Why is the most rebellious Conservative MP still in a governing administration career?
Why does the Conservative MP who has solid extra dissenting votes in the 2019 parliament even now have a £41,000 federal government income?
He has cast a larger proportion of votes versus his govt in modern-day moments: not only shattering the information held by Philip Hollobone, Kate Hoey and Jeremy Corbyn but also that of Paul Marsden – a backbench MP who was so rebellious he defected from Labour to the Liberal Democrats and back again all over again around the system of 2001-5 – as the most rebellious MPs in the 2010, 2005 and 2001 parliaments respectively. Nonetheless he however has a very coveted front-bench work. Why?
The response is since the most rebellious Conservative MP is Stuart Andrew, the deputy chief whip, who holds additional Conservative proxy votes than any other one parliamentarian. While he himself has not rebelled for the duration of this parliament and is just one of the the very least rebellious MPs in the parliamentary celebration, because he is accountable for voting on behalf of so lots of Tory MPs, he has solid additional rebellious votes than any other MP.
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The striking issue about that is one of the fears people experienced about the proxy vote technique was that so a lot of MPs, particularly Conservative kinds, had opted to give their proxy votes to their whips. (On the Labour side, whilst numerous MPs have presented their votes to their whips, numerous additional have given them to near political allies.)
On the other hand, these fears haven’t materialised. More than 50 percent of all rebel votes solid in this parliament so significantly have been solid by occasion whips. If you think about it, this makes a great deal of feeling: due to the fact MPs’ legislative data are public, it is not like rebel MPs have ever been capable to hold their dissenting votes covert in any case.
(Whole disclosure: I only identified this out since I considered it might have an affect on the rate of revolt. Having said that, it does not show up to. The 2019 parliament has been an extremely rebellious and fractious 1, not only thanks to veterans, but also thanks to a bigger rate of rebellions by initially-time MPs than any parliament has managed in its initially calendar year in contemporary instances.)
While there are quite a few pros to voting jointly in individual, the accomplishment of proxy voting – in letting parliament to proceed to legislate throughout the pandemic and in MPs continuing to sense able to rebel – displays that its rewards, both for MPs with caregiving obligations and for ministers, could and ought to be retained immediately after the pandemic.
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