The issue of Stephen Hester’s bonus is going to carry on hurting the government. Labour has now announced that it will use an opposition day debate on 7 February to hold a parliamentary vote on the issue. The coalition will either have to lose, an admittedly non-binding vote, or whip its MPs to go through the lobbies in defence of Hester’s bonus.
As Labour showed when it used the threat of a Commons vote to push Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp to abandon its bid for full control of BSkyB, the bully pulpit of Parliament can be extremely effective. These votes also bring out tensions within the two coalition parties. I imagine that Lib Dem MPs will be even less keen than Tory ones to support the Hester bonus.
There is, of course, a way out of this mess for the government: Hester following his chairman’s lead and not taking his bonus.
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