Numbers Game. Boris Johnson’s parliamentary position may be more secure than it seems

“All is fair,” Michael Foot conceded, when he was the Leader of the House of Commons in the very late Callaghan era, “in love, war and parliamentary procedure.” That thesis is about to be tested in the weeks ahead.
This is in part because the combined forces of the Conservative Party and their not entirely predictable allies in the Democratic Unionist Party now have a majority of precisely one over the collective forces of all of their opponents. That could easily become a deficit over the next few weeks as an extremely estranged Conservative MP, Dr Phillip Lee, who is a staunch advocate for staying in the European Union, has already publicly declared that he intends to use the summer recess to contemplate defecting to the Liberal Democrats (personally I would find reading a good book of better value, but each to their own). If he switches (which appears probable) then Boris Johnson would find himself heading a minority administration.
That might be countermanded if ex-Labour, now Independent, MP Jared O’Mara (who defeated Nick Clegg in Sheffield Hallam in 2017) resigns from Parliament once the House is back in early September as he has announced. Were that to occur, and until the by-election to replace him is held, the numbers would be tied if Dr Lee does indeed leave the Conservative Party as he has indicated.
What are the real figures?
Strictly speaking, the numbers are already level. There are 311 Conservative MPs plus 10 DUP MPs on one side of the House, and an assortment of 321 Opposition MPs on the other. Then there are the seven Sinn Fein MPs who do not take their seats in the House of Commons, and the Speaker. And there is the convention that the three Deputy Speakers do not vote in House proceedings, and as two of them are Labour MPs and only one is a Conservative (the balance is as it is because the Speaker was a Conservative MP – albeit a distinctly maverick one – at the time of his elevation in 2009) that allows for the Conservatives and the DUP to claim their majority of a single Member of Parliament.
Which does not sound like a margin of safety really. The hairy numbers are amplified further by the threat of a no confidence motion from Labour as soon as the House returns, the prospective need to find a majority for any alternative Brexit deal in October, and the risk of the House of Commons doing another ‘Cooper-Letwin’ and imposing an extension of Article 50 on the Government to avoid a no-deal Brexit on 31 October despite the Prime Minister’s ‘do or die’ bravado on the matter. If all that you did was glance at the numbers in the House of Commons then you would presume that this was a Government that was all but doomed and quaking in fear of defeat at any moment. This is not the impression that Mr Johnson seems to be offering. He is right to be more relaxed about the situation.
The Official Opposition does not want to see the Government defeated
Jeremy Corbyn is in a very difficult spot at the moment. As outlined in BVCA Insight last week, his party is in a fairly dire position, with his own public standing a striking liability. Yet if in the abstract the Government reaches a moment in September when it does not, along with the DUP, command an outright majority then the pressure on Mr Corbyn to call a vote of no confidence (even if it is clear that he will not win) will be enormous. That the Labour Party conference is at the end of next month means that it will be even harder for him to avoid throwing down the gauntlet.
If he does not, then he will be tormented by Jo Swinson for the Liberal Democrats, Nicola Sturgeon for the SNP and, with lesser impact, Caroline Lucas for the Green Party. All three of these figures have very sound reasons for favouring an early election as all believe their parties would make progress predominantly at the expense of Labour (the story in Scotland is more complicated as the SNP would probably advance their numbers in an instant election at the expense of both Labour and the Conservatives).
So, Labour might feel compelled to move a vote of no confidence but it would not throw the kitchen sink at winning it. It is entirely possible to go through the motions on such a parliamentary showdown but not move heaven and earth to ensure that every Labour MP is forced to cast their ballot on the day concerned. Besides which, even if 100% of them did it may not matter.
The numbers in the ‘Not Conservative or DUP’ camp are extremely complicated
If one excludes the Deputy Speakers then there are as of today 320 MPs who are either from the Conservative Party (310) or the DUP (10) and 319 MPs who constitute the Opposition. This is a more complex scenario than it might seem. The ‘Opposition’ consists of 298 MPs who might be thought of as part of the ‘formal’ Opposition in the sense that their opposition to the Conservative Party in any vote of confidence at any moment can be safely assumed. These are the 245 Labour MPs in the House of Commons plus the 35 SNP members, the 13 Liberal Democrat MPs, four from Plaid Cymru and the sole Green MP. Even if Labour hearts were not in it, this is the basic anti-Tory voting bloc.
In a novelty for UK politics, nonetheless, there are an atypically large tally of 21 MPs who come in various shades of ‘independent’. They constitute the five MPs from The Independent Group for Change (all formerly from ‘Change UK’, launched earlier this year – four ex-Labour, one a former Conservative MP), five MPs from ‘The Independents’ (four of whom were part of Change UK – three Labour plus one Conservative who have subsequently been joined by John Woodcock MP, who was suspended from Labour over allegations of sexual impropriety and then resigned from the party), 10 different sorts of independent Independents (more on them in a moment), and Frank Field MP, who is technically a member for the Birkenhead Social Justice Party, but as he looks as if he is the only member of said organisation, he can legitimately be labelled as an ‘Independent’ one thinks.
Of this collection of 21 idiosyncratic individuals, only one (Lady Sylvia Herman from North Down in Northern Ireland) was actually elected as an Independent in 2017. All the rest of them have arrived there either by choosing to leave their former party in the course of the past two years or because they have been suspended from their previous party during that time for various offences or the suggestion of offences (inappropriate sexual conduct being the main cause for their troubles).
It is far from obvious that either the Independent Group for Change or The Independents would automatically back Mr Corbyn in a vote of no confidence. Mr Field, who we will charitably treat as a separate sort of Independent, is adamantly against the leader of his former party and was a Leave backer at the 2016 referendum. Is he really itching to throw Boris out of office before 31 October?
The 10 independent Independents (do concentrate, there will be a test on this at the end) include a mainstream Conservative, Charlie Elphicke, who had the Whip withdrawn from him because he will be on trial for sexual offences as of next month but will presumably return to his old colours if he is acquitted, and two former Conservative MPs (Sarah Wollaston and Nick Boles) who while alienated from their old abode, might be reluctant to vote against the Government in a no confidence vote.
Then there is another renegade former Labour MP called Kelvin Hopkins (who backed Leave in 2016 but has been hit by sexual conduct allegations since), a more centrist ex-Labour MP Ivan Lewis (more sexual accusations) who openly loathes Mr Corbyn and represents a pro-Leave constituency, and one more ex-Labour MP Ian Austin, who has damned his ex-leader as a rampant anti-Semite and voted for Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement on all three occasions.
To add to the spice of life there is also an ex-Lib Dem MP called Stephen Lloyd who, although he was an advocate of Remain in 2016, promised his electorate in Eastbourne (a pro-Leave seat) that he would back their wishes when it came to the Withdrawal Agreement and had to depart the Lib Dems as a consequence.
All in all, the chances of every one of this bunch lining up against the PM on a vote of confidence look really quite slim. In many ways, despite how matters might seem, this is the best of all worlds for Mr Johnson. If he wants an excuse for an early election, he can cite the fact that he has only has a majority of one, zero, minus one or whatever as a reason to go to the country. If he does not want to hit the hustings then he is unlikely to be forced to do so by a vote of no confidence.
Tim Hames
Director General, BVCA