Keir Starmer’s plans will fundamentally alter the shape of Westminster

What would Britain look like under a Labour government? This is the question Keir Starmer has been trying to answer for the past few months. There have been policy announcements and big speeches; attack lines against the government and broader hints at the party’s preferred direction of travel.

Bit by bit, the opposition is setting out its stall to voters, and showing them what they will get if they make it into power. The latest attempt by the party to define itself is the Commission on the UK’s Future, launched today and spearheaded by Gordon Brown.

Interestingly, it largely answers a different question, namely: what would Westminster look like under a Labour government? If Starmer gets his way, it will be a very different place.

For a start, regulation on the second jobs MPs can take would be drastically tightened, with backbenchers effectively banned from having other employment with only a few exceptions. Secondly, the House of Lords in its current form would be scrapped entirely and replaced with an elected chamber. Finally, more powers would be devolved to local and regional authorities, as well as Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Many arguments are already being had over the merits of those proposals, but one thing has been missing. Put together, those policies would fundamentally alter the nature of parliament.

Say, for example, that you were planning to become an MP some years ago. The deal then was relatively simple: assuming you were either in an already safe seat or managed to become locally popular, you essentially had a job for life. You could get elected and then, fingers crossed, climb the greasy pole over several years.

After a stint on the front bench, hopefully while your party was in government, you could return to a quieter life and busy yourself while waiting for your time to come again. Sometimes it would, sometimes it wouldn’t; with enough luck, you could then go on to retire in God’s waiting room, otherwise known as the House of Lords.

Labour’s plans would change all that. Well, the beginning would stay the same; you could campaign and get elected and become a PPS and a minister and keep climbing until gravity caught up with you. The descent, however, would be different.

While waiting out a spell in opposition or the tenure of a leader you dislike, you would be firmly stuck to the backbenches. You could run to be the chair of a select committee, or throw yourself into campaigning for one issue, but there would be few other options. There would then be no light at the end of this particular tunnel, and no red benches for you to end up on.

Would this scenario improve or worsen politics? It isn’t as obvious a question as it seems. On the one hand, stopping dodgy MPs from taking even dodgier side gigs should be a no-brainer. If you are paid by the taxpayer to make laws, no extra money in your pocket should come from people seeking to tweak or circumvent those laws.

Still, there is a risk of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Politicians who have been ministers often find it hard to readjust to a quieter life, especially as they know that being a backbencher isn’t a full-time job. They wouldn’t have been able to be a minister at the same time otherwise.

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Preventing them from busying themselves elsewhere will only result in many of them resigning, as Sajid Javid is doing at the next election. The House of Commons can and does benefit from the experience of the people on its benches, and losing politicians still in their prime is often a shame.

Similarly, removing the option for those people to move to the second chamber means that they will be more likely to leave parliament earlier, in order to find another career for themselves.

In short: if Labour’s reforms become a reality over the next few years, politics is likely to become something you do for a while, as opposed to a more lifelong calling. Perhaps that is no bad thing; as many industries have been finding out in the past decade, people no longer want or expect to do the same job in the same place for decades at a time. There is no reason why Westminster should be an exception.

It is still something that merits discussion. Parliament is a place ruled by informal conventions and traditions: losing much of its institutional memory could have unforeseen consequences. This doesn’t mean those plans should be shelved; inertia too often wins out in British politics, and some radical changes could be welcome. Starmer just needs to make sure that he knows what he’s doing.