After spending Tuesday afternoon queuing in a socially distanced conga line across the parliamentary estate, many MPs found themselves in a bad mood. Even Conservative MPs who backed the government’s plan to change to a system of socially distanced physical voting were complaining. Speaking to Coffee House afterwards, Tory MPs complained the process was ‘humiliating’, a ‘clusterf–k’ and most kindly ‘a work in progress’. Despite this, the system is here to stay for the time being.
However, yesterday’s episode just adds to a growing sense of unease among Tory MPs over the government’s direction. As I say in this week’s magazine, No. 10 has a growing backbench problem. Part of the reason MPs have been summoned back to Westminster is that the government has found a remote party is near impossible to whip. Backbenchers have been venting their frustrations over WhatsApp and in some ministers’s minds become more susceptible to outside pressure.
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