Political Precedent

There is a comforting theory that Parliament runs on rules, and that once a line is crossed the consequences follow more or less automatically. It is tidy, principled, and almost entirely fictitious. What we actually have is a system that runs on incentives, numbers, and nerve. A sort of constitutional improv, except the audience occasionally gets to throw things.

Take the comparison now being drawn between Keir Starmer and Boris Johnson. The argument, usually delivered with great certainty, is that Johnson “set a precedent” by surviving repeated dishonesty, and therefore Starmer must either benefit from or be judged against that same precedent. This is the wrong model. Johnson did not establish a precedent in any meaningful constitutional sense. He simply lasted as long as Conservative MPs judged him worth the trouble. Once they decided he was costing them more than he was worth, he went. The sudden collapse of ministerial support was not a constitutional mechanism, but a collective act of self preservation briskly repackaged as principle.

That points to the real hierarchy of forces, which is rarely stated plainly. First come a Prime Minister’s own MPs. They are decisive. If they decide he is still an asset, he stays. If they decide he is a liability, he is finished, usually quite quickly and with a sudden outbreak of previously undetected moral clarity. Second comes perceived electoral damage, with the media as the main delivery system. Headlines and investigations matter, but only insofar as they shift polling and the private anxieties of backbenchers. MPs are not moral arbiters so much as risk managers with a keen interest in keeping their jobs. Only then comes the opposition, which can make noise and frame the story, but does not control the outcome.

Alongside all this sits a more awkward question that is rarely voiced in public. If we push him out, who exactly replaces him? Parties do not remove leaders into a vacuum. They remove them in favour of someone, and that someone has to look at least vaguely plausible as Prime Minister. If the cupboard looks bare, tolerance for the incumbent rises sharply. It is one of the reasons Johnson lasted as long as he did. For quite a while, the alternatives looked divided or risky in their own way. Once more acceptable options emerged, his position became untenable very quickly. The same logic applies to Starmer. However irritated Labour MPs might become, they will still ask whether a successor improves their electoral chances rather than complicates them. It is remarkable how forgiving a parliamentary party can be when the alternative involves explaining a leadership contest to voters who were hoping for a quiet life.

Now consider the noise around Peter Mandelson and the pressure this is said to place on Keir Starmer. The claim, in essence, is that Starmer must bear responsibility for a flawed process. That is where the argument runs ahead of the evidence. On the facts, a negative vetting recommendation was not passed to ministers, and there is no proof that Starmer was aware of it. The attempt to pin this directly on him therefore relies on implication rather than demonstration. It has a distinct whiff of Yes Minister: the minister is formally accountable, the system quietly makes the decision, and when it goes wrong the accountability remains while the information does not.

That kind of ambiguity is harder to kill than a clean scandal. It allows critics to edge towards “misled” without having to prove intent, while also raising questions about grip and judgement. A clear cut offence can be denied or conceded; a murky one lingers. It sits in that uncomfortable middle ground where nothing is quite provable, but nothing is entirely reassuring either. Opponents will still try to collapse it into something punchy, but what actually matters is whether Labour MPs start to think the story looks slippery and is becoming difficult to defend on the doorstep.

There is no stable ratchet of standards in British politics. Each episode is judged afresh, through the same pecking order of pressures: party first, electoral fear second, opponents a distant third, and hovering over all of it the question of who comes next. Precedent, in this context, is mostly a rhetorical prop, invoked when useful and ignored when inconvenient. Which is why the question “should Starmer resign, given what happened before” tends to go nowhere. It assumes a rules based system that does not exist.

A more honest question is simpler. Do Labour MPs think he is still worth the trouble, and do they have anyone better to hand? If the answer to the first is yes, he stays. If the answer to the second is no, he stays rather longer than anyone will publicly admit. Only when both answers turn against him do events move at speed. And when they do, there will be much talk of standards and precedent. There always is. It just tends to arrive after the decision has already been made.

British politics is not governed by precedent so much as by panic, timing and whether the next lot look less alarming than the current lot. Which, admittedly, is not the grand constitutional settlement one might have hoped for.