As voters across the United Kingdom head to the polls, Robert Saunders reflects on the emergence of the real villain of this election - 'The Supermajority' ...
Like a desperate screenwriter, rummaging in the dustbins of the Marvel Comic Universe, the Conservatives have stumbled upon a new villain. "The Supermajority" may lack some of the glamour of The Green Goblin or Dr Doom, but he strikes no less terror into his victims. According to Grant Shapps - a man with a few secret identities of his own - a Labour supermajority would wield “unchecked power”, plunging the country into “a dangerous place”. Labour, warns Rishi Sunak, could "change the rules so that they are in power for a very long time”, allowing them to do “whatever they want to our country”. The party's loyal newspapers warn of "4 Days to Stop a Supermajority", before the Leader of the Opposition bastes himself in gamma rays, hulks out on the campaign trail and unleashes "Starmergeddon" on a petrified nation.
'I have the Power...'
The British electoral system routinely throws up inflated majorities: 179 for Tony Blair in 1997; 144 for Margaret Thatcher in 1983; 145 for Clement Attlee in 1945; 209 for Stanley Baldwin in 1924; and a whopping 493 for the "National Government" in 1931. Only the last of those won more than half the vote. But a large majority is not the same as a super-majority - and that difference matters.
A "supermajority" is one that, by passing a certain threshold, unlocks a set of powers that don't come with a normal majority. This is a common feature of many constitutional systems, which require a special majority to amend the constitution, override a presidential veto or close down debate where opponents are "filibustering". Securing that majority radically changes what a government can do, opening up dramatic new possibilities for change.
The UK does not have that system. Under the theory of parliamentary sovereignty, Parliament can abolish the monarchy, change the electoral system or annexe France by the normal process of legislation. It doesn't matter whether the majority is ten or two hundred: Britain has no special categories of legislation beyond the reach of a regular majority. Parliament has, occasionally, written higher thresholds into specific pieces of legislation: the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, for example, required two-thirds of MPs to vote for an early election. But as we saw in 2019, that could be overruled by a new Act of Parliament, which required only a majority of one.
In that sense, Britain's problem is that any reasonable majority is a "supermajority" - whether it's 50 or 500. The Conservatives want to persuade the electorate that, if Labour wins big on Thursday, there were will be something new and dangerous about its powers. In fact, the only novelty will be the transfer of those powers out of the hands of the Conservative Party, which was happy to wield the sceptre itself.
For good or for ill, the Conservatives have shown little concern in the past about the power of a government with a clear parliamentary majority. In 2022, they used their majority to introduce compulsory Voter ID: a change to the ground-rules of our democracy, which was carried against the opposition of almost every other party in the House. They have repeatedly rushed through legislation on accelerated timetables; used their control of parliamentary business to avoid (or boycott) Opposition Day debates; and used skeleton bills and Henry VIII clauses to arm ministers with what the House of Lords Constitution Committee called powers of "breathtaking scope", acquired "for convenience rather than necessity". For those of us who have been warning for years against a lack of checks and balances in the British constitution, the Conservatives feel a little late to the party.
So what's new?
Even for the Conservatives, some of the more apocalyptic warnings are undoubtedly overblown. There is no reason to believe that "Labour could be in power for 20 years if voters “get this wrong”" - unless, of course, voters choose to re-elect them at least three times. Votes at 16 may be a good or bad thing (I'm mildly sceptical), but there aren't enough 16/17-year-olds to "rig the system" and no one can predict how they might vote in future. (If you think young people are biologically left-wing, take a peek at the elections in France).
Historically, there is little correlation between the size of a majority and its durability, or even its effectiveness in office. The landslides of 1906 and 1945 had gone by 1910 and 1950; the big wins of 1900 and 1966 were swept away at the elections that followed. Landslides happen when the ground becomes unstable, which can leave all parties struggling for a foothold. Margaret Thatcher's first government, with a majority of 44, was almost certainly more effective than her second, when the lead ballooned to 144 seats. The most stable government of the last 14 years was the coalition of 2010-15, formed when no party had an independent majority.
What of claims that opposition will become impossible? If the Conservatives do as badly as predicted, they may struggle to staff their front bench or supply parliamentary committees, and they will receive less "Short Money" to support their activities. But the reality is that the UK system is always stacked against the Opposition. The government controls the parliamentary timetable and even the scheduling of Opposition Day debates. It can expect to win almost every vote in the House, except when its own backbenchers rebel. In the parliament that has just ended, it mattered much more whether the ERG opposed something than whether the Labour Party did so.
If anything, Opposition is less punishing for the Conservatives than it is for their opponents. They retain a loyal band of newspapers that still have a disproportionate influence on the news agenda. There is now a dedicated right-wing TV channel, whose importance will grow over the coming years. Labour finds it much harder to get a hearing when out of power, while Ed Davey has to fall off a paddle-board to get thirty seconds on the news.
But is there a problem?.
These things matter, but they will not be new on Friday morning. They are the routine disorders of the British constitutional system, which grants too much power on too small a share of the vote, weights the dice against opposition parties, and relies too much on the unelected chamber for proper scrutiny of legislation.
As Rory Stewart's recent book describes, it can be difficult for MPs even to know what they are voting on; and compared to other parliaments, MPs have limited access to research services against which to test their leaders' instructions. The explosion in the use of secondary legislation has armed the executive with extraordinary powers to sidestep Parliament altogether. If Labour uses those powers - as it will be sorely tempted to do - it will simply entrench them as a normal part of government.
There is a wish-list of small things that might help here. An incoming government could make far greater use of pre-legislative scrutiny, allowing MPs to scrutinise and feed back on bills in draft form. It could ramp up funding for the House of Commons library, so that MPs have access to more expert information. As Hannah White wrote recently, much hangs on "the attitude that the next government takes to the role of parliament": whether it ensures that ministers turn up to select committees, restores the balance between primary and secondary legislation, and takes seriously amendments from either House of Parliament.
But ultimately, the roots of the problem lie in our electoral system.
The case against First Past the Post has always been that it inflates the majority of the largest party and denies proper representation to smaller parties. In 1983, the Alliance won a quarter of the vote and finished just 2 percentage points behind Labour; yet it won 24 seats to Labour's 209. In 2015, the Scottish National Party won 50% of the vote in Scotland and 97% of its seats, reducing parties that had won a referendum a year earlier to near irrelevance. In 2019, the Conservatives won 56% of the seats on 44% of the vote, giving them a majority of 80 over all other parties combined.
The case for First Past the Post is that it provides strong government and corrects the errors of the electorate, who persist in cussedly voting for smaller parties. If the Conservatives have now decided that they don't want strong government - that the kind of majorities this system is designed to provide are dangerous and undemocratic - then the logic of that position is clear.
The Conservatives backed First Past the Post when it worked for them, and few tears will be shed when its guns are turned on their own decks. But Britain does have a problem with executive power: it has too few constraints on government, gives too little voice to parties with substantial public support, and has an electoral system that grotesquely misrepresents the allocation of votes. That these are the normal conditions of our politics makes change more, rather than less, urgent.
If a big Labour majority on Thursday compels the Conservatives to think seriously about our constitution, and to reconsider their enthusiasm for executive power, it will have done something of value. And that really would be "super".
Dr Robert Saunders is Reader in Modern British History and the Co-Director of the Mile End Institute. This piece originally appeared on his blog, The Gladstone Diaries.