Recently British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Welfare Reform Bill was passed in the House of Commons. Theoretically, passing bills for Starmer’s Labour Government shouldn’t be an issue, for it has 403 out of 650 MPs. But it is, as in British politics, the independent views of an MP (irrespective of the leadership view), matters. Party ‘Whips’ cannot be issued at all times, as democratic deliberations and dissenting views within a party are considered healthy, and even necessary.

A staggering (by Indian standards) 49 Labour Party MPs voted against a bill brought by their own government. This is not surprising as the Centre-Left Labour party is a mélange of democratic socialists, social democrats, trade unionists and even hard leftists. It is the same for the main opposition grouping, the Conservative Party, which hosts an array of traditional conservatives, one-nation conservatives, That – cherites and even hard-right factions. Sub-factions within the party debate and disagree with each other publicly and it is usually the majority faction within each party that gets to elect the leadership and pass bills.

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The traditions of democracy and its essentialities of debate are afforded externally and internally in British Democracy. “Brexit” was a classic case that demonstrated various positions amongst the Parliamentarians that cut across party lines. Cohorts included Hard-Brexiteers, Soft-Brexiteers, Remain, Refuseniks, “People’s Vote Faction”, Lexit-Eurosceptics, etc., which ensured that the then ruling Conservative leadership could not take its parliamentary majority for granted. Befittingly, while the Labour Party officially voted ‘against’ Brexit, 32 Labour MPs defied the official position and chose to ‘abstain’ symbolically in the decisive vote. All this points to the importance of individual opinion and the assertion of the same in British politics. It is not predicated blindly on the “Party Line” as is effectively man-dated in Indian politics.

© The Statesman