This transcript is automatically generated. There are consequently minor errors and the text is not formatted according to our style guide. If you wish to reference or cite the transcript please first check against the audio version. Timestamps are provided for ease of reference.

Intro: [00:00:00] You are listening to Parliament Matters, a Hansard Society production, supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Learn more at hansardsociety.org.uk/pm.

Ruth Fox: Welcome to Parliament Matters, the podcast about the institution at the heart of our democracy, Parliament itself. I'm Ruth Fox.

Mark D'Arcy: And I'm Mark D'Arcy.

Ruth Fox: And in this special edition, we're going to look at the business of setting up shop as Leader of the Opposition.

Mark D'Arcy: Well, it's a new political era, we have a new Prime Minister, and now we have a new Leader of the Opposition. Kemi Badenoch had her first stint at Prime Minister's Question Time, to, it has to be said, mixed reviews. But one Prime Minister's Question Time doesn't the term of a Leader of the Opposition make.

There's an awful lot that goes into being the Leader of His Majesty's Loyal [00:01:00] Opposition. So what kind of things go into that operation? How is strategy determined? How Personnel decisions, like who's in the shadow cabinet and who's not, made. Well, with us to talk about all those questions and much, much more is Nigel Fletcher, one of the founders of the Centre for Opposition Studies, a political historian who's written books like the Not Quite Prime Ministers, a study of opposition leaders who didn't make it into Downing Street, and another book called Institutionalised Dissent about the role of opposition, plus another one still called How to Be in Opposition. So, Nigel, this is obviously very, very much your subject and you can see whole new chapters of your various books unfolding as Kemi Badenoch starts taking the decisions that will shape how she takes on Keir Starmer's government.

Nigel Fletcher: Yes, indeed. I wonder whether I should perhaps set up a book stall in sort of the reception of Portcullis House for new shadow ministers. to find my pearls of wisdom if they're of any use to them. But yes, it's one of the great delights, having made my sort of life studying opposition, which gets very little attention, really, [00:02:00] in the study of politics, when this cycle comes around and suddenly people are very interested in it and want to examine what is the role of the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow cabinet, and particularly for a party that's been in government for a long time, when they go into opposition, the real shock that they have of finding themselves without the support they're used to in government, and trying to get used to a whole new skill set, it suddenly focuses people's attention a lot more on this topic.

Mark D'Arcy: What are your impressions, first of all, of Kemi Badenoch at the very start of her term? Do you see the kind of the ship of opposition being constructed in the shipyard, if you like?

Nigel Fletcher: Yes, I think she has got a bit of a challenge that others perhaps haven't had in the past, that she has no experience of being in opposition.

This does tend to happen for leaders who come in after a long period of their party being in government.

Mark D'Arcy: She's only been in Parliament since 2017.

Nigel Fletcher: Yeah, indeed. And so she's had that sort of accelerated experience of being a cabinet minister in different departments. Parliament itself is a very difficult thing for people to get their head around and going into government very [00:03:00] quickly after that.

So just learning the ropes in government is one thing. But ministers, as I'm sure you've noticed, sometimes don't pay Parliament the attention that they should. And in opposition, Parliament is where it's at. So just getting to grips with Parliament, despite the fact that you might have been in for a few years and think you know what you're doing, suddenly you find yourself, you're not often Whitehall in your government department.

You're on the parliamentary estate all the time and you're having to operate as a parliamentary figure. But I think she has some interesting qualities that you do need in opposition. The one that's been commented on a lot is the fact that she's very good at attracting attention. She says interesting things.

Yeah, exactly. And this is something I've heard from those who do focus groups and things that people listen to her in clips that they play them in focus groups. They're interested in what she has to say. They want to hear more from her. Now that's a double edged sword because on the one hand, it's, obviously something you need to do in opposition is to cut through.

One of the big shocks that a party has going into opposition is how few people are paying any [00:04:00] attention to them whatsoever. So a leader who's able to get some attention is a good thing. But of course, usually in government, most government press officers spend their time trying to avoid their minister being interesting at all.

You know, being interesting is something that is usually a warning sign. So there is a problem there that if you're going in and being interesting, Often the way you're being interesting is by saying something controversial or unplanned. And so that's a bit of a risk, but um, she has this reputation that she's developed of being a straight talking person.

She said in her conference speech during the leadership contest, and indeed again, when she became leader, it's time to start telling the truth. And she has this brand of wanting to be a plain speaking person. So I think from the outset, we know nothing else necessarily about how she's going to organise the opposition apart from her shadow cabinet that she's just appointed.

But certainly one thing we do know about her is that she's someone who likes to present herself as being plain speaking. And that's something which perhaps augurs well for her in the first job of an opposition, which is to actually get noticed.

Ruth Fox: Well, Nigel, what are actually the [00:05:00] resources available to the leader of the opposition so they get a million pounds in short money, essentially public funding, for the office of the Leader of the Opposition.

They get some additional short money as a party for the number of seats they have and the share of the vote they got at the general election. Do they get anything else?

Nigel Fletcher: There are some perks to the job, yes. One of them, which um, I need to find out exactly how this is done now, but um, they get a car and driver, which is the most immediately obvious thing that they tend to get. Some leaders have played around with that system a little bit. David Cameron wanted to get a hybrid car, which wasn't in the government car service at the time. And so they made a big thing about the fact that they had to lease a car and have a different arrangement, but it doesn't get talked about a lot.

So, um, I'm hoping someone might put down some PQs about it at some point, which they have done in the past. When I've written sort of about the history of this, people often put down written parliamentary questions, asking for the cost of it and so on. But that's a concession that was brought in, in the 1970s, when Harold Wilson, who had previously been Prime Minister, who was then Leader of the Opposition to Edward Heath, [00:06:00] was seen queuing at the members entrance for a taxi. And the Labour Chief Whip thought this was very unseemly, and raised it with the Conservative Chief Whip. And lo and behold, they said, yes, that's probably something that shouldn't happen.

And they then conceded that the Leader of the Opposition should have a car. And so there is the car. That is something they have. They get a salary, of course, very rare for an Opposition figure to get a salary.

Mark D'Arcy: I think the opposition chief whip also gets a salary.

Nigel Fletcher: The opposition chief whip has, um, again, this has been a, a sort of an evolving payroll that they've had, but it hasn't gone very much further.

So the Leader of the Opposition first got a salary in 1937 as a sort of parting gift from Stanley Baldwin, um, as he was leaving office and realised that the Labour Party at that time were not from the landed gentry who have their own personal resources. As you say, since then, the chief whip now gets a salary and, uh, few others as well.

I think a couple of the other whips might also be funded. But the rest of the shadow cabinet, you know, people are waiting by their phone to be appointed to the prestigious post of shadow foreign secretary or shadow home secretary. And they must be a [00:07:00] bit disappointed when they realise this carries absolutely no extra salary whatsoever for them, which is a bit of an anomaly when we consider that chairs of select committees in the House now do get an extra allowance.

So that's something which I've highlighted as perhaps something that might change in future. So yes, they get a salary, they get their car and, and driver. But apart from that, there are very few other, uh, real perks that they get. But that million pound to run the, the leader's office, that was brought in by Tony Blair's government after 1997.

Prior to that, they just had the short money that was worked out, as you say, on a formula, on their seats and, and, and vote share, which they then used as they saw fit. Now, the Official Opposition gets this extra million pounds a year that it is now, to run specifically the Leader's office.

Ruth Fox: The Leader of the Opposition has an important constitutional function. I mean, in terms of what their sort of roles and responsibilities are, you've got this split between the arch critic that we see every week at Prime Minister's Questions.

Nigel Fletcher: Yeah.

Ruth Fox: You know, the chief critic of the government, but they've also got this important constitutional role as leader of the opposition, providing the scrutiny and [00:08:00] accountability to the government.

They're constitutionally the potential government in waiting were the government to fall. Very unlikely in the current circumstances, given the majority, but they've got to take account of the fact that they're going to have to attend state occasions, the Leader of the Opposition will be invited into security briefings, sort of kept up to date with what's happening in the international scene because they've got to prepare for the fact that potentially they could be the next prime minister.

Nigel Fletcher: That is something which I think says a lot. There's quite a lot about our political system and how it's evolved as a democracy. The fact that we have, in the very heart of our political system, an individual who is the alternative prime minister, someone who is actively and explicitly seeking to displace the government, to overturn them, to throw them out of office.

And yet they are brought within the cloak of the state and recognised as doing a legitimate job. I thought it was very telling, for example, that after the death of the late queen, when the new King came down to Buckingham Palace and after his accession [00:09:00] council, which was attended by Privy Counsellors including the Leader of the Opposition, he had a series of audiences.

So he received the Prime Minister and Cabinet. And I think the Archbishop of Canterbury was one of the first as well. And immediately after that, he saw the Leader of the Opposition and of the other opposition parties. So right from the outset of a new reign, but also other occasions, such as we've seen this week with the Remembrance Sunday service at the Cenotaph, the leader of the opposition is there.

Mark D'Arcy: And we all remember the occasion when Michael Foot turned up in what was deemed to be not sufficiently smart attire, and took a hell of a broadside for it.

Nigel Fletcher: Yes, the famous donkey jacket, which you can see and judge for yourself if you go to the People's History Museum in Manchester. It's one of my favourite museums for political nerds, and you can go and see the supposed donkey jacket in a glass case there, which he donated to the museum.

He said that this was something that the Queen Mother said to him afterwards, was a very smart gift. for the occasion, Mr. Foot. But yes, I mean, that does make the point that the Leader of the Opposition [00:10:00] is there expected to stand shoulder to shoulder with the prime minister. And so at these great state occasions, we don't just have those in power.

We also recognise there is another side to the argument. And one of the problems that Leaders of the Opposition have had in perhaps recent decades is that, um, the sort of binary system that we've become used to, there's a two party system, there is one prime minister and there is a alternative prime minister, has come under a bit of strain because of course we have many more parties contending for office.

And so at the Cenotaph, you do have not just the Leader of the Opposition, but also the Leader of the Liberal Democrats and you have leaders of the other parties as well. And that has started to happen in other environments as well, such as when there was a state visits. I think we're, we're due one in December.

I think as well, the leader of the opposition is invited to Buckingham Palace to pay a formal call on the visiting head of state. Again, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, he's also invited to do the same now. So the system has kind of adapted to having what was in the past been called a two and a half party system.

Yeah. [00:11:00] The leader of the opposition doesn't have an exclusive privilege in that regard, but they are there at the very sort of heart of our national life, and I think that's an important statement about the nature of our democracy.

Mark D'Arcy: Mm-Hmm. Well, Kemi Badenoch now has a million pounds of public funding to spend on the Leader of the Opposition's office.

So what sort of structure should she build around her? I mean, you were saying earlier, she has this reputation of shooting from the hip. Does she need a collection of press officers who can also make sure that she's hip when she shoots?

Nigel Fletcher: Yes, well, I think that the first thing she has to do is find somebody to run the office and to set it up for her.

A chief of staff figure. A chief of staff figure, who is someone that needs to be a trusted political aide, someone that she has confidence in from a political point of view, but also someone with a very highly tuned, uh, organisational ability, which hasn't always been the case in the past. Some leaders have appointed someone who is a close political advisor, but someone who has not been very good at running an operation.

Again, coming back to a [00:12:00] party that's going into opposition from government, you know, you have the civil service in government to organise your office. You have a Rolls Royce system, hopefully, of your private office and officials who are there to support you in your official role. And so you can focus on strategy and policy and appointing your political advisors. In opposition, you have no official structure. You have to appoint it all for yourself And as we talked about, you do get short money to pay for for them, but you have to choose who they are and there's no guarantee that that will be an efficient operation. And really all Leaders of the Opposition have faced criticism from their parliamentary party and from the media and others that their operation has been defective in some way, there's been some confusion. But some have been worse than others. Iain Duncan Smith's office was the subject of a parliamentary inquiry, uh, because, um, of a row over payments to his wife, who he was employing in his office. So the parliamentary commissioner for standards mounted an investigation into that issue, which interviewed all of the members of the private office, which is a gold [00:13:00] mine for researchers because we now have on the record all these interviews with, with them at the time. And it's quite clear it was a dysfunctional office. And that really, although politically he was in a very difficult position within the Conservative Party, the operation of his office was a real problem, uh, in that regard.

Mark D'Arcy: What should your office be doing if you're leader of the opposition?

You've got to have people developing interesting new policy ideas that catch the voters eye. You've got to have people liaising with the wider party behind you. You've got to have a press official who's making sure that you're hitting the media a lot. All those things and doubtless much, much more.

Nigel Fletcher: Yes.

You're effectively replacing the entire government function in opposition. You're trying to shadow Number 10, not just that, but also across the whole of the shadow front bench. You're trying to mount a kind of equivalent operations. So as you say, yes, you have to have a firstly, the private office function, which I think a lot of people do, um, perhaps neglect as a, an important first thing.

Mark D'Arcy: And woe betide you if you do. I mean, the boring stuff like declarations of interest. No one notices most of the time if you do it properly. But just ask Keir Starmer. What [00:14:00] happens when gifts of suits and glasses appear? And people think, hang on, it's a bit inappropriate to be getting those.

Nigel Fletcher: Yes. So all of those things which, um, in government, your private office would be doing for you, making those kind of declarations. But also just really basic stuff like booking your train tickets and ensuring that, you know, you're getting to the right place on time, the ops, as they call it, which in government gets done for you to quite a large extent, you need people doing that for you to ensure that, you know, this national figure we've talked about someone who is a very prominent and senior figure, is professionally supported.

But yes, you also then have to have people who are working on policy. You have to have people who are liaising with the parliamentary party. You have to have people who are managing the press and acting as your chief spokesperson. And there's often a bit of a row, there was at some point, about whether or not you could house those people in the parliamentary office.

David Cameron had an inquiry from the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards into whether he could entertain donors in his Commons office, for example, um, which he was doing.

Mark D'Arcy: Isn't it lovely? The [00:15:00] Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards is someone who can be kind of thrown in the way of a new Opposition Leader by almost vexatious complaints, uh, just as a way of tangling them up.

Nigel Fletcher: Yes, and often there are many other tangles they have to contend with as they, they go into office. It's quite surprising, a number of leaders have said that when they came into office, The office they came into had no furniture in it. For example, they said that, you know, they walked into the leader's office and the previous team had moved out and the house authorities had cleared it out and, uh, and the chairs weren't there when the computers have been taken out and the phone lines have been, have been taken out and they had to reapply for them, which when you're taking over as leader, events do not stop.

We had the new leader of the Conservative Party elected on a Saturday and the shadow cabinet was then appointed on Monday. But, you know, immediately they're having to respond to international events, to media events and things. There's no interval, and so they have to get in there and, um, and start the operation immediately.

And often there are these hurdles put in their way. There was one great tussle that took [00:16:00] place in the 1970s between Harold Wilson and Edward Heath when the television that was in the Prime Minister's room was removed and put into the Leader of the Opposition's room. They had a tussle over whose television it was and that kind of thing.

You get these kind of rows and, and, um, uh, Marcia Williams, Harold Wilson's notorious senior aide, had a tussle with House authorities about whether they would unlock the office, uh, at weekends, because very surprisingly, the opposition wanted to work across the weekend and she wasn't able to get into it.

So there's all these, these hurdles that you have to get across, which in government, you just don't tend to face these logistical problems, as well as the fact that you have far fewer staff and you have a lack of senior officials supporting you.

Ruth Fox: The previous leaders have looked at whether they need to have somebody in their political front bench team covering every government department, every minister.

And obviously with a much reduced side of a parliamentary party, that is quite a challenge. I mean, you know, there's only 121 [00:17:00] Conservative MPs now. So the government front bench is probably a hundred plus strong. So what do you think Kemi Badenoch is likely to try and do with this and what are the lessons we can learn from previous leaders?

Nigel Fletcher: Well, we can see some of the problems, William Hague has talked about this when he ended up with 165, I think it was after 1997, that he faced a real problem with constructing a front bench because he ended up with, you know, pretty much half the parliamentary party potentially being on the front bench with 121.

As you say, you could shadow every government minister and have the entire parliamentary party as a shadow minister but you have to take away from that all the people who are on select committees all the people who are doing other things, all those who have after the leadership election declined to serve and have returned to the back benches. So you have a much smaller pool to start with and what we saw in the interval between the general election and the result of the leadership election, Rishi Sunak with his interim team had a lot of doubling up, so at the shadow cabinet level, not quite so much, but below that you have people who were appointed to the whips [00:18:00] office who were also shadowing one or maybe two other portfolios.

And I think that's something which is now going to be inevitable. I haven't, as we sit here recording this, um, haven't actually looked at any updates. Uh, we were rather distracted by events on the other side of the Atlantic. I was rather unusual perhaps in, uh, as everyone else was waiting for the declaration of who the new leader of the free world was, I was busy scrolling to see who the shadow leader of the house might be on that kind of thing.

And so looking for if there were any other sort of front bench appointments coming out. But I think when we do see the front bench, I think we're going to see a much smaller front bench below the shadow cabinets. In fact, there's a sign when they announced the the, the first one, which was the shadow education team.

They announced the shadow secretary of state and the shadow education minister. So one person. Now they had to do that because education questions was taking place that afternoon. So I wonder if that might be only sort of part of the team, but I wouldn't be surprised if, uh, when we go and look at the list, they appoint one person sub shadow cabinet because they just don't have [00:19:00] the personnel.

And, and it does mean that you have to make some rather difficult choices. Imagine being the person who is left out of the shadow team when you have so few people to choose from. It's going to cause a few difficulties I would imagine, but the temptation, as we've seen this kind of appointment inflation which happens in government, where they have to bring in a sort of an extra table at the end of the cabinet table to accommodate the people who are attending cabinets, the same has happened in in opposition as well. And leaders who have tried to slim down the shadow cabinet in the past, Edward Heath tried doing it, and also Michael Howard, for a time, had shadow supremos looking across different policy areas and slimmed the shadow cabinet right down.

Um, they found it doesn't really work. Just in terms of the procedure of the house, really, you need to have someone who is directly shadowing a particular cabinet minister. And those people do expect to be at the top table and sitting in the shadow cabinet room. Also, actually, I will say that I was quite pleased to see that they are using the traditional wood panelled shadow cabinet room for their meetings.

There was some uncertainty on this point [00:20:00] after the last decade when leaders have started using a rather nondescript conference room in Norman Shaw South for meetings of the shadow cabinet.

Mark D'Arcy: It's one of the parliamentary office buildings, just off the sort of main part of Parliament.

Nigel Fletcher: Exactly. Quite close to what is now the Leader's office, which is also in one of those outbuildings. They started using the conference room, which had the advantage that they could actually expand the number of people attending, but the traditional shadow cabinet room off the corridor behind the speaker's chair in the House of Commons, I was a little bit distressed to think they might not be using those hallowed, uh, chambers anymore. And they have. I saw Rishi Sunak use that for his shadow cabinet after the general election. And Kemi Badenoch in the photographs that were released of her first shadow cabinet. They're back in that room.

Mark D'Arcy: It must make for better photographs, if nothing else.

Nigel Fletcher: Exactly. And also there is an important point about that, which is that you are presenting yourself as a shadow government.

And there is something about sitting there in this very high ceiling wood paneled room that looks very formal, looks very official, that gives you a sense of gravitas.

Mark D'Arcy: Let's talk about some of the people who aren't in the shadow cabinet, because one of the things that's noticeable is that some of the [00:21:00] heavy hitters of the previous government, Steve Barclay, the former health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, the former chancellor, have quite consciously decided they're going to sit this one out.

They're not in the top team, and presumably would have been in some capacity had they been willing to be there. But there are also several former leadership contenders who've decided they're going to sit this one out. James Cleverley, the former Home Secretary, there's talk he might run for Mayor of London.

Tom Tugendhat, the former Security Minister, who also ran, are both out of the team. How does an incoming opposition leader manage people who maybe are setting themselves up as long term rivals?

Nigel Fletcher: It is difficult. I mean, there is always a mantra that Uh, leadership contenders trot out that, you know, the party must unite, we must all come together and all put our shoulders to the wheel and so on.

And there will always be some who for one reason or another don't want to. And we can understand that if you've just had a very bruising leadership election and lost and you've been in government for a long time, you might not really relish the prospect of sitting there in someone else's shadow cabinet, uh, as I say, for no extra money either.

Uh, and you might want to [00:22:00] go off and do other things. So that is always something that leaders have. I mean, William Hague had this for a number of people. Most notably, actually, David Davis went off to, um, be chair of the Public Accounts Committee.

Mark D'Arcy: He quite consciously decided he was going to sit this one out.

He said we're not going to get re elected next time, and then he joined the Shadow Cabinet afterwards.

Nigel Fletcher: Indeed, and Jeremy Corbyn, when he had his revolt from his Shadow Cabinet, and they all resigned, many of them didn't come back, and they went off and pursued a different route as chair of Select Committees, and so they found an alternative route to do something in opposition, as a lot of other people will do.

So that is also a challenge, but as you say, there's also the political problem there that people are setting themselves up potentially as being rivals and just as in government when someone resigns from the cabinet or from the government, uh, to set themselves up as a sort of internal critic, it's often because they want to have their hands clean when things go wrong.

Mark D'Arcy: And they want freedom to speak, they're not bound by collective responsibility, they're not in the shadow cabinet.

Nigel Fletcher: Yeah, indeed. And that's again another thing that mirrors the procedure in government, that we expect a shadow cabinet [00:23:00] and a shadow administration to observe shadow cabinet's collective responsibility.

There was once a note, which I, I managed to quote in my research on this, that I found after 1997, which was a sort of equivalent of the ministerial code and the cabinet manual indeed in government, which was published once and has never been, never been updated, which I'm hoping that the government might get around to updating that at some point.

But this sort of procedural guide, which sets out the conventions, including, collective responsibility and all those sorts of things. There was an equivalent that was produced under William Hague's leadership at one point, and I don't know whether anyone's ever done that again, but we do expect that, that level of mirroring of government by having the whole shadow cabinet being bound by collective responsibility.

Mark D'Arcy: Now you do have both people who are outside the tent, for whatever reason, yeah, the Tom Tugendhat's, the James Cleverley's, but you also have within the shadow cabinet, Robert Jenrick, who was Kemi Badenoch's final rival in the election that went to the Conservative Party membership. And he's in there as shadow justice secretary, where he'll be directly responsible for one of the issues which [00:24:00] he most radically disagreed with Kemi Badenoch, whether we should be in or out of the European Convention on Human Rights.

That's an immediate and obvious policy conflict. You're thinking back, you can remember William Hague having Michael Portillo with obvious leadership ambitions of his own inside his shadow cabinet back in the day. So there are occasions when you've got a kind of a rival you have to contain and manage and make work for you.

And that's a pretty awkward wicket as well.

Nigel Fletcher: Yes. And again, it comes back to this, you know, is it better to have them inside the tent? Uh, you know, um, Yes, Robert Jenrick, I think, is an interesting one. As you say, being put into a position where he has direct responsibility for that issue, on which he disagrees with the leader.

Kemi Badenoch had said that she did not favor leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, and so she got someone there who is going to have to compromise on that, whilst everyone knows full well what his, his view is. But again, it does make this point that, you know, he's somebody who clearly was a rival, does have a lot of support from the membership.

It was, I think, the closest leadership vote that the membership have had. So there is that issue. And [00:25:00] also, of course, those who supported him in Parliament for the last ballot that the MPs had in the leadership election. The Conservatives seem to have contrived to devise an electoral procedure in which it's almost guaranteed that their new leader can't count on a majority of support from their colleagues.

It's very difficult for them to demonstrate that and it's caused them problems.

Mark D'Arcy: I do want to talk about that because you know the leadership election, the final ballot, it was almost a third, a third, a third between Badenoch, Cleverley and Jenrick. Yes. Only very slight differences in numbers between them, which does as you say stoke the Potential for leadership problems later on if the going gets tough if headway is not being made.

Nigel Fletcher: Absolutely, and um, it does mean that uh, as I say, you can look at those numbers and say well, you only had a support of just over a third of the parliamentary party, you know, two thirds of your colleagues voted for someone else and that is a problem. Conversely, um when this procedure has been used, that usually the first time that a leader has been able to demonstrate conclusively that they have, um over 50 percent of support from their colleagues is when they face a vote of no confidence.

Uh, as we saw with Theresa May [00:26:00] and, uh, and Boris Johnson, they were able to win those, and it showed that they had over 50%, but it was the last knockings of their leadership at that point. But it is a problem. It means that they have to work that bit harder to unite the party, as they all say they want to do, and to bring people on side.

I noticed that the, um, chair of the 1922, Bob Blackman, has announced that they've increased the threshold somewhat. So it's going to be slightly more difficult, but only to about a third.

Mark D'Arcy: I think a third of MPs have to sign a letter of no confidence before there could be a leadership ballot is the new rule.

It was what 12 percent before?

Nigel Fletcher: Yes. Which with the numbers they've got was quite a small number of MPs.

Ruth Fox: Talk a little bit, um, Nigel, about how they might operate in Parliament now. Because, um, it's reported that Iain Duncan Smith attended the first meeting of the Shadow Cabinet and sort of talked to them about what it's like to be in opposition.

And it's reported that he talked about the need for guerrilla warfare. And obviously that's something that sort of previous oppositions have pursued. But in this particular Parliament, you've got [00:27:00] 121 Conservative MPs up against this wall of 400 Labour MPs. So even guerrilla warfare looks quite difficult.

So how do you think they might operate in Parliament? What are sort of the opportunities? What might they do?

Nigel Fletcher: Well, as you know, and as the Society has done a lot of work on, the opportunities for Parliament as a whole to scrutinise and frustrate the government have been sort of under threat for a long time.

So in the past, there were many more opportunities the Opposition, um, had to conduct that sort of guerrilla warfare. The biggest one, of course, being that of time. They were able to keep debates going. They were able to frustrate the government by stretching out debates and keeping them up at night voting.

That's something which, since we've had the introduction of timetable motions, and prior to that the guillotine, a government with a majority can curtail debate pretty quickly. And so that tool that the opposition used to have, that they were able, uh, to talk things out and to keep the government on its toes and keep it up at night, is hugely reduced.

But there are ways of doing it. And so [00:28:00] they will, as they go through, and this is probably what Iain Duncan Smith was referring to, they will find ways in which they can use arcane procedural devices to have a similar effect. For example, the use of Opposition Day motions. And we discovered during the Brexit years, that a government which didn't feel much minded to even vote on them, let alone to respond to them, faced an opposition that found another tool. They started using the tool of putting down a humble address, seeking papers from the government under a little used device, but one that had material effect, so the government couldn't ignore the motion.

And they discovered that as a means of getting around the fact that the government just wanted to ignore the Opposition Day, um, votes. So innovations do come up and usually people scrabbling around in their copies of Erskine May for procedure will find these opportunities. But usually you end up with a bunch of supportive backbenchers who are the ones who are sort of licensed to go off and conduct this guerrilla warfare. Back in the day, under the Conservatives in opposition, it [00:29:00] was Eric Forth.

Mark D'Arcy: Ah, the late, great Eric, yes.

Nigel Fletcher: The late, great Eric Forth, who was a sort of master of procedure, and he and others, uh John Bercow at the time as well.

Yeah, this sort of awkward squad, who can be an awkward squad for the leadership themselves, but if they're directed in the right way, they can be an awkward squad making things difficult for the government. Maybe it's time to unleash Christopher Chope. That's a phrase you will only ever hear on this podcast.

Ruth Fox: Because didn't Eric, in the first years of William Hague's leadership, after Labour had come in with this big landslide majority, Eric Forth was involved with William Hague, and basically praying against all these negative Statutory Instruments to try and get debates. And yeah, I mean, I do think things like delegated legislation committees are an area where you might get some traction, because you can either boycott them, and the government's not sure what's happening, or you can suddenly swamp them.

Because, uh, you know, don't have to be a member of the committee to turn up.

Nigel Fletcher: Yeah, absolutely. And of course, the big one the Opposition has is mounting an ambush in the House. Quite difficult with such few numbers that they have. But, you know, the classic is, uh, and I noticed that they, um, they did [00:30:00] this on the West Wing once as well, where they had a kind of an all night thing where people camped out in a, in an office in, in the House there.

I mean, you can do that in the House of Commons as well, of course, you know, if you catch the government unawares, the ultimate objective is to be able to win a vote when they weren't expecting it. Very difficult to see how they're actually going to do that. But there are other ways in which, yes, as you say, you can use arcane bits of procedure to cause problems for the government.

Ruth Fox: It's also about personalities. I mean, it's a bit brutal, but, politics is a hard game. I mean, I'd be looking at the government front bench and thinking to myself, you know, and with my colleagues, who's the weakest link on that government bench and targeting them ruthlessly to undermine them.

Mark D'Arcy: Well, Kemi Badenoch opened by targeting David Lammy, didn't she, for his comments about Donald Trump before Donald Trump was back in the presidency.

And did that come over as an effective piece of politics? Did it seem a bit student union? Only time will tell, I suppose.

Nigel Fletcher: But yes, I think there is also the objective of, uh, as you say, of trying to expose [00:31:00] ministers who perhaps they feel are not up to the job. And, uh, they will also have the advantage that a lot of them have been ministers themselves.

So you often know where to look for

Ruth Fox: Where the bodies are buried.

Nigel Fletcher: Well, where the bodies are buried, absolutely. And so there will be some things where, if you think about it, at all the questions in the House, a shadow minister who has served in the department that they are shadowing, for example, uh, when the minister stands up and is responding to a question, they, they're reading prepared answers from the civil servants, and they've got their folder of all of their information.

A lot of the shadow ministers, at this point in the Parliament, having recently come out of government, kind of know what's in that folder. Um, they've had that folder, they've stood at that dispatch box, and they've read them. So there is an advantage there in the fact that they know on some of these perhaps less prominent issues that might cause difficulty for ministers, if they ask a question which they know there isn't an answer to, they can embarrass the minister. So if they've done the job before and it may not be that they are the the shadow minister who's uh, Who's um shadowing that department, but they can speak to colleagues who were in in office some of whom of [00:32:00] course now not in Parliament. But I would advise that one of the things they might look to do, the new shadow ministers as they come into their new portfolios, is speak to the previous ministers who were in that department themselves

Mark D'Arcy: If they aren't themselves the previous minister.

Nigel Fletcher: Absolutely. Yeah. And, um, and again, we can go back to Yes, Minister. Of course, there was always a Yes, Minister, uh, episode for this. Where you had, um, Jim Hacker speaking to his opposite number and they said, I'm sure the civil servants have told you that, you know, this is the. And he went through and sort of told him that, and, and that inside track of knowing what's in there.

And so if you speak to, um, the, the former minister, or if you are the former minister, then there will be little arcane nuggets of policy, or particularly sort of irritating issues, that you know are tricky for the government, and that the minister can't give a proper answer to. And so an easy win in oral questions, find one of those points where you can ask the question of the minister.

As a frontbencher, you have the advantage that you don't have to submit your question in advance. The speaker will call you as a supplementary to ask your question. So you have the element of surprise. [00:33:00] And so there will be a carefully formulated question that you can ask. You know, very few people will be watching oral questions, let's face it, of a department at this stage in the parliament.

But you can cheer up your troops and maybe get a decent story out of it if you trip up a minister by asking them a question which they're having to flick through their folder to try and find a kind of a non answer and then come back at them and say, well, I noticed the minister hasn't answered the question.

Why on earth can't they answer the question? They know full well why they can't answer the question because they've been in the department themselves and they've read that same answer themselves.

Mark D'Arcy: But it's a bit of a different act for the actual Leader of the Opposition, who, in this case, has to go from being a relatively junior cabinet minister in government to making themselves into an alternative prime minister.

And one of the stages on which they can try and set themselves up and project themselves is Parliament, so how do they go about. I mean that there are two problems here. I mean at Prime Minister's Question Time you could almost revert to stand up comedy or alternatively you could do what I think of as the Paddy Ashdown shtick, which you narrow your eyes and you say that in my [00:34:00] judgment as a world statesman, it's historically inevitable that such and such is going to happen. What's the prime minister going to do about it?

So you've got the kind of scylla of uh stand up comedy and the charybdis of the neopomposity. How do you steer between those two?

Nigel Fletcher: It is difficult because, yes, you do have to project yourself as a serious politician of standing that someone can envisage being the prime minister. And lots of leaders have had the problem that they have not been seen to have that gravitas.

Ed Miliband very quickly was lampooned by the press and was seen as someone who was not a figure of particular standing. William Hague had this issue as well. Not helped by his baseball cap, uh photo opportunity and the fact that people had in in mind the footage of him as a teenager at the Conservative Party Conference.

He had to constantly fight against that. He hated that being brought up. Of course. And his advice to anyone sort of who has ever said to him, you know, as a teenager should I go and speak at the Conservative Party conference? He said no absolutely not. Um, [00:35:00] yes, you do have this problem of, on the one hand, needing to project yourself as a serious figure of standing, and on the other hand, you need to connect with the voters, you need to cheer up your troops.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, there's a third dimension to this.

You've also got to be a functional human being in the eyes of the voters.

Nigel Fletcher: Well, for politicians to project that is often quite difficult, uh, within the constraints that they have.

But certainly, uh, Neil Kinnock, for example, who is a very gregarious and very sort of entertaining figure. And a lot of that came through in his public communications. You know, he would break into song or dance, you know, in public and, you know, he likes to sort of make jokes and so on. But often he wasn't seen as being a serious figure for that reason.

And he has talked about that, that part of the reason he believes that he never quite made it over the line to become prime minister was that people just couldn't see him as prime minister. And there is this sort of thing about being prime ministerial. Lots of people, you know, become prime minister from, with different characteristics.

You know, what is it that we mean by being prime ministerial? And really it's the voters who get to decide whether they see someone as [00:36:00] prime ministerial or not. But as a leader, you really do have to walk that tightrope of not being too po face. You don't want to be seen as someone who, as you say, is not a functional human being, but if you try to sort of spend your whole time as a standup comedian, uh, William Hague found it, you know, it entertained the troops, but it didn't do him an awful lot of good in the long run.

Mark D'Arcy: A final thought then, Nigel, uh, if you're the opposition leader looking across at the seried ranks of Labour MPs and the opposition benches and their overwhelming parliamentary numbers, you'd think, this is a government that's going to take two terms to get out. You might be able to whittle down its majority at the next election, but it'd be the one after that where you might have a realistic hope of coming into government.

But if you look at the electoral numbers, it's a very different thought. This is a Labour government that got a massive landslide on a third of the vote. So, there is the possibility that the leader of the Conservative Party at the next election could well be the Prime Minister. And how does that inform what they try and do now?

Because they're not seeing this as quite a sort of 8 year marathon. They're seeing it as, if [00:37:00] not a sprint, then a 4 year middle distance run.

Nigel Fletcher: Well, I think, first of all, almost all leaders, at least in their public pronouncements and how they present themselves, do argue that they can do this in one term.

You don't see a leader who will ever openly say, oh, well, we're not going to win the next election, but we might win the one after. Yeah. And, and as you say, Neil Kinnock famously said that, you know, this is a two innings match. That was something he said, but he didn't say that at the time. This is something that someone had said to him when he became leader.

And that's how he conceived of it. Uh, and he, was able to contest two elections, which is quite unusual now to think that a leader might be able to do that. Having failed, Jeremy Corbyn was able to hang on and fight two elections, but in rather unusual circumstances around that time of elections taking place quite rapidly, usually they have in mind they have only one go at this.

And so to say this is a project that's going to take more than one election is quite unusual anyway. So it doesn't materially change how they are presenting themselves. They will all say, we've got to spend this Parliament coming up with a policy platform [00:38:00] that we will take to the next election, that will be an election winning platform.

But I think you're right, that in terms of the expectations, After 1997, there was really no sense that the Conservatives were coming back any time soon, and William Hague had constant problems with trying to appear relevant when people just dismissed the Conservatives as being nowhere near power, and that was a problem they had all the way through to 2005, when David Cameron became leader.

It wasn't until then that anyone seriously looked at them as being potentially the future government. I think you're right to say that looking at the numbers, it is rather deceptive. Labour has a huge majority. The Conservatives have fewer MPs than they have ever had. And yet, there is this perception that things could change, that they could turn around.

The honeymoon for the Labour government has been surprisingly short, um, and there has been a sense that this may be a more febrile atmosphere in politics.

Mark D'Arcy: The Conservatives though are not just facing the Labour government, they've also got lurking on one flank at least, the Reform Party and Nigel Farage.

So this is not [00:39:00] a one dimensional operation, they've got to play three dimensional chess, maybe five dimensional chess given the Lib Dem flank as well.

Nigel Fletcher: Yeah, there's a huge political problem that they've got which they have to contend with, how they present themselves, how they pitch themselves. to voters when they are facing this threat to them from the right from Reform UK, but also in a parliamentary sense, they have this problem, which is that we have a much more pluralist opposition at the moment across the opposition benches. As the official opposition, they are only just over 50 percent of opposition MPs. We have a very large number of Liberal Democrats. And then we have other parties, including Reform UK, the Greens, and the grouping around Jeremy Corbyn, who provide alternative opposition. And this is something which the parliamentary system is not really set up to recognise.

We have this very binary system of, the Government says this, the Opposition says that, and what I think we are going to start seeing is a bit of disquiet on the opposition benches from those other parties, particularly the Liberal Democrats who have this very large number and who are not too [00:40:00] far in numbers behind the Conservatives about why procedurally the Conservatives get so many more privileges as the official opposition.

I think that's something which is justifiable in their role as the alternative government, but it's something which the other parties will find increasingly to be unfair and start to challenge.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, well, just after the general election, in fact, Paul Evans, Hansard Society member, been on this pod, a former clerk in the House of Commons, actually wrote a blog post for us, looking at exactly this question, you know, how do the rules operate in terms of the share of benefits, procedural benefits, for the opposition parties when you've got what he described as a multi polar parliament. And in fact the Liberal Democrats, I noticed at Lib Dem conference, it kept being cited in various speeches by Lib Dem frontbenchers and I do think that's going to become an issue because as you say there just feels like the sort of this discrepancy that the Conservatives have got a very advantageous position compared to the fact that for the first time they've sort of 50 percent or or fewer in terms of the share of the, of the, opposition [00:41:00] benches and clearly parties like Reform, I mean, I think reform of the only party with four or more MPs that haven't got a seat on a select committee. I think there's still a few appointments being made, so that might be addressed. But, um, those kinds of issues are going to come up and possibly the Modernisation Committee is going to have to look at this.

Nigel Fletcher: That is, I think, a real risk for the Conservatives. That there is of course this mechanism by which changes to the way procedure works can be initiated and the Modernisation Committee is one of those and if the Labour government are inclined to make things difficult for their opponents, setting them against each other in that way is quite a good way of doing it.

But I think there is, I mean, there is I think, whilst there is a case for those other opposition parties to critique and to challenge the Conservatives position as the Official Opposition, there is also a case for saying that, well, it's winner takes all in terms of government, you know, you, you, you contend for power in order that you're able to exercise the levers of power.

I would say that there's also a prize for coming second. There is a prize for becoming the official opposition, [00:42:00] or as Kemi Badenoch said in her sort of acceptance speech as Leader of His Majesty's Opposition. She did use that phrase when she was describing the role. You know, that is a formal constitutional role.

It's recognised, as we've talked about earlier, in all sorts of different ways that the Leader of the Opposition has a particularly privileged position within our national life. You can argue that there is that prize for coming second because it makes you the de facto alternative government of the country.

And that is different to the role played by other opposition parties in parliament. So I think they can make that case and I think that's something which when they are challenged on it, they could come back with. And in that sense, it does provide that constitutional function that there is a standing opposition which is there to take over from the government if the government should fall and that's in itself quite an important constitutional principle.

Mark D'Arcy: Well it's a fascinating discussion there Nigel Fletcher. Thanks very much indeed for joining Ruth and I on the pod today and we'll have to get you back to give Kemi Badenoch marks for artistic impression and technical merit in a few months [00:43:00] time.

Nigel Fletcher: Thank you very much for having me.

Ruth Fox: Thanks Nigel. Well that was Nigel Fletcher of the Centre for Opposition Studies.

We'll be back with the main pod later in the week. We'll see you then.

Mark D'Arcy: Join us then.

Ruth Fox: Bye.

Well, that's all from us for this week's episode of Parliament Matters. Please hit the follow or subscribe button in your podcast app to get the next episode as soon as it lands.

Mark D'Arcy: And help us to make the podcast better by leaving a rating or review on Apple or Spotify and sharing your feedback. Our producer tells us it's important for the algorithm to give the show a boost.

Ruth Fox: Mark, tell us more about the algorithm.

Mark D'Arcy: What do I know about algorithms? You know, I write my scripts with a quill pen on vellum and then send it in by carrier pigeon.

Ruth Fox: Well, before we go, a quick reminder also that you can send us your questions on all things Parliament by visiting hansardsociety.org.uk/pmuq.

Mark D'Arcy: We'll be discussing them in future episodes, including our special Urgent Questions editions dedicated to what you [00:44:00] want to know about Parliament.

Ruth Fox: And you can find us across social media at Hansard Society to get more content related to the show and the wider work of the Hansard Society.

Outro: Parliament Matters is produced by the Hansard Society and supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. For more information visit hansardsociety.org.uk/pm or find us on social media at Hansard Society.