• Why MPs can’t just quit: The curious case of the Chiltern Hundreds, Parliament Matters, Episode 129

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Intro: [00:00:00] You are listening to Parliament Matters, a Hansard Society production, supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Learn more at hansardsociety.org.uk/pm.

Ruth Fox: Welcome to Parliament Matters, the podcast about the institution at the heart of our democracy, Parliament itself. I'm Ruth Fox.

Mark D'Arcy: And I'm Mark D'Arcy. And coming up this election week ...

Ruth Fox: Should he stay, or should he go? And if he does go, how would a leadership election work? The dilemmas facing Keir Starmer and the Labour Party after this week's elections.

Mark D'Arcy: The results in Scotland, and especially Wales, may offer a glimpse of Westminster's future after the next general election.

Ruth Fox: And now the elections are over in Scotland and Wales, how do their parliaments get back to business?

But first, Mark, a bit of housekeeping for [00:01:00] listeners. If you hear some background noises that sound like a washing machine, our apologies. It is not a washing machine. It's actually some building work going on right next door to us, and unfortunately we couldn't avoid it today. So I hope it doesn't distract you too much.

Mark D'Arcy: Lot of drilling and thumping. So Ruth, let's start with Westminster digesting the results of the Scottish and Welsh elections and the English local elections. And it's a very interesting question, who has the worst indigestion? Who needs the most Rennies- ... in the aftermath of all this? Is it Sir Keir Starmer, whose party has taken a hell of a beating?

Is it Kemi Badenoch, who has some successes to point to, but also some pretty unsettling results elsewhere, not least in her own county of Essex? Or is it Sir Ed Davey, who's had some signal successes to point at, and has indeed been pointing at them, but also some troubling results in what have previously been fairly traditional Lib Dem heartlands.

So all of them have something to worry about, but I suppose it's Sir Keir Starmer who's got the most. But these elections have produced some really quite extraordinary results. Your old stomping [00:02:00] ground at Barnsley, for example.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, I mean, they're, they're still counting, Mark, as we're talking on Friday afternoon.

So the result hasn't come out yet, but my intelligence is that interestingly, turnout is up, which we can perhaps come to in a moment, considerably. But the expectation is that Reform are going to take Barnsley Council. Labour has run that council since Uh, since it became effectively - the dawn of time - yeah, well, 1970, whatever it was, probably 1974. Since it became a metropolitan borough council. And it's unlike some, uh, parts of the country where only a third of the council seats are up for grabs this time in Barnsley, apparently, it's an all-out election, so it's expected that Reform is going to take control of, of that. And that's an interesting thing, you think about democracy, and you think about politics, there's never any rewards in, in politics really. The leader of Barnsley Council and the, the Labour administration there have done a huge amount in terms of regeneration of the town, and yet they're not getting any rewards for it because of the national picture.

Mark D'Arcy: They're swept away on the national tide.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's interesting. But conversely, another one of my old [00:03:00] stomping grounds in Harlow, because I used to work for the MP for Harlow many, many moons ago. Back in my day, it was a three-party marginal: Conservative, Labour, and, and Lib Dems. Now, Conservatives dominate the council, but it was thought that Reform, because they've won Essex County Council for the first time, Reform UK now running the council, it was thought that Harlow might also follow, but in fact, Kemi Badenoch will be pleased with this result. The Conservatives have held those seats.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, uh, and possibly for similar reasons I was very struck by the results in Wandsworth, an old stomping ground of mine. I cut my local journalistic teeth reporting on Wandsworth Council 40-odd years ago. Incidentally, I, I noticed, uh, amongst other things, there's a guy called Tony Belton, who was the Labour leader when I was reporting in the early '80s there. He is still a Wandsworth Councillor. 50 glorious years in office there, so congratulations to Tony Belton. But Wandsworth Council is an area where the Conservatives had had a sort of model council that was an example to all the others about keeping costs down and keeping council tax low.

They lost it [00:04:00] spectacularly a couple of years back, and now have regained it. So the Conservative machine in Wandsworth has picked itself up, dusted itself down, and regained the council. And I think it might be quite alarming to a lot of Labour people who maybe had thought that the Conservative Party was almost out of the game in the face of a Reform onslaught.

Instead, it sat up in its coffin in the middle of the wake so to speak, and it's done so in Wandsworth, it's done so also in, in Westminster, another big London borough. So the Conservative machine in London is not quite as dead as maybe some Labour people had rather hoped it was. And again, that's something rather alarming for Keir Starmer.

But what about turnout? Because as you say, there's been quite a big turnout for local elections. I mean, it's always dispiriting when local elections are won or lost on some miserable sub 20% of the voters bothering to go to the polls kind of turnout. So it's pretty good news that the voters are engaged with this, but are they engaged with local questions or is this national angst coming home?

Ruth Fox: Yeah, I mean, the feeling is this is national angst.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah.

Ruth Fox: Um, we don't know. We haven't got the final results yet, but I mean, [00:05:00] the numbers that we've seen so far suggest that in the locals that turnout in places is seven, eight points up. I mentioned Barnsley earlier. I mean, apparently the turnout could be double what it was at the last local elections, which is, is extraordinary.

And in Wales, again, we haven't got the final numbers, but the intelligence coming through is that in, in Wales, turnout might surpass 50% for the first time in a Senedd election. Now, part of me sort of thinks we shouldn't really be pleased with that. We should be more worried about why it's never reached 50% or more in, in the past, and that's you know, the complexities of devolution in Wales and the extent to which there was really ever great public support for it from the outset.

At least you know, the Scotland devolution model was always much more popular, and there was always more demand for it in Scotland than Wales. But yeah, turnout apparently could go through the, the 50% barrier for the first time. So those are good, positive things. Even if it is the national picture that's driving people to the polls, far better that people are actually turning out.

Mark D'Arcy: Democratic engagement is good.

Ruth Fox: Absolutely. It's still [00:06:00] below what we would want to see, it's still low. Mm. But, but it's, it's better than..

Mark D'Arcy: Better, better than before. Yeah.

Ruth Fox: It's a low bar, unfortunately.

Mark D'Arcy: But what this also raises is there's this really striking disconnect now between what's happened in these elections and the way politics looks if you're in the chamber of the House of Commons.

Because the three parties who dominate the numbers in the House of Commons, Labour, the Conservatives, and the Lib Dems, are not the parties who've done strikingly well in these elections. The parties that have done strikingly well, the ones with very tiny contingents of MPs in the House of Commons, which is to say Reform, the Greens, the SNP, and Plaid, and they collectively don't really have anything other than occasional walk-on roles in the Westminster drama.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, I mean, it's a bit negative to say they're bit part players at, at Westminster, but in terms of their access to the share of parliamentary debating time, prioritisation they get when, when amendments are being selected.

Mark D'Arcy: Speaking slots at PMQs.

Ruth Fox: Speaking slots at PMQs, [00:07:00] shares of seats on committees, select committee chairs and so on.

The opposition spoils are unequally shared. But the Conservatives and Lib Dems dominate, and we argued after the last general election that there was a case for more equal, a fairer split of the opposition spoils across the parties. That's not happened. No. There's no sign that it's going to happen.

But it will be a disconnect, you know, what the public has voted for out there is sharply different to what they voted for two years ago in terms of the general election and, and the seats in the House of Commons. So Westminster functions on the basis of the largest parties. Yeah. Those are the rules And will continue to do so for the rest of this Parliament.

But it does have that sort of slightly odd feeling.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah. But the narrative now moves on to the question of the future of the Prime Minister. Sir Keir Starmer has said that he takes responsibility for Labour's bad performance. I, I'm, I'm not actually quite sure what that actually means. I have visions of him being ritually scourged by monks as he expiates his electoral sins, rather like [00:08:00] Henry II after the murder of Thomas à Becket.

But I'm not sure that saying, "It's my fault," and then not doing anything about it is really going to cut the mustard here with his troops. So what is he going to do?

Ruth Fox: Well, that's the question, isn't it? And is he capable of making the changes in performance, behavior, the way in which the government is run, his judgment that is necessary to show that you've, you've changed as part of that taking of responsibility.

I mean, on the one hand, you sort of think if Labour has lost Wales, first time in 100 years, and, and the ties between Welsh Labour Party and the history of the party, the key figures in the party, is so considerable. To lose Wales is, is, it's seismic in, in for the party. Yeah. To suffer the greatest local election losses that the party has, has ever suffered at a single election, if that doesn't lead to him being ousted, you kind of think, "Well, what would?"

Mark D'Arcy: Hmm. And let's not underestimate the effects here. We're not simply talking about a few local functionaries being a bit unhappy here. We're talking [00:09:00] about very, very serious dents being put into the Labour electoral machine. If you're an MP, a lot of your constituency operation depends on local councillors.

If those local councillors have just lost their seats, they may just decide to wander away. I know people in politics whose parties, uh, had a bit of a debacle have just said, "Well, look, I've spent 10 years or 15 years working for us to get a toehold in power, and it's just dashed away. Why the hell should I keep on doing it?"

Ruth Fox: Yeah, I mean, your, your councillors are your local members, and they're the lifeblood of the local party, and they will feel bruised, and some of them will be angry that they've lost their positions through no fault of their own, against the national tide.

Mark D'Arcy: They, they may feel this is completely irrelevant to their actual performance as a party.

Ruth Fox: And in, in most cases, it probably has been. Yeah. So there will be the sort of the psychology of defeat. But a lot of talk has understandably been about Keir Starmer's position, and obviously that's our focus because we're focused on the Westminster Parliament. But there will also be now a battle for the [00:10:00] soul of the Labour Party at the local level, because the party will have to look ahead to the next electoral cycle.

This is one of the problems. We're in a sort of hamster wheel of elections every year. So they'll be looking ahead 12 months hence, 24 months hence. You've got local elections where you're going to have to have candidates. Who are those people going to be? If there's any prospect of picking up seats in some of these areas and recovering, I mean, that's a big question mark, but if there is, those are the people that are going to define the party in your local area going forward.

So, so there's sort of two levels of angst for the Labour Party. There's the local leadership, and there's the national leadership.

Mark D'Arcy: And often what you will see is an old establishment that's been in charge for quite a while in some of these places that have been Labour since the Jurassic period, if they've suddenly lost, they may be replaced by totally different people with a quite different outlook as the set of candidates who fight the next election.

There will be a different face to the Labour Party in a lot of places, and maybe the electorate will notice that either in a good way or in a bad way.

Ruth Fox: But conversely, if you think about it from the perspective of the other parties, in, [00:11:00] in the way that at the general election we had this huge influx of new MPs who had never been to Westminster, didn't, you know, know how House of Commons operates and so on.

You've now got thousand plus councillors across, more than that, several thousand, who are going to be completely new to being local councillors.

Mark D'Arcy: So they'll suddenly be in charge of adult social care and special needs education.

Ruth Fox: And they're going to have to take responsibility for power at the local level, and as Reform found out at the last local elections, you know, a lot of talk about cutting budgets and spending differently, you actually find that actually a lot of your spending is already statutorily required. There isn't actually much fat to cut, you know, we've been, been round this discussion before. So it may well be that at the local level, dissatisfaction could set in quite quickly. And a lot of these councillors, how well some of them will have been vetted will be an issue.

Mark D'Arcy: All sorts of things could happen.

Ruth Fox: All sorts of things could happen, yeah.

Mark D'Arcy: When, when you're suddenly in charge of something, the, the focus is on you a bit more, and if you make a mess of it then, then trouble follows. But meanwhile, you've [00:12:00] got a whole load of Labour MPs who've spent the last couple of weeks knocking on doors, talking to voters, coming back to Westminster for the King's Speech next week, probably rather bruised, possibly rather angry. What do they do and how does it redound on Sir Keir Starmer?

And the issue here is that there are different things that can happen with a leader. Sir Keir's already said he's not going anywhere. Now, that is a phrase which can be interpreted in a number of different ways for a start, but you wonder how the different levels of the Labour Party are looking at that.

What are they saying in the cabinet? What are the MPs out there saying? And some of those Cabinet members will have had pretty unpleasant results in their own constituencies. I mean, Jonathan Reynolds, the Chief Whip, has seen some pretty awful results in his Stalybridge and Hyde constituency. You wonder what Shabana Mahmood's going to make of the results in Birmingham.

You wonder what other members of the Cabinet are going to make of what's happened in their patches. Cabinet members aren't immune to [00:13:00] these kind of pressures, and you also wonder what the individual MPs may do. And there are formal and informal processes that could take place here, as we know from previous leadership battles over the years.

If you think back to both Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. they were mortally wounded as premiers by other scandals. But what actually brought them down was final failures of political judgment which were the last straw. The awful Chris Pincher affair and Boris Johnson's misjudgment about that came back to haunt him.

Liz Truss was finally brought down by a, a whipping disaster over, I think, windmills that was badly mismanaged, and that was just the final straw for MPs who were already pretty despairing and angry. And it's not hard to imagine Keir Starmer hitting something like that, even if he has firmly said he's not going to go, and there will be no leadership contest, and no one's quite plucked up the courage to challenge him.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. Well, do you know what the rules are, Mark, if the, in terms of challenge? I mean, you say there could be informal [00:14:00] actions taken where, you know, the Cabinet turns and says, "You've gotta go."

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, which is ultimately what happened to Margaret Thatcher. Yeah. You know, halfway through a leadership contest, the Cabinet were not really behind her anymore, and it was clear, and she decided to do the graceful thing. So there is, as you say, the, these informal ways in which party elders can say, "The game's up, Kip." Mm.

Ruth Fox: Or there's the formal route where somebody challenges. Do you know what the rules are? I mean, presumably once a challenge happens, whether it's an informal approach or a, a, a formal one, then, you know, you'd have to have a, a party process to elect a new leader.

And of course, there's a disconnect. It seems highly unlikely to me but there's a disconnect between Prime Minister and party leader. They don't have to necessarily be the same thing at the same time all the time. So you could see a scenario where the Cabinet basically gets rid of Keir Starmer because they've lost confidence in him.

And a new Prime Minister is appointed at the request of the Cabinet.

Mark D'Arcy: That person isn't formally the party leader. That could get a bit awkward after a while.

Ruth Fox: And I, I can't really see that happening. I think if there's going to be a, [00:15:00] a putsch, I think it'll be, you know, cleaner and, and clearer than that.

Mark D'Arcy: I mean, the, the, the precedent there is a really old one, which is that when Winston Churchill became Prime Minister in 1940 because Neville Chamberlain had lost the confidence of his party, it took a while before they kind of backfilled and made him Conservative Party leader, but there were other things going on to attract their attention at the time, so, uh, like the Second World War. So, I don't think that's a a particularly likely scenario. See,

Ruth Fox: And I'm not sure that the country would really wish to wear an interim Prime Minister while the Labour Party sorts out its, its leadership election.

Mark D'Arcy: The normal form is that if a leader decides to go, they wait, they remain in office on the principle the King's government must continue until a new leader is chosen, however long that takes.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. So do you know what the rules are? I'm ashamed to say I actually don't know what the rules are for a Labour challenge.

Mark D'Arcy: Well, the absolutely key hurdle is that any challenger would have to muster the support of 20% of the Labour MPs. It says the Parliamentary Labour Party, but it [00:16:00] means the Labour MPs. The Peers aren't included in this. So at the moment, 405 Labour MPs, that means you need 81 Labour MPs, one of which can be the challenger themselves.

So gathering those votes, and of course, I'd imagine the Whips office would quickly become aware of attempts to get people to sign on the dotted line to support. I mean, theoretically, you could have, with that mathematics, as many as five different candidates, but I'd be surprised if there were more than three. Because clearly the candidates would wish to, uh, get more than just the 81 to get over the hurdle. People can remember back to the days when Jeremy Corbyn was seeking nomination to be Labour leader, and it was all a very last minute effort, and it wasn't clear until the last moment that he'd actually get enough signatories to allow him to challenge.

In those days, I think it was 10% of MPs, and the rules have subsequently changed. All the same, there it was quite a last minute thing, and I think various people were in some trouble with their colleagues when it turned out they'd supported Jeremy Corbyn to further the debate, and then he actually became leader slightly to their horror.

But leaving that to one side for a moment, [00:17:00] having got 81 signatures, a candidate then has to notify the Labour Party General Secretary, Hollie Ridley, that they accept the nomination.

Ruth Fox: So Hollie is the equivalent of Graham Brady, except she's not a parliamentarian in Parliament. She's, she's the senior official.

Mark D'Arcy: Well, she's more the returning officer. She doesn't have the political role that someone in the 1922 Committee does. One of the big differences between the Labour system and the Conservative system is that there is actually a formal set of party officials guiding the contest rather than the 1922 Committee, which is a kind of parallel body which stands on its own authority.

So it's a different game completely in the Labour system. You'd then have to go and get nominations from constituency Labour parties as well to demonstrate that you have support outside Westminster and from affiliated bodies to the Labour Party, affiliated organisations.

Ruth Fox: And is that part of the process once the decision has been made about the election timetable, or do you have to do that beforehand?

Mark D'Arcy: I think you have to get that once the decision has been [00:18:00] made, that an election timetable as is set. And the setting of the election timetable is one of the absolutely critical factors in all this. Here's a scenario just for the purposes of argument, if you like. Sir Keir Starmer decides he's going to go, but doesn't formally trigger the election process in order to allow the party to have the widest possible choice of candidates, which is code for come...

Ruth Fox: Come on down, Andy.

Mark D'Arcy: Yes, exactly. Which is code for allowing Andy Burnham - King of the North - to have a chance to get someone to stand aside from a parliamentary seat and allow him to contest it. Now, that parliamentary seat just to digress slightly, probably have to be in his Northwest England bailiwick, Greater Manchester, possibly Merseyside.

Ruth Fox: That's the interesting question, isn't it, out of these local elections, because there's been some speculation that they're so awful for Labour, could Andy Burnham actually win a seat? But I, I think, I think the general sense is, academic colleagues up in the Northwest say he's very, very popular.

He's a different kettle of fish if he's running in, in a seat in the Northwest. That actually he could. No guarantees of course, [00:19:00] but, you know, he, he is a pretty popular figure and obviously a very well-known name, high name recognition, and a sense that he's actually delivered stuff in, in Greater Manchester. So he possibly could, but that wouldn't apply in a seat outside the Northwest. So somebody's then got to stand down.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, absolutely, and there are names floating around of people who might potentially stand down. I mean, it's all rumor mongering so I'm not going to recycle them. But there are a number of things here.

It was suggested after the Gorton by-election that there was polling evidence that had Andy Burnham been Labour's candidate, the Greens wouldn't have won the seat, and he would. And it's all very tendentious because it's a, it's a whole set of assumptions here. But there is a thought that there's a Burnham factor out there, and he's sufficiently popular as Mayor of Manchester, that his personal charisma, if you like, would carry Labour to victory in a seat in his bailiwick.

Well, that would have to be tested. If he were to become Prime Minister, he'd need to get into Parliament somehow.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, so if, and it's a big if, If Keir Starmer either decided voluntarily to stand down or was [00:20:00] pushed towards the door to stand down by his Cabinet or 81 nominations, the question of the timetable, as you say, then becomes critical.

And Keir Starmer, would he, you know, want to get it done quickly because he's no interest in having Andy Burnham as part of the discussion, or would the party actually, or the NEC perhaps even say, actually, you know, we do want him to have the opportunity to be considered, so we wait for a by-election.

Or conversely, could it be done the other way? They actually say, well, he could be leader of the Labour Party, and then somebody has to stand down and he comes in and becomes an MP, but that would be very messy.

Mark D'Arcy: Well, it would be very messy, and also I, as far as I can see, the rules wouldn't allow it.

You actually have to be a Member of Parliament in order to run, so you couldn't be nominated from outside Parliament and pick up a seat later.

Ruth Fox: So this is not a Mark Carney situation in Canada.

Mark D'Arcy: It's not a Mark Carney situation. It's not a, if you want to go back into the mists of time, an Alec Douglas-Home situation where he became Prime Minister, then had to win a, a seat in the Commons.

So the decision on timing is critical for Andy Burnham because if they just fire the starting gun immediately, he doesn't have a chance to get into Parliament. He can't be nominated, [00:21:00] and then it's Wes Streeting or Angela Rayner or some other figure, someone from within the existing parliamentary Labour Party who put their head above the parapet and could get the nominations.

Ruth Fox: Step forward, Al Carns.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah. Well, there are suggestions that it might be someone completely different. Yeah. But who, who knows who might emerge in, in those very difficult circumstances. But the key decision here is for Sir Keir Starmer. Does he decide he's going to stand down, or alternatively does he find he's pushed into standing down because he loses the support of the people he needs to govern, which ultimately was what happened to Boris Johnson, if you remember that endless cascade of ministerial resignations.

Even people he appointed to fill the spaces left by some of his resigning ministers almost immediately resigned. Anyone remember Nadhim Zahawi's 30 second tenure as Chancellor?

Ruth Fox: A few MPs have already broken cover, Mark, and obviously are being asked questions by the media, and the line seems to be that Keir Starmer cannot lead Labour into another election.

Now, you notice it [00:22:00] doesn't say another general election, so there'll be local elections next year, so possibly setting out a timeframe, if you like, for the party and for the, for the Cabinet to consider.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, but that, that could mean, I suppose, not an immediate process, or not even maybe a process this year, but maybe a more leisurely changeover of leadership.

But I think the overriding point that Labour's just, I think, beginning to start to face is that it's now being attacked on all sides. You know, it's losing votes to the Greens, it's losing votes to Reform, it's losing votes to the Tories, the Lib Dems, to the SNP, to Plaid. It's losing votes in all directions, and it's got to come up with a strategic response to that, and that means a leader who has some kind of answer to the pincer movement, if you like, that Labour candidates and councils and in the Senedd and in the Scottish Parliament have been having to deal with.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, I mean, this can't be clearly just about can we have a, a, a leader, a Prime Minister who can communicate a bit better with the electorate. One MP who's gone over the top has said that he can communicate in human [00:23:00] terms which I thought was a tad unfair. It's also about, you know, what's the policy programme? What is the political strategy? What is the economic strategy? How are they going to put together a programme that is going to convince the electorate that they've got a sense of direction? But also that they can take advantage of the policies and the legislation that they've already put in place. I mean, one of the problems with Keir Starmer's administration is it jumps about from issue to issue, and they, they never have a sustained message to the electorate about what they're already doing. But also, they need to have a, a much more developed political and economic strategy.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah, a more fluent personality, and perhaps an end to the soap opera of palace intrigue that Downing Street has had with the Sue Gray saga, the Morgan McSweeney saga, and all those kind of things, would be a relief for Labour MPs, but it's clearly not enough.

As you say, there has to be a leader who embodies a much wider political strategy if they're going to change leaders. Otherwise, probably the pain of changing leader [00:24:00] just to get slightly more human sounding interviews isn't going to be worth it.

Ruth Fox: No.

Mark D'Arcy: Of course, the other point about the timing of any leadership election is that it's not like there's nothing else going on in the world.

How long do you want to have a situation where the British government is presided over by a Prime Minister who everybody knows is in the departure lounge before you get a new replacement in? And that's got to figure in as a major factor in any decision about how long you give an election. It can't just be a stately process that runs on for months.

Ruth Fox: Or whether you have an election. I think, I think it's a prior factor in, for example, the Cabinet. I mean, one assumes that they have got more information than we've got about the state of the problems coming up in terms of the economy as a result of the situation in the Gulf and the...

Mark D'Arcy: The oil reserves and all the rest of it.

Ruth Fox: So the, you know, the impact on oil, the potential impact in terms of the cost of living crisis. So the timing of a, of a leadership election, were there to be one, they've got to factor that in as well. I mean, part of Keir Starmer's response to these local [00:25:00] election results was that he didn't want to plunge the country into chaos with a leadership election.

Very much sort of fronting up as, "I'm the only possible leader that can lead us through this time." I'm not sure that his colleagues would, would necessarily agree with that. But as you say, it's, it's relevant in terms of the timing. But it could also benefit him precisely in that they may actually take the view that what is coming up could be potentially difficult, and we don't want to have a situation where because of a leadership challenge and leadership election that's elongated, you've got a lame duck Prime Minister in, in post.

Well, this of course, Mark, is all speculation, but I think useful to lay out for listeners what the rules are should this come to pass. Because there's a lot of speculation and, and as I said earlier, if there is to be a push against him, this kinda seems like the time. You know, how do you survive results like this? And if you do, then what else would possibly dislodge you? I mean, if he doesn't go over this, then it's hard to see that he doesn't otherwise then survive through to the general election.

Mark D'Arcy: Well, it's the old question in politics, isn't it? If not now, when? And if the answer to that is never...

Ruth Fox: And it may well be, because they can't [00:26:00] agree on an alternative, or the Cabinet can't get their act together to collectively to move against him. Who knows? But, useful, I hope, to listeners just to, to have a bit of an understanding of, of the rules and, and how this will work in terms of Westminster timetables as well, because as you say, you know, by-elections and so on could become important.

But, shall we take a break and come back and talk about the situation in Scotland and Wales? Because there's some really interesting things happening in both countries that will have implications for Westminster as well.

Mark D'Arcy: Indeed. See you in a moment.

Ruth Fox: See you in a minute.

Mark D'Arcy: And we're back. And, and Ruth, obviously Westminster is back in business next week with the King's Speech on Wednesday, but also the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Senedd will be back in business too.

And both of them have interesting stories to tell. I mean, one immediate Westminster implication of the Scottish results looks to be the departure of Stephen Flynn, the SNP's Westminster leader, who now has a seat in the Scottish Parliament, and he's been one of the real stars of [00:27:00] Question Time. He's turned into a very sharp-edged, very incisive questioner in the Commons sphere, and I think his presence will be missed by the SNP, although probably not regretted by Sir Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch, because he's sometimes rather shown them up as a very effective performer in the Commons.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. They've got nine SNP MPs, so there, there's going to have to be a by-election, which, listeners you can tune into our podcast explainer on the Chiltern Hundreds. I'll include a link in the show notes, because that's definitely going to be coming up. I don't think it'll be a seat Andy Burnham will be running in.

Mark D'Arcy: I think the SNP slightly wince at the whole business of the Chiltern Hundreds ... but they're rather stuck with it, I think, so.

Ruth Fox: The reason he's standing down is because last year the Scottish Parliament passed legislation to stop members of the, the Scottish Parliament double jobbing, dual hatting, as it were.

So it means that if you win election to the Scottish Parliament and you were already, as he is, a member of the Westminster Parliament, he's basically got 49 days to resign [00:28:00] his seat in the other legislature, or he would be ousted from his own seat, the new seat in the Scottish Parliament. So we'd expect fairly quickly for Mr. Flynn to be applying to the Treasury for the Chiltern Hundreds.

Mark D'Arcy: And you'll just have to watch. It'll be quite an interesting, exercise deciding who the SNP have to lead them next. There are several candidates out there from the, the contingent of MPs they've got. Stephen Flynn's arrival as the SNP's Westminster leader was actually, um, surprised some observers who thought that others, other better known names might get it, but he was very much the anointed candidate of the party leadership, and he's performed well up to expectations. Maybe the SNP see him as a, a future First Minister in due course.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, and we don't know exactly who the Scottish MSPs are going to be. The results are still coming in, but there are quite a few former MPs for the SNP at Westminster running in these elections. So we may see a return of faces like Alison Thewliss, for example, and, and a few others, Deidre Brock, who may return to Parliament in Edinburgh.

The Parliament is expected to get up and [00:29:00] running - it has to convene within seven days of the election - so it'll convene sometime next week. They haven't announced when exactly, so whether it be Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, I'm not sure. And then once they've done that, obviously the members will have to take the oath of office, uh, they have to take the oath of allegiance or make a solemn affirmation as they do at Westminster.

And first item of business will be to choose a new Presiding Officer because Alison Johnstone, who was the Presiding Officer in the last Parliament, she has retired, so there'll be a new face in the, in the chair in the Scottish Parliament. And then they've got to choose their First Minister, which I think, although the results are not all in, I think we can say will be John Swinney.

Mark D'Arcy: And a parallel process will be taking place in the Senedd as well, in Cardiff Bay, and, it will be very intriguing to see how that unfolds because it'll be the first time that it hasn't been a shoo-in that whoever's the Labour leader will take over as First Minister. A whole new game will be afoot in Cardiff Bay.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, and I think this could be a little bit more complicated- ... than the, than in Scotland to work out. [00:30:00] So the Senedd has to meet within 14 days. The Presiding Officer from the last Parliament liaises with the party leaders apparently to decide the date when they will convene next week. And again, we don't know, but it's expected to be probably Tuesday or Wednesday.

And again, same sort of process. They have to take their oaths, and then they have to choose a new Presiding Officer, and then they've got to vote for the First Minister, as in Scotland. And this, I think, is where it could get a bit more complicated because they have to nominate a First Minister within 28 days, so that's the 3rd of June is the deadline. And if they don't nominate somebody, they will have to have an extraordinary general election. Same in Scotland, I should say, but there's no expectation of being any problems in, in Scotland.

Mark D'Arcy: But the possibility of deadlock in the Senedd i- is, is at least live, and could I suppose it could actually come to pass if the parties really can't agree amongst themselves in due course, and some kind of majority can be cobbled together for someone.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, [00:31:00] because, uh, the thing to understand about Wales is that it is going to be a bigger Parliament. So they've increased their numbers. They, there will be 96 members now of the Parliament, and there'll be more ministers. So it's going up, I think, to 17, where I think it was about 12 or so before. And they've got to get to 49 seats. Any party that wants to form a majority government has got to get to 49, and it looks like no party will. It's looking, as we're recording, that Plaid Cymru might be the biggest party. But then there's a broader question in these systems, you know, what does winning mean? Is it those who've got the most seats or those who've got the greatest vote share and, and so on?

Mark D'Arcy: And those who perhaps can attract the most coalition partners.

Ruth Fox: Yes, and that's the critical point. What matters is your seat in the Parliament, because you've got to be able to, to cobble together support for 49 in order to pass a budget, for example.

So there was a sort of an argument, what if Reform were the largest party?

Would they be [00:32:00] able to cobble together enough support in order to form a government? Now, the expectation is probably not, because if you look at the spectrum of parties in Wales, their only possible partner really is the Conservatives. But it's not really in the Conservatives' interest to prop up a Reform government in Wales.

So if you look at the other side, Plaid has got more potential partners. It's got Labour, it's got the Liberal Democrats, it's got the Greens. So the expectation was that they might have a better chance. So what was likely to happen, I suppose, is that, you know, you have your, you vote for First Minister. It might be next week. Doesn't have to be. And as I understand it, any member who wants to stand to be First Minister can throw their hat in the ring. So it's not a foregone conclusion that just because, you know, Plaid have got the, the largest number of seats, that only the leader of that party will be in the contest.

It might well be that the other parties, Reform, for example, try and, and challenge, and there is a, a vote. And it's actually I think, a roll call vote. [00:33:00] Unlike in Scotland, where I think it's a secret ballot. So yeah, there's a sort of question, who can cobble together the numbers?

Mark D'Arcy: And it's also possibly not likely to be a full-blown coalition, you know, with Labour members sitting as junior members of a Plaid Cabinet, for example.

You may find that it's parties saying, "We'll give you our tacit support for now, but it's not guaranteed that we'll agree with you on all issues." And so you, you may have a minority government basically eking out an existence from vote to vote and having to pass a budget and not being sure it can.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. And it may well be that the parties indicate, well, you know, Plaid or Reform, whichever one it, it is at the end of the day, let them get on with it. They've clearly performed better in the, the election. But you kind of wait until the budget comes, and then you vote against them. And the pain It's delayed pain. You know it's coming 'cause you, you, they haven't got the numbers, but you don't need to extract that pain now.

Mark D'Arcy: It's the good old Leninist line, "we will support them as a rope [00:34:00] supports a hanging man". You know that, that Labour or the Conservatives could easily support people for a while, but then trip them up when it seemed a strategically advantageous moment to do it.

Yeah. So government in Wales for a while might be quite a tricky business for whoever gets the crown.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. You can see there's going to be an awful lot of horse trading over policy and over commitments. And would Labour be prepared to support a budget from a, for example, a Plaid or Green coalition?

Possibly not. There's lots and lots of permutations that might emerge, but in the end, there'll be an enormous amount of horse trading, and potentially one or two members of the Parliament could have outsize influence.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah. And, uh, it's going to be a test of everybody's party cohesion if everything is a kind of rolling negotiation as people go along.

So watch this space. And I suppose the, the point about this is that this may be a portent of how Westminster may look after the next general election. You could indeed have several parties who potentially have a claim to form a government. Suppose you have a very [00:35:00] large contingent of Reform MPs and a quite large contingent of Conservative or Labour MPs trying to assemble a coalition with the smaller parties, or at least the tacit support of the smaller parties, trying to get a King's Speech through.

Maybe they'll get it through. Maybe at the last minute there'll be a snag, and so the King's Speech will be defeated, et cetera, et cetera. So you put that set of dilemmas through the architecture of Westminster, and again, an incoming government after the next general election may have a very rocky time of it.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. Another thought on the implications for Westminster. Clearly, the Welsh government, the Welsh civil service, the Welsh system, is going to have to also adapt to these new circumstances. You have an awful lot of new members, as Westminster had at the, the 2024 general election. You're now going to have a lot in the, the Welsh Parliament.

But I think there's implications for Westminster in terms of legislation. I mean, how, how important you view it, I think will depend upon how relations between the parties develop between Whitehall and, and Cardiff. [00:36:00] But when Westminster is wanting to legislate in areas of devolved responsibility and where they sort of cut across on policy areas, the Welsh Parliament, and indeed the Scottish Parliament, are asked to give legislative consent.

That's a formal process. The government recommends to the parliament whether or not legislative consent should be granted, and then that is reported back to Westminster.

Mark D'Arcy: But Westminster doesn't have to stop if legislative consent is withheld, and that's the difficulty.

Ruth Fox: Yes, and that, that's the problem, isn't it?

That's the flashpoint, I suppose you could say. Yeah. As we found during Brexit, if Westminster wants to ignore them, they can and will. But it does make relationships trickier.

And I think the expectation is that if Labour doesn't have a, a government in Cardiff, the expectation is, well, Plaid are much less likely to be willing to give legislative consent than a Labour administration.

And from Plaid's perspective, it's much better for them in terms of their positioning and their whole rationale, for their existence to say no.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah. Or extract concessions. [00:37:00] You know, uh, okay, we'll, we'll go along with this, but you've got to legislate to allow there to be a Welsh justice system.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. On the other hand, something that's not talked about that much, apart from, you know, very constitutional geeky circles like ours is that actually underneath the hood, Westminster and Whitehall do quite a lot of stuff that is not done in Cardiff, that, you know, there's a sort of tacit, sometimes requests from Wales, for things to, to be delivered by Whitehall rather than the Welsh government because they don't have the capacity.

And as a consequence, again, would Plaid take that approach in future? Possibly not.

Mark D'Arcy: What happens if those relationships break down to the point where Westminster isn't necessarily willing to oblige them, so.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. And, you know, you look at what's coming in the King's Speech or what we believe is coming in the King's Speech next week, you look at things like, for example, the so-called EU Reset Bill that we talked about on the podcast a couple of weeks ago with Professor Catherine Barnard, and areas where we are effectively going to become a rule taker in, respect of energy and [00:38:00] phytosanitary regulations.

Mark D'Arcy: Imagine the fun a Reform administration in Cardiff could have with some of that.

Ruth Fox: Well, even, you know, even Plaid Cymru, because a lot of this has an enormous cut across and consequences for the devolved governments as well, because this is in legislative areas sometimes that is delegated to the Scottish and Welsh governments, and it's incredibly complicated at a policy and, and legislative level.

And I just think that the capacity of, of the administrations to deal with it is going to be difficult.

Mark D'Arcy: Indeed, there's definitely something to watch there. And as I say, this is all a portent for the kind of situation that Westminster could face after the next general election, and we will just have to watch out.

In particular, I'll be very interested to see how the institutions in the Senedd adapt to a multi-party environment where there isn't a dominant majority or even a dominant minority party there, where a lot of political actors will want more of the action. Minor players will [00:39:00] suddenly be demanding their slice of the cake, because that is, again, something that Westminster may have to get into.

Westminster is a bicycle built for two at the moment. A government, an opposition, and a few bit players around the edges. What if it's not like that next time?

Ruth Fox: Yeah. Well, the, the rules don't help. Yeah, there is going to have to be some serious look at the Standing Orders of the House of Commons and how they would operate in that kind of multi-party environment.

But going back to Wales, you know, one of the other issues will be that committees of the Welsh Parliament, for example, they are much more likely than a, you know, Labour-led select committees in, in the Parliament to put the boot into London when it suits. So, you know, it's not hard to think that Plaid or Reform, for both of them, the interests are to distance themselves from London.

Mark D'Arcy: We're now living, I suppose, with the devolution nightmare scenario, which is all three devolved parliaments are now headed by secessionist parties.

Ruth Fox: Yeah. So how the government here in, in Westminster deals with that will be [00:40:00] interesting because they you know, an argument in Wales is they haven't shown nearly enough respect, consideration, and engagement with them about some of the key issues that they care about. And one of them was the control of the Crown Estate in Wales, where there you know, there was a desire on the part of the Welsh Government to have control of that, and that was not something that London was keen on.

So, you know, there are plenty of areas where you could say that the government here in, in London has not paid, you know, sufficient regard to the needs of of the Welsh administration. And if you remember, of course, Anas Sarwar in Scotland put the boot into Keir Starmer. And Eluned Morgan, who's lost her seat, we've just had the confirmation of that, she's lost her seat in Wales, the First Minister, she didn't, and one does wonder if, if she had perhaps been a little bit more openly critical might it have made a difference.

Possibly not, but we will never know.

Mark D'Arcy: We'll never know, but it all rolls forward into next week's exciting episode when Ruth and I will be back to assess the King's Speech and whether Labour's new legislative programme really is going to amount to a reset that will make a difference with voters.

Ruth Fox: But listeners, [00:41:00] before we go, just remember to rate, review, and, forward on the podcast to your friends and family and coworkers if you think they might find it of interest.

See you next week.

Mark D'Arcy: Bye-bye.

Outro: Parliament Matters is produced by the Hansard Society and supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. For more information, visit hansardsociety.org.uk/pm, or find us on social media @HansardSociety.