Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough

One-on-one election debates are a standard part of US political lore, and have been ever since Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts squared up against Vice-President Richard Nixon in 1960. American voters expect to see them now, and, indeed, expect to see primary debates before the final run-off. In the UK, it is a much more recent addition to the general election schedule. John Major challenged Tony Blair in 1997 but Blair wasn’t game. The leaders’ debate first shot to the fore in 2010, when we saw Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg go head-to-head-to-head, famously giving us the phrase “I agree with Nick”. Then, in 2015, we carved up the various leaders in all sorts of permutations, in an election in which several parties were in play.

It is not clear what will happen in this election. The Prime Minister has said she will not participate in a multi-leader debate, as she prefers to be out in the country speaking to voters, but she has, as I understand it, indicated that she would be willing to subject herself to a question-and-answer session, moderated, presumably, by Paxman or a Dimbleby, to engage with the ordinary public. This is a sort of compromise, but will it work?

We know that Mrs May does not take advice from a wide circle. She relies very heavily on her husband, Philip, and then there are her joint Chiefs of Staff, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill. Beyond that, it seems a very closed circle. So has this tightly-knit cabal delivered good advice?

The argument in favour of shunning a debate, or debates, is that there is really very little for Mrs May to gain. She is the Prime Minister, she has inherent status and gravitas, and she has a pump-primed platform (or bully pulpit) any time she wants it. Lady Thatcher was fond of jetting off on international meetings around election time, because it emphasised that she was a statesman, a serious woman of business, striding above the petty politics of her opponents. Mrs May might choose to do the same, and already the rhetoric coming out of Downing Street is that she and only she can deliver strong leadership as we embark on Brexit negotiations.

Let us look at her opponents for a moment. Mr Corbyn is, I suspect, a busted flush; in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister has demonstrated her ability to best him in debate and she must have little to fear from that flank. Nicola Sturgeon is a different proposition. As First Minister, she has her own, more modest, platform: why, then, would Mrs May want to offer her another? Lastly, we come to Tim Farron. The Liberal Democrat leader pops up on television all the time clanging the bell for a revival for his party, which, personally, I think is deeply unlikely, and is certainly not borne out by the latest opinion polls. But the Richmond Park by-election was a nasty shock for the Conservatives, and, with the spectre of 1997 still hanging over them, the party hierarchy must worry that the polls will be wrong and there will be a yellow surge. Whether or not that is true, again, it is a strong argument against a debate. Mr Farron leads a party of nine Members of Parliament, fewer than the DUP, so why on earth would the PM want to provide him with a platform, a platform which would imply some degree of equality?

If you are cautious, then, as many have suggested that Mrs May is (her decision to call an election notwithstanding), why would you roll the dice on participating in a televised debate with two, three, four or however many other leaders?

There are reasons to doubt whether the Prime Minister’s decision might not be so sound after all. The greatest worry must be that the broadcasters will simply empty-chair her, and all of the other party leaders will have an hour of primetime television to talk about their competing policies, while the Conservative position is lost by default. That cannot be a good thing. All the psephological evidence suggests that a huge proportion of the electorate was influenced by the debates in 2015, and if you have no voice in that, you might lose out.

There is also the danger that Mrs May simply looks afraid to face up to her challengers. After all, she had to face down the Opposition parties in calling this snap election by asking them what they were scared of. They might reasonably turn that weapon back on her now if she declines to appear in a multi-leader debate. The electorate has, I think, an innate sense of someone running away from a fight (think of the famous incident of Roy Hattersley pulling out of Have I Got News For You and being replaced by a tub of lard).

I am not a political strategist (though, God knows, it would seem that some people advising some party leaders are not either). What would I have done? I think it is incredibly finely balanced. The PM can point to a year of facing Mr Corbyn across the dispatch box at Prime Minister’s Questions every Wednesday, and generally coming off better. And the willingness to appear at a Q&A will allow her to speak directly to voters, in a way that John Major did so successfully in his soapbox campaign of 1992. Still, some voters will wonder if she’s running scared. That may do her damage. We will see in the next few weeks if she has made the right decision.

Can a man serve two masters? Yes

George Osborne’s announcement today that he will not seek re-election as the Member for Tatton in June has resolved one of the most controversial conflicts of interest of the past year or so. Mr Osborne can now devote his time to the day job of being editor of the Evening Standard, while continuing his four-days-a-month gig at Blackrock, for which he earns a very respectable £650,000. Well, a man’s gotta eat (caviar).

This is not how it was supposed to be. When his surprise appointment at the ES was announced, he insisted that he would continue to sit for his Cheshire seat in the House of Commons. Indeed, he argued that Parliament would benefit, and that outside experience, remunerated handsomely or not, helped MPs, especially former ministers, in “continuing to contribute to the decisions we make”. (It should be noted that this would not necessarily have been a long-term conflict of interest: had the Boundary Commission’s proposals been implemented ahead of a general election in 2020, Mr Osborne’s Tatton constituency would have been broken up.)

Inevitably, the Opposition, because it is their job, decried Mr Osborne’s appointment and demanded that he resign from the Commons. Jeremy Corbyn muttered darkly about press freedom and impartiality, and one Labour MP spoke of the “deep overlap” between Mr Osborne’s role as a legislator and his position as a newspaper editor. Some of the sound and fury was synthetic and politically motivated, of course, and no-one should criticise the Labour Party for that. Oppositions are supposed to oppose. But it raised a deeper question. Should MPs have outside interests?

In times gone by, of course, it was commonplace for Members of Parliament to have other interests. This was reflected in the relatively paltry salary they received, and to some extent in the sitting hours of the House. The Commons sat in the afternoon and evenings because Members were at their day jobs the rest of the time. One great disadvantage of this system was that it in effect required MPs to be wealthy individuals, as the salary was not enough to support them, certainly not if they maintained two homes.

(Can I pause here to rehearse one of my bugbears: MPs are not paid enough. Sure, their salary is currently £74,000, plus allowances for offices, second homes and the like, and that’s way above the national average. But I would argue two things. Firstly, if you want to attract really bright people, you need to offer competitive salaries. I know friends with political ambitions who would be taking massive pay cuts to be MPs. The chief executive of Sunderland Council, to take a random example, is paid more than £600,000. Who do you want to scrutinise legislation and hold the Government to account? The second, more fundamental, point is that the work MPs do is important, and that should be reflected in their remuneration. Rant over.)

Outside interests are nowadays much less common. Some former ministers have City directorships, and there are still a few pre-eminent lawyers, like Sir Edward Garnier QC or Geoffrey Cox QC, who make good livings at the Bar. For a very few (George Osborne is one of them, as was Sir John Major in his time after 1997), speaking engagements offer lucrative rewards. In the main, however, Members rely on their salaries and concentrate on their duties in the House, whether in the Chamber, as members of select committees or on constituency work. That is commendable in its own way, and I know from experience that there are very few lazy MPs. They work hard and they work long hours, for very little public esteem. They are certainly not in it for the money.

My view is an unfashionable one now, but I think a moderate amount of outside interest is a healthy thing. Different experiences make MPs more rounded people, and allow them to maintain parallel careers. It means that the ambitious need not choose so starkly between public service and private remuneration, and offers the possibility of a continuing career after Parliament. The value added by outside interests is evident to anyone who spends a lot of time watching Commons debates, as I used to do as a Serjeant at Arms. Dr Phillip Lee, for example, until he became a minister, continued to practice as a GP part-time, so when he spoke on health issues, he did so with current, front-line experience. Equally, when you hear one of the really good lawyers, like Dominic Grieve QC, take apart a lazy argument with forensic skill, you see the value of all those hours spent in the courtroom. It’s a matter of balance, of course: being a Member of Parliament is time-consuming. But I think this kind of life experience enriches the quality of debate and scrutiny which the House of Commons can bring to bear.

Fundamentally, I don’t regard being an MP as a job in the normal sense. It is many things: an honour, a burden, an opportunity, a public service. Some Members devote themselves wholeheartedly to Parliament, and that is a fine and noble thing. Here’s a strange thing, though. George Osborne becomes editor of the Evening Standard and there is an outcry at his having another job as well as being an MP. Nobody complained when he was simultaneously MP for Tatton and Chancellor of the Exchequer, which I’m fairly sure is quite a demanding role. We accept without demur that MPs can be ministers – indeed, that, apart from the Lords, ministers must be MPs, though there is no constitutional requirement for this to be so – but anything outside Whitehall, particularly one which smacks of personal enrichment, is infra dig.

So, within reason, I say bring it on. Newspaper editors? Great. Iain Macleod’s constituents didn’t suffer during his brief but brilliant time at the helm of the Spectator. Doctors? Fantastic. Bring your experience of what delivering healthcare is really like to the deliberations of our legislature. Lawyers? Super. You have a very useful skill set and a knowledge of how the laws Westminster makes are applied day-to-day. Like Lord Mandelson, I am “intensely relaxed” about people making a decent amount of money, so long as it’s made honestly and they pay their taxes. If it attracts bright, talented, successful people to sit in Parliament, it can only be a good thing.

Vote early, vote often

Well. A general election. Whitehall and Westminster are usually the worst places to try to keep a secret, but, to her credit, the Prime Minister seems to have pulled it off this time. Only hours before she strode out into Downing Street, Guido Fawkes was speculating that the statement might be about the imposition of direct rule in Northern Ireland, or the PM stepping down on health grounds. Genuinely, it seems to have been a surprise. It certainly was to me.

The fact of an early election is not really so much of a surprise. The Conservatives are leagues ahead in the opinion polls – the one I saw most recently gave them a 21-point advantage – and the Labour Party is in what, out of respect for private grief, we shall politely call disarray. In addition, Mrs May does not have that nebulous thing called a “mandate”, unknown to the constitution and to old buffers like me, but which people do seem to harp on about. So an early election makes sense. The chances are that the Conservatives will win, and win handsomely, and then the PM can forget about the grubby business of electioneering for another five years and concentrate on delivering a red, white and blue Brexit.

But the manner and the timing are a surprise. The logical time would have been last autumn, flush from her coronation as party leader, and with the Labour Party going through its own divisive leadership election. Moreover, the evidence is – I stress I do not know her personally, and have only ever encountered her in the division lobbies of the House of Commons – that Mrs May is not a risk-taker, not a gambler, not someone who acts on gut instinct. After all, she could quite easily have sat out the Brexit negotiations safe in a (relatively modest) parliamentary majority and knowing she would not need to go to the polls until May 2020. (Parenthesis: the National Review carried a headline today, “May orders march to a June election. Arf.)

And yet here we are. Tomorrow, the House of Commons will debate a (non-amendable) motion that “there shall be a parliamentary general election” on 8 June. This will require a bit of legwork. Under the provisions of the Fixed-Term Parliament Act, a wretched piece of legislation introduced for short-term political gain, the House must vote by a two-thirds majority (and that’s two thirds of all the seats, 650, therefore 434 votes in favour) for an early election. The other mechanism is for the Government to lose a vote of confidence, but that takes longer, and, in any case, you can see the absurdity of a Government asking its backbenchers to vote against itself.

Now, the Government does not have 434 seats in the Commons. In fact, it has 330. So the ball is now in the Labour Party’s court. As the official Opposition, with 229 seats, it can allow the Government’s motion to pass, or sit on its hands and see the Government twist in the wind. Politically, I think it is inevitable that they will have to vote in favour of the early election. It is not, of course, in their interests; as I said, they are almost historically far behind in the polls, and every indication is that they will get a good shoeing in June. It may be a mortal blow to Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, though the party membership seem to have drunk so deeply of the Kool Aid that he may survive. Certainly there is no obvious replacement for him who might change the party’s fortunes.

Why, then, will they vote in favour? I think because they cannot be seen to run away from a fight. No party can afford to be seen as “frit”, if I may borrow Lady Thatcher’s Lincolnshire patois. Jeremy Corbyn has said that he welcomes an early election. That may be true. It may be true for a number of reasons: it could free him from what cannot be an enjoyable stint as Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition; he may be delusional enough to think that the Labour Party can win and he can start measuring up Downing Street for organic, biodegradable hemp curtains; or he may simply not care any more.

This last point works both ways. I do not know Jeremy Corbyn, though in my time as Associate Serjeant at Arms I often sat close to him in the Chamber. I do not pretend to know what makes him tick, and whether he enjoys being leader of the Labour Party. I suspect not (“I’m not sure this is a good idea, Seumas”). But he is a politician, like any other in some respects, and he must relish the opportunity to give his opinion on current affairs at any opportunity, to a wide audience. So perhaps, I don’t know, he is content to limp along as an unelectable leader, preserving his ideological purity and avoiding those messy compromises that successful politicians have to make.

In any event, the next couple of months will be interesting. It all starts tomorrow, on the floor of the House of Commons, and the story will end there when the new Parliament is sworn in. My former colleagues in the Journal Office will get to sit at the Table and scribble down the names of new and returning Members of Parliament. The question now is, how many will be on each side?