Can Boris crack the unwhippables?

‘Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won,’ wrote the Duke of Wellington after the Battle of Waterloo. This sentiment, rather than any form of triumphalism, is what Tory whips should feel after winning the vote on the government’s decision to reduce spending on foreign aid from 0.7 per cent of GDP to 0.5. The vote is a sign of the battles to come in the rest of this parliament.

The government put its authority on the line in the Commons debate. The Prime Minister opened it, the Chancellor closed it. The government also offered something of a concession, a pledge to return to 0.7 once the current budget was balanced. The result was a government majority of 35, which sounds comfortable enough, yet the make-up of the rebellion reveals a problem for the whips. Of the 24 Tories who voted against the government, 14 are former ministers. The overwhelming majority of these are either uninterested in returning to ministerial office or are only interested in doing so on their terms. This means the usual whips’ line — if you keep your nose clean preferment might come your way — is ineffective. This group is essentially unwhippable.

Nearly all of these former ministers were in government under Theresa May or David Cameron. This means some of them take a rather wry view of appeals from Boris Johnson’s allies to rally round the party. They argue that Johnson wasn’t restrained by loyalty to the leader when choosing which side to back in the 2016 referendum or when voting on May’s Brexit deal, so why should they be? In May’s speech on the aid cuts she explained why she was voting against a three-line whip for the first time in her parliamentary career. She included the pointed line: ‘As prime minister I suffered at the hands of rebels; I know what it is like to see party colleagues voting against their government.’