Loyal MPs will defend anything

Just don't U-turn the next day

(Andrew Parsons / No 10 Downing Street)

You’ve no doubt done it yourself. On realising you have overshot your destination, instead of simply turning around and walking back, you partake in a little play. You reach for your phone, inspect the lock screen with one of studied surprise or mild irritation (whichever feels more natural in the moment) and, having pretended to assimilate a new piece of information, you finally turn back.

In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1956), Erving Goffman describes social interaction as a series of performances organised around the maintenance of face — what he calls a “sacred thing”. Put another way, humans are just highly motivated to appear intentional, not mistaken. So it goes in politics.

Individual U-turns make headlines, but they are rarely decisive in the life of a government. If nothing else, turning around is almost always preferable to pressing ahead in the wrong direction. Indeed the 2010-15 coalition government — in policy terms the most successful of the five Conservative-led administrations of the period — did it rather a lot¹.

Still, that government never U-turned on its core policy of deficit reduction, and it also had to manage two different political parties. Labour, elected only 18 months ago, has already wholly or partially changed its mind on:

• Welfare reform

• Workers’ rights

• Digital ID cards

• Winter Fuel Payments

• Business rates for pubs

• National Insurance Contributions

• Income tax thresholds

• Grooming gangs inquiry

• Farmers’ inheritance tax

That last one is particularly instructive, in that a U-turn was essential. The main benefit of the original policy seemed to be that farmers don’t vote Labour anyway. But in practical terms, the measure risked economic damage by undermining the viability of family farms while raising a relatively small amount of money. Still, it is the sheer tonnage of U-turns that is itself the problem.

Not because it makes the government look directionless, though it does. But because of the impact on backbench morale and incentives. Many MPs really do try to be team players, whether because they seek promotion or they want the party to do well. So they are prepared to go on television and defend unpopular policies, even at the risk of looking stupid. What they really don’t appreciate is doing the above, only for the government to perform a U-turn moments later.

Recall that despite it all, from Partygate to the string of calamitous by-election defeats, it was Downing Street’s constant shifting over the Chris Pincher affair that ultimately led to Boris Johnson’s downfall. A quick reminder: