“Norman Warner Quits Labour Shock.” Oh dear. A politician few voters have heard of resigns his party’s whip and becomes an independent. Westminster gets excited, but the caravan moves on, both sides usually glad of a divorce that ends what had become an uneasy marriage.
Lord Warner’s resignation over policy – in this case, Labour’s direction of travel under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership – is only one cause of departure. Since the 2009 expenses scandal, the most common reason for MPs and peers of all parties to disappear (sometimes temporarily) from the ranks has been trouble with the law. The SNP’s Michelle Thomson, facing business problems, was this parliament’s first such casualty.
Influence-peddling and other forms of misconduct have long provided a trickle of blood on the parliamentary carpet. But policy issues or ideology – the drift is mostly left to right – have usually been the declared motive. Low calculation sometimes plays a part, especially when one’s party looks set to lose next time.
Thus Liberals went Liberal Unionist (ie Tory) in the 1880s – Joseph Chamberlain abandoned Gladstone’s cabinet over Irish home rule in 1886 – but Tories such as young Winston Churchill “ratted” the other way when the tide turned after 1900. In the 1920s, Churchill ratted back again and got away with it, more or less. In 1931, some Labour MPs who quit the whip to join Oswald Mosley’s fascistic New party resigned from it within 24 hours.
Labour PM Ramsay MacDonald led some ministers out of their party over austerity that year. Labour MPs are much more likely to walk out: principles matter more than power to some. In 1981, 22 of them (plus peers) quit Michael Foot’s Labour benches en masse to launch the Social Democratic party. Few survived the next election, and one, Lord Owen, seems cosier with his old party than with the Lib Dems these days. When rightwing Tories started peeling off over Europe, they did not prosper much, either. Douglas Carswell survived his defection to Ukip on 7 May; Mark Reckless did not. Cannier colleagues stayed put.
Yet, a well-timed resignation can revive a flagging career. Reg Prentice (1977) became a Thatcher minister, Shaun Woodward (1999) a Labour one. Other noisy defectors to New Labour – Emma Nicholson, Alan Howarth, Peter Temple-Morris, Quentin Davies – became peers in return. Robert Jackson did not. “What’s in it for me?” is often the subtext, although not for Norman Warner. He’s already a peer.
