The first time is the hardest, so they say. Most MPs do not arrive in parliament as rebels. The courage to defy whips and forfeit career prospects must be summoned over time. But rebellion, like all things, gets easier with practice.
The decision facing Labour MPs voting on whether to empower the prime minister to activate the European Union exit clause is not easy. Their leader backs the bill, but that is not a significant consideration for many. They know the arguments for triggering article 50, but none could honestly say they have been persuaded by anything Jeremy Corbyn has said on the subject. And since Corbyn’s 30 years as a backbencher were spent in disdain for party lines, his authority as a wielder of whips is negligible.
Few Labour MPs imagine that Corbyn will one day be doling out ministerial red boxes. So exile from a demoralised opposition frontbench is a small price to pay for conscientious objection to Brexit on terms dictated by Theresa May.
There is a good case for Labour accepting that Britain must leave the EU, since that is what a majority of the country has said it wants. That is Corbyn’s view. The opposition could then define itself through an alternative vision of the nation’s post-European destiny, one that is kinder and more reasonable than May’s rock-hard Brexit. But convincing leave voters that their anger is sincerely heard, while reassuring anxious remainers that they are not being abandoned, is a tricky message best delivered by a strong leader with transcendent authority and charisma. So not Corbyn. Sullenly following Tories through the aye lobby won’t do the job.
Labour’s Brexit position is doubly hard to sell since Donald Trump started making good on his nastiest promises. The availability of some compromise Brexit, defined by continuing intimacy with the rest of the Europe, is shrinking daily. Trump was not bluffing about his vicious immigration policy. It would be wise to assume he was also not bluffing about trade protectionism and willingness to see the EU unravel. There is no mask. There is no better man hiding inside the one who radiates scorn for civil society, pluralism and the spirit of the US constitution. Yet May is happy to have his capricious little hand tug Britain away from its continental alliances.
So while it makes sense for Labour to come through the article 50 debate looking like a party that accepts the verdict of the majority, it is hard to expect individual MPs to sign a licence for May to harm their constituents and diminish the country’s standing in the world. For Labour, the pain of choosing between conviction and public opinion is grimly familiar. That is what happens when you lose elections: you re-examine beliefs that voters have rejected, which is tricky when you think the voters are wrong.
Conservative remainers have less experience of that torture. Many knew election defeat under John Major, William Hague and Michael Howard. But those results were well signposted in advance. There was no shock factor. Besides, a central tenet of David Cameron’s Tory “modernisation” project was acceptance that the party had found itself on the wrong side of too many arguments for too long. Although few said it out loud, many knew they had deserved to lose.
That spirit does not extend to the referendum result (not yet). Pro-European Tories admit that they failed to understand and address important social and economic grievances. But most still believe that leaving the EU is a false remedy. They acquiesce to the “will of the people” without deferring to the people’s judgment. Many Tory liberals are also appalled by the thought of Trump in triumphant procession over British diplomatic dignity.
It is unclear how many Tory MPs fall into this category. Only a handful are vocal. In parliament today Ken Clarke gave a lusty defence of EU membership in flagrant contempt of the referendum result, but he enjoys an elder statesman’s insouciant disregard for party lines and the consequences of defying them. The stakes are higher for most Conservatives with rebellion rumbling in their stomachs. Their leader is not some hapless striker of irrelevant poses. She is the prime minister, with real powers of patronage and a long memory for grudges. And many backbenchers recognise a duty not to destabilise the government in volatile times.
The modernising wing of the Tory party is also temperamentally loyal. Under Cameron, they made a point of playing nicely, in contrast to Eurosceptic rowdiness. They lobbied in private and took the whip with good grace. Their reward in matters European was to be ignored, while Cameron lavished concessions on the troublemakers.
There is no sign of that pattern being reversed under May. When she first moved into No 10, she feared the liberals in her party almost as much as the headbangers. She saw former ministers such as Anna Soubry and Nicky Morgan agitating for a softer line on Europe and suspected an organised campaign – a revanche by Cameroons-in-exile, with George Osborne as the criminal mastermind organising dissent from a bunker beneath a volcano somewhere.
But the volcano is dormant. The greater demands on May’s attention come from the hard-Brexit ultras, now fellow travellers with Trump. Without countervailing pressure, the prime minister will keep tilting in their direction once article 50 is triggered.
And it will be triggered. Once that happens, MPs can consider their duty to the referendum result discharged. There was only one commandment handed down on June 23 2016: leave the EU. There is no additional mandate for a Brexit that aligns the UK with Trump in hostility to our European partners and in betrayal of our true American friends – those who fear for their republic and their constitution.
Labour has no capacity to force the prime minister to change course. That power belongs to a few dozen moderate Tory MPs. Those who are alarmed by the illiberal turn events have taken should examine the paltriness of their compensation for the years of loyalty to Cameron and May. They have been taken for a ride. They dutifully uphold a government that has cast their values into opposition. It is time they summoned a more rebellious spirit.