The World Ahead 2022
The British government’s main opposition will be its back-benchers
Ideological differences within Tory ranks will start to show
BY RIGHTS, BORIS JOHNSON should have an easy ride in 2022. The government enjoys a majority of 80, its biggest since Margaret Thatcher’s time. The cabinet is packed with simpering poodles. Sir Keir Starmer is still trying to drag the Labour Party, kicking and screaming, out of the far-left wilderness. And Mr Johnson has defined an exciting and challenging agenda—“levelling up” one of Europe’s most regionally and socially divided countries. Yet the prime minister is nevertheless in for a difficult year, with trouble coming not from Sir Keir’s opposition party, but from his own backbenches.
The Conservative Party has all it needs to cause its nominal master trouble: a clique of hardened rebels; internal divisions over everything from spending to foreign policy; a weak Downing Street operation; and a habit of rebellion. Party bosses calculate that, thanks to growing disloyalty, the government’s working majority is not 80 but more like 20—about the same number that John Major had during a premiership that was characterised by perpetual rebellion and plotting and by a succession of knife-edge votes.
Why is a party that is famous for its appetite for power becoming so unruly? One reason is that it has been in office either on its own or as part of a coalition since 2010. Every year in power adds to the number of MPs who can’t be disciplined either because they’ve had their time in office and been discarded (such as Theresa May and David Davis) or because they have given up on ever being promoted. Another reason is that MPs are increasingly acting as political entrepreneurs rather than cogs in the party machine: their road to success lies in building their individual brands through media appearances (as Mr Johnson himself did).
The chairman of the 1922 Committee will be a central figure in 2022
But the biggest reason is ideological: the Conservative Party is divided down the middle between its traditional supporters in the prosperous shires and its new-found supporters in the industrial north. Shire Tories claim nobody joins the Conservative Party because they want to raise taxes and expand the state. But the Brexit earthquake gave the Tories a cohort of working-class voters who are more dependent on the state than its traditional voters. It also gave the party a new agenda—levelling up by providing better opportunities for the left behind, even if that means higher taxes and looser planning laws.
These internal divisions make it hard to predict which rebellions will take off: some MPs will revolt against spending cuts (such as the squeeze on universal credit, a social-security payment), while others will revolt against higher taxes and spending. But two things are certain. The first is that Downing Street and the whips’ office will have to work hard to impose party discipline, using both threats and rewards (such as knighthoods). The other is that
Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 Committee, the backbenchers’ trade union, will be a central figure in politics: far more important, for the time being, than most cabinet ministers, and perhaps more important than the official leader of the opposition.
Adrian Wooldridge: Bagehot columnist, The Economist■
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition of The World Ahead 2022 under the headline “They’re not behind you!”