Tory MPs were in buoyant mood as they dashed off to the 7 p.m. vote on Monday night. They shouted out hearty greetings to each other, slapped backs and had a spring in their step. They were buzzing in the way a fielding team does just after the fast bowler has hit a star batsman a painful blow on the body. The cause of this excitement: No. 10’s display of brute political force over the lobbying bill.
When news first broke of Patrick Mercer’s troubles, the Cameroons could barely conceal their schadenfreude. They were not going to mourn the political demise of Cameron’s most vituperative backbench critic. But the headlines were still about Tory sleaze. Labour began demanding to know why the government had abandoned plans for a statutory register of lobbyists. The government, to the alarm of Tory MPs, was being pushed on to the back foot again.
Then, late on Monday afternoon, came details of the proposed lobbying bill. To Westminster’s surprise, it included a clampdown on the trade unions. There were measures to control their spending in the year prior to an election and to investigate the accuracy of their membership lists. It was a brazen attempt to turn this crisis to the coalition parties’ political advantage.
The Labour leadership was indignant, complaining that these measures are normally taken forward on a cross-party basis. But the ploy had worked. Labour was now on the defensive, trying to explain away its opposition to change. This act of low politics so cheered the Tory troops because of how unexpected it was. David Cameron’s No. 10, to their frustration, is a surprisingly unpolitical place. Even loyalist Cabinet ministers privately vent about ‘the complete lack of political drive in Downing Street’.
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