The dust is settling on one of the most unpredictable elections in at least a generation. David Cameron has won the Conservatives a majority for the first time since 1992, throwing Labour back to behind where it ended up after the 1987 election and even making it literally impossible to decimate the remaining LibDems in parliament (if we are being pedantic…).
Given he has only a narrow majority, there has already been a vigorous debate on how fractious this government will be. Here is a summary of the debate with some analysis from us.
Do we expect a strong, stable government?
- Cameron has delivered a majority. One of the key reasons for indiscipline in 2010 – that no Tory MP felt any gratitude to Cameron for their seats – has been mitigated. In the early months at least, we expect a reasonable amount of unity.
- As a self-declared pragmatist, David Cameron’s instincts are for compromise and consensus rather than for taking on factions within his own party as Thatcher, Major and Blair.
- Cabinet appointments made so far point to an attempt at continuity, and clear attempts at reassurances to the right of his party.
- The promise of an EU referendum may bind the party together, for the first 18 months at least.
- The Fixed-term Parliaments Act strengthens the hand of a PM with a narrow majority – allowing him to risk failure on key votes if necessary, without the fear of needing to resign.
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There is a majority, of sorts:
- The Conservatives now have 331 MPs, giving them a majority of 12 over the 318 MPs from other parties who could vote against them.
- Whilst a simple majority, remember that this is five MPs less than John Major had in 1992, and he experienced serious backbench rebellions after six months.
- In each of the last five parliaments there has been an average of 15 by-elections, with on average five by-elections in each of those parliaments involving Conservative incumbent MPs.
- The Conservatives lost all but one of their MPs in those by-elections when they were in government (eight between 1992-1997, and four between 2010-2015).
- You might therefore expect the Conservative’s majority to get down to about half a dozen MPs over the course of the next parliament.
How likely is it that Conservative MPs will hold the line?
- There are three big issues that will, to different degrees, make Conservative backbenchers restless: Europe, spending cuts and constitutional reform.
- Europe holds the potential to divide the party like no other issue, as we have seen in the past. It is already being reported that up to 60 MPs are preparing to demand a parliamentary veto over any EU law – clearly undeliverable by the PM. Cameron will be under intense pressure while he attempts his renegotiation, and it is not clear how the party will behave when it comes to the referendum itself.
- If you believe the IFS, the Conservatives pre-election spending plans have a £30bn blackhole. More cynical observers have suggested that promises such as a further £10bn welfare cuts were never intended to be implemented – and the Conservatives would claim they had been ‘forced’ into dropping them by coalition partners. Osborne now has a difficult task to make the sums add up. He will do so against a backdrop of global problems – possible Grexit, weak US and Chinese economies, and inflation as we see some revision in the oil price.
- Constitutional reform within Britain holds the possibility of further infighting. As we saw the morning after the Scottish referendum, many English Conservatives strongly favour a restriction of Scottish MP voting rights. But other Conservatives have been left worried for the state of the union by the party’s election campaign and aggressive anti-SNP messaging. Nervous Tories will be joined by the DUP – highly concerned by the Tory leadership’s apparent carelessness for unionist sentiment – and whose votes Cameron will normally expect to rely on in this parliament.
- Moreover, Cameron’s group of MPs is by nature rebellious. 2010-15 was the most rebellious Commons in the post-war era, and not just because of the LibDems.
Cameron certainly has challenges ahead of him. The policy programme that awaits him is contentious and heavy with major constitutional challenges. He should however, have reason to be optimistic on balance. He clearly has political momentum behind him. The opposition is – SNP excepted – in tatters. He has a new intake of MPs who should be loyal to him, and many re-elected MPs with a renewed faith in his power. Crucially, those issues on which his backbenchers are most rebellious are also those on which they are least aligned with the opposition. Finally, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act means he can risk failure with less fear of a forced resignation. So Cameron’s government will not be easy, it is unlikely to be popular, and it may be riven with factionalism, infighting and rebellion. But he has good reason to be confident that it can be stable, nonetheless.