcing him too to make some hard choices and then demand his MPs support them. When and if that day comes, he may find himself very privately wishing he could deploy someone like Gavin Williamson, yet be unable to do so because those (healthy, positive) social norms of political conduct make doing so impossible.
The end of the ‘dark arts’ in politics is nothing to regret, but we should be clear-eyed about what it might mean. And one consequence could be greater political volatility and weaker governments.
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