Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The writer is a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London
In 2022, when the MP for Bury South left the Conservatives to join Labour, Nigel Farage called it a “disgraceful episode”. It was, he said, “dishonourable” to change parties without resigning to fight a by-election. When he’d been leader of Ukip, they’d insisted that MPs defecting to them had to face their voters. “It is a complete insult to voters for MPs to have the arrogance to think that it’s them they voted for when the truth is most of us vote for or against the main party leaders.”
So I am really looking forward to the forthcoming by-elections in East Wiltshire, Newark, Romford, and Fareham and Waterlooville. Or perhaps not. Because none of the recent defectors to Reform UK has said they will be contesting their seats.
Both constitutional theory — and custom and practice — are on the side of those sitting tight. Since 1979, just three MPs have resigned their seats to fight a by-election after changing party. We elect individuals; the party label is incidental.
We used to have by-elections when MPs were made ministers, but that practice was abolished a century ago. MPs frequently invoke Edmund Burke’s famous speech to the electors of Bristol: “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”
Bugger Burke, you might say. Why should a speech from 1774, which anyway was a polemic made in response to someone arguing the very opposite, determine how MPs behave today? It is not a valid description of how MPs are chosen by voters or how they then behave when they get to Westminster. Even if personal votes have become more important in recent years, it’s the party bulk vote that gives the MP their ticket to ride. And while the rules of Westminster mostly treat them as atomistic individuals, they don’t vote like that. Backbench rebellions may have become more common in recent decades, but cohesion is still the norm.
So Farage was on to something in 2022. A petition calling for by-elections to be called automatically when MPs defect to another party, recently cleared the 100,000 mark and will be considered for debate in parliament. It’s easy enough to see the appeal.
But what about an MP who loses the whip and becomes independent? Are they forced to resign? What if they stay in the party but begin to vote completely differently? What if, rather than defecting, Robert Jenrick had walked around with a T-shirt saying “Kemi’s Rubbish. Vote Nigel”? (His actual behaviour wasn’t far removed from this.) Or if he’d become independent but just happened to vote the Reform line, appear at Reform events and so on?
Countries with anti-defection rules often also have very strong party discipline. Indian MPs, for example, are barred from changing parties and from voting against the party line. I am not sure that’s the direction we want to go in.
There may be a compromise. One of the most effective constitutional reforms made by the 2010-15 coalition government was to allow voters to recall MPs in cases of wrongdoing. So rather than automatically causing a by-election, a change in party status could trigger a recall petition, perhaps with a higher bar than the current 10 per cent of eligible voters. If enough constituents are exercised by what the MP has done, they get a by-election. It would have the merit of allowing voters to decide, without necessarily incurring all the costs of a by-election.
It would also deal with the in-between cases. An MP who lost the whip because they had told the party leadership where to get off might find voters saw no need for a ballot. One who was turfed out of the party because they couldn’t keep their trousers on may find their constituents less forgiving.