Thursday 19th January 2012 | 16:52

Rebels of the Chamber

Constitutionally contrary or admirably independent-minded? Isabel Hardman meets MPs who are a thorn in the side of their parties and asks how influential they really are

Most MPs will never forget their first rebellion in the House of Commons. For some, it is the end of a promising career on the first rungs of the ministerial ladder, but for others, it’s the start of a career as part of a hardcore of rebels. So how does an MP become a serial whip-defier? And what does it feel like to regularly trudge through different lobbies to your party colleagues? The House Magazine met some of Parliament’s most notorious refuseniks.

The most independently minded MP of the current Parliament is Philip Hollobone, who has rebelled on a quarter of votes. He prefers to let his voting record speak for itself, but hot on his heels for the title is Shipley MP Philip Davies, who has rebelled on 22 per cent of votes since May 2010.

Though he is cheerfully unrepentant about being a serial rebel, he insists he never feels cheery when walking through a different lobby. “I am a Conservative to the core,” he says. “I think Tony Benn said that he was born in the Labour Party and he will die in the Labour Party, and I feel the same way about the Conservative Party.”

Even October’s backbench vote on whether the government should hold a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union was, says Davies, not a challenge to David Cameron’s leadership. “I was not thinking that I was undermining the prime minister. I did not have any Machiavellian reasons for voting the way I did.” He also observes a strict etiquette about rebelling. “If I’m going to rebel,” he explains. “I will always tell the whips.” Apparently these conversations, in which he announces his intentions, are always cordial – it’s a myth, says Davies, that whips have a “selection of instruments of torture”. It’s hardly a surprise that Mr Davies is so rebellious: he promised to be so in his maiden speech, saying: “I have no desire to rise through the ranks as a shadow minister... I wish to remain on the backbenches and to speak up for the things that matter to me and my constituents.”

Another MP who has long given up hope of encouraging his party’s patronage through loyal voting is Portsmouth South MP Mike Hancock, who has defied the whip on 12 per cent of votes since the coalition formed. Sitting in his office in 1 Parliament Street, Mr Hancock claims his record would be worse had he turned up to more votes. “Some of them I just don’t bother to go to: I think it’s easier if I just don’t show my face at all.”

He is a veteran of dissent, starting out as a Labour councillor who defected to the SDP. Sitting opposite an old photograph of him with David Owen, Charles Kennedy, Roy Jenkins and Charles Kennedy, Hancock says: “My constituents did not vote for a Tory government. The fact that we could only offer them that as the only workable solution following the election, I am bitterly disappointed by.” In the early days of his political career following his election in 1984, there were only seven Social Democrat MPs in the House of Commons. Rebelling against the party line then was rather different. “Getting bollocked by David Owen was not very pleasant,” he says wryly.

He is sanguine about the role of the Lib Dem whips today, saying that twisting the arms of MPs is “what their job is”. But he has had his run-ins with the enforcers. “I was threatened by the whips that I would be removed from the Council of Europe, and I would not take the shit from them. Within 20 minutes I was in Downing Street: I had told Nick Clegg I was going to go to the press on that.” The threat was withdrawn.

He would also have rebelled against the government on the Health and Social Care Bill if he had not been exempted by chairing the public bill committee. “I am sick of being told ‘do not worry, it will be sorted out when it goes to the Lords’. I’m not happy with the idea that the democratically elected House can send legislation away from it which we are clearly uncomfortable with.”

Once an MP starts down the route of the serial rebel, it seems easier for the whips to leave them be. Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn, is one such example. “A whip called me once, saying: ‘I just wanted to confirm that you will definitely be voting against us tonight’,” he says. “I replied, yes, your intelligence is right.” He was not one of the queue of Labour MPs called in for their five minutes with Tony Blair before the Commons voted on the Iraq war, even though he asked to have some time with the PM. “It would have taken him two hours,” he says, adding that “nothing on earth would have changed my mind on that vote”.

Like Mr Hancock and Mr Davies, Mr Corbyn claims he has never been interested in promotion, and so the whips’ threats are fairly empty. There is less call for rebellion when you are in opposition, but Corbyn remains top of his party’s rankings, with 5.5 per cent of his votes defying the party whip. It was a different story when Labour was in government, with the backbencher – who describes himself as a socialist – turning against the government on 487 out of 2,567 votes between 1997 and 2010. But he is still uncomfortable about some votes he has attended in this Parliament, warning: “The Labour spokespeople have fallen into an elephant trap in saying that somehow or other that we are going to win an election by seeking the approval of the Daily Mail. We should be seeking the approval of the people who support us. We are testing the patience of our supporters.”

All three of these MPs insist that voting by your gut instinct is an effective way of influencing party and government policy, Professor Philip Cowley of Nottingham University, who runs revolts.co.uk, isn’t so sure. “There’s a diminishing scale of influence. Your first rebellion is quite powerful, the second is less so, and so on. Those rebels are needed to start a revolt, but on their own they are not enough. They need other MPs, who do not rebel as often, to join them for it to become a serious revolt.”

But for all these MPs, the trade-off between a ministerial job and loyalty to policies they find unconscionable is just too great. But that’s not to say they don’t respect colleagues who have swallowed the whips’ medicine more frequently. “If every MP was like me, Parliament would be complete chaos,” says Mr Davies. It’s just as well for the whips that they aren’t.

PARLIAMENT's MOST REBELLIOUS MPS

1 Philip Hollobone 25.2%
2 Philip Davies 21.8
3 Christopher Chope 21.7%
4 Richard Shepherd 18.4%
5 David Nuttall 17.8%
6 Peter Bone 16.9%
7 William Cash 15.7%
8 Julian Lewis 12.4%
9 Mike Hancock 12.0%
10 Andrew Turner 11.0%