Prime Minister David Cameron’s personal authority over his Conservative Party backbenchers took a battering when more than half of them defied his personal appeals – and heavy-handed parliamentary whipping – to support a non-binding, symbolic vote for a referendum on Britain’s continued membership of the European Union.
Unlike the 1991 Maastricht Treaty rebellion by Tory Eurosceptics opposed to then party leader and Prime Minister John Major, the motion – which would have had no legislative force – was easily quashed by an overwhelming majority of Tory, Labour and Liberal Democrats votes.
But significantly for Labour Party leader Ed Miliband – who taunted Mr Cameron that French President Nicolas Sarkozy spoke for British voters as well when he criticised Mr Cameron’s posturing on the EU at last weekend’s Brussels summit – some 19 Labour MPs were reported to have defied his leadership to support the motion.
In terms of practical realities, there is not actually a great deal of difference between the two party leaders’ positions on Europe, and both know how unpredictably it can play as an issue with voters – many disengaged or apathetic but a smaller highly motivated and vocal group opposed to being part of the EU.
Among many of Mr Cameron’s newer MPs there is a clamour for fewer social or employment protections associated with EU membership but also a wish to enjoy the benefits of the single market with none of the social obligations that have evolved.
But for many of those same Tories the European issue is not just a populist, rallying point that plays well in constituencies but a focus for wider dissatisfaction over not just limited promotion prospects but what they see has a high-handed, clique-ish leadership.
Such complaints have been all-too familiar in Labour in recent years, a point formally acknowledged by Ed Miliband’s leadership.
Those rebel MPs who disagreed with him on the EU referendum proposal and defied the whip were, on the whole, familiar names in such a context: Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley), Rosie Cooper (Lancashire West), Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North), Jon Cruddas (Dagenham & Rainham), John Cryer (Leyton & Wanstead), Ian Davidson (Glasgow South West), Natascha Engel (Derbyshire North East), Frank Field (Birkenhead), Roger Godsiff (Birmingham Hall Green), Kate Hoey (Vauxhall), Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North), Steve McCabe (Birmingham Selly Oak), John McDonnell (Hayes & Harlington), Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby), Dennis Skinner (Bolsover), Andrew Smith (Oxford East), Graham Stringer (Blackley & Broughton), Gisela Stuart (Birmingham Edgbaston), Mike Wood (Batley & Spen).
But for Mr Cameron the prospect of the secretary of his 1922 committee of backbenchers, Mark Pritchard, whose committee can trigger a leadership vote, threatening that the totemic issue of the EU will become more, and not less, of an issue during this Parliament can only continue to be frustrating if not unsettling.
