The most famous parliamentary defector is notable not only for who he was, but because he did it twice. When Winston Churchill ratted from the Unionists to the Liberals in 1904, he argued it was because of his desire to preserve Free Trade against the Tories’ dabbling with Tariff Reform. When he switched back twenty years later, he justified it out of his desire for “the successful defeat of socialism”, at a point when the Liberals were propping up the first Labour government.
Of course, the principles that Churchill enunciated weren’t the only consideration in his ratting. In both cases, Blenheim’s favourite son was leaning into the prevailing political wind. That included bailing on a Tory party exhausted by the Boer War, or to scurry from the third-place Liberals – and in both cases, the move paid off. Churchill was in the Cabinet within two years of the 1906 Liberal landslide, and Stanley Baldwin made him Chancellor following the Conservatives’ 1924 victory.
In Churchill’s moves are encapsulated the two over-riding reasons for MPs to cross the floor of the House of Commons: high principle and low politics. It is very easy to make a moral stand against the divisions and turpitudes of your newly-jilted party if switching sides also improves your chance of holding your seat. Something Christian Wakeford, our former contributor and new Labour MP, must know well, with his 402-vote majority in Bury South.
So when we hear that “Labour sources” having been telling journalists that three Red Wall Tory MPs –all first elected in 2019 – are considering switching to Starmer, one can understand that competing instincts in their minds. With slim majorities in historically Labour areas, a swing against them at the next election would easily see them unemployed – and they are hardly the only Tories worried about the party’s “ideological direction” after Johnson’s recent travails.
Usually, a spate of defections is a sign a party is in the doldrums. Whether it was Reg Prentice jumping ship from a Labour government in hoc to radical left-wingers and terrified of the unions, a spate of Labour MPs (and one Tory) fleeing Michael Foot and Margaret Thatcher to the SDP, Shaun Woodward seeking promotion under Tony Blair rather than William Hague, or Soubry, Umunna et al fleeing to Change UK Group of Independents (or whatever it was), it is a choice pressed by electoral considerations.
Then again, in each of those examples, one can also identify the principle to match the obvious opportunism. Prentice had faced a local party beset by militant activists, and moved as a precursor of the defence of social democracy that later spurred the defections of Jenkins, Owen, and co. Similarly, the Independent Group of UK Change all sought to defend a vision of social and economic liberalism threatened by May and Corbyn. Even Woodward had supported repealing Section 28 against Hague.
So it would hardly be a surprise if a few more Red Wallers plan to “do a Wakeford” and scuttle off to Starmer’s merry band of milquetoast Marxists. With Brexit largely dead as a division, and with the gaps between Tory and Labour economically reaching Butskellite levels of thin, moving to Labour is also easier for MPs from an ideological perspective than any point in a decade. That was the case even before the Prime Minister’s tanking popularity.
Yet these potential defections may also be something different from those of even the recent past. It has become a cliché of sorts to mention that the Red Wallers are different from the historical mean of Tory MPs. That is obvious. Northern accents, state educations, and an unfamiliarity with the greasy pole draw a sharp contrast with those teenage pinstripe enthusiasts who swept from public school to Oxbridge, to the Conservative Research Department, to a safe seat, ministerial car, and Cabinet spot.
But the differences do not stop there. Seats like Leigh, Blyth Valley, or Bishop Auckland – and this is no comment on the defection potential of their respective MPs – have never been Tory before, and traditionally saw the Labour vote weighed rather than counted. So a first-term Conservative MP would have more reason than most to be worried about their future. For all we hear about how awful being an MP is today, the job has enough attractions for one to think how best to keep it.
More than a narrow-minded preoccupation with job security, though, is how the historically unusual nature of many of these MPs might make them thing about their seats. If you come from a non-traditional Tory background, never expected to be an MP, were driven into politics by Brexit, are not as committedly Conservative as a teenage Thatcher enthusiast, and are genuinely passionate about your local area and constituency, why would you cling to an unpopular party if you can keep serving the community you love by switching to Labour?
Going through the biographies of numerous Red Wallers, it is fascinating to see how a few were Vote Leave activists or Ukippers. Some only joined the Conservative Party relatively recently. In the rush of selection in 2019, they found themselves thrust into candidacy in many seats considered almost-impossible targets. They are not the truest blue of Tories, if that means that afore-mentioned pinstripes and Thatcher posters. Not necessarily a bad thing, if one wants a more diverse parliamentary party. But their loyalty is not of the traditional kind.
But in having been politically adventurous before entering parliament, the Red Wallers are hardly unusual. We have a Prime Minister who became President of the Oxford Union by playing up to the SDP. We have a Home Secretary who formerly headed the press office of the Referendum Party. We have a Foreign Secretary who was President of the Oxford University Liberal Democrats, was a member of their national executive youth committee, and called for a republic at their conference.
That isn’t all. Did you know, for instance, that George Eustice was a UKIP candidate at the 1999 European elections? Or that Michael Gove campaigned for Labour at the 1983 general election? Or that Douglas Ross was a young member of the Scottish Liberal Democrats? In all these cases, youthful enthusiasm for different strengths of left and right faded into firm Tory blue, as common sense, political calculation, and the odd job offer from CCHQ arrived.
We should therefore hesitate before saying that, for example, since Mark Jenkinson or Lee Anderson were respectively members of UKIP and Labour within the last decade, they are both ripe for ratting again today. Wakefords are the exception, not the rule. Just because the Red Wallers might not resemble the average Carlton Club member does not make them particularly vulnerable to Starmer’s siren songs. The number who have come from outside politics are outnumbered by the number who are former councillors, activists, and candidates.
What is the case, however, is that the average MP today is likely to be more rebellious and independent-minded than previous generations. The push to bring in people from outside of politics, begun under Cameron and accelerated by the referendum, has resulted in a number of atypical MPs amongst the former SPADs and council leaders. But a louder voice and tendency to rebel does not automatically translate into a hankering for a Labour government – and it must be remembered that, before his defection, Wakeford was mostly very loyal.
After all notorious Tory defectors of the past have hardly been atypical MPs. Shaun Woodward, Christopher Brocklebank-Fowler, Quentin Davies, Peter Temple-Morris, Emma Nicholson – their social profiles were not too far distant from an identikit Tory. The latter has even returned to her ancestral party, like Churchill. And if even Churchill could be tempted to abandon the Conservatives from time to time, don’t be surprised if the odd Red Waller will be too. In some cases, of course, it might even be the most traditionally Tory thing about them.