Penultimate point

First, a note on floor-crossing. Then we'll get into some broader issues... A clever riposte to those who want to ban MPs from switching parties is to bring up the question of free votes. Isn't an MP who votes against the party line just like one who crosses the floor? Shouldn't that be forbidden, too, in the name of holding MPs accountable to the voters who elected them? The question invites us to think there are only two possibilities: either MPs vote the party line, or they vote their conscience. But most voters, I submit, want their MPs to do both. It's true that MPs are elected mainly by virtue of their party affiliation. But they are also chosen partly for their individual judgment (some more than others), otherwise we need have no MPs at all. Probably MPs should have to vote the party line on platform issues, for that reason. But outside of confidence motions -- and very few bills need be matters of confidence -- they should be free otherwise to vote their conscience, or their constituents' wishes, as they see fit. Indeed, in the Conservatives' case, that sort of autonomous role for MPs is party policy. (So if an MP did toe the party line, he'd be violating party policy? Just checking.) How's that different from crossing the floor? Because when a member switches parties, he does not become a free agent. He rejects one party's whip, and accepts another's. Exercising his judgment on particular votes is part of the understanding on which he was elected; submitting himself to an entirely different party platform is not. That part of the bargain has been fundamentally altered. Which is why I'm predisposed in favour of the idea that, as a rule, members should have to seek a new mandate from their constituents in such cases. In all such cases? What about the MP who leaves his party to sit as an independent? That's not what the voters bargained for, is it? What about when two parties merge? Are we going to have 75 byelections? I don't see why you couldn't. On the other hand, you could make the argument, as many do, that the MPs in these scenarios will face the judgment of the voters at the next election -- though until then those voters would be deprived of the kind of representation they voted for in the last one. BUT LET ME put another case to you. Suppose an opposition MP crosses over in return for a cabinet post, or some other reward that goes with being on the government side. There's no urgent question of principle that impels him to switch allegiances, which he might argue justified temporarily breaking faith with the voters. It's just a bribe, basically. Or at any rate, it is unclear to what degree he was motivated by principle, and what by venality. In that case, it's clear -- clear to me, at any rate -- that he must immediately submit his decision to the voters' approval. Quite apart from whether floor-crossing should be allowed or not, we want our MPs at all times to be acting on principle, and not for personal gain. It's always possible that a member may wish to join the government side out of genuine principle, and for that reason I don't think you want to ban floor-crossing outright. But there needs to be some check applied to it, some test, some means of winnowing principle from self-interest. That is a judgment probably best left to the voters. Must they make that judgment immediately, though? Couldn't it wait until the next election? But in a general election the fate of the individual MP is swept up in any number of other issues: the parties, their platforms, the leaders etc. In a byelection, it is much easier to focus on the particulars of the case at hand. And that's as it should be. Integrity in those we elect is not an issue like the rest, to be weighed against their positions on health care or fiscal policy. It is, or should be, a basic condition of office, a prerequisite. If at any time that comes into doubt, the doubt must be resolved immediately. So I'm certainly comfortable with a law requiring MPs who cross from opposition to cabinet, or who are elevated to cabinet within x number of months of having crossed, to first obtain the voters' approval (that used to be the requirement, remember, for all cabinet appointees). Whether the same stricture should apply more broadly I leave open. But what sort of law should apply in general is a very different matter from what is the right thing to do in this case. I'll turn to that, and some other distinctions that seem to have eluded a few people, in my next post.