The talk of the Commons tearoom today is last night’s Opposition Day vote on Universal Credit. This is unusual: Opposition Day votes are non-binding and have recently been used largely for Labour to bang on about pet projects rather than hold the government’s feet to the fire. But the Opposition has sharpened up its act, and used growing Conservative concerns about the roll-out of the new benefit to good effect in yesterday’s debate.
The whips had already decided that one of the ways they could make these Opposition Day debates even less politically powerful when they are operating in a minority government is to instruct all Tory MPs to abstain, rendering a defeat reasonably meaningless as it would merely be Labour approving its own motion, with some of the smaller parties thrown in.
But this strategy seems to have a much shorter shelf life than previously thought.
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