The 'individual conscience vote has yielded to politics

Two votes in the Commons, split by four days, have laid the ground for a seismic shift in British social policy, making last week one of the most significant in the modern history of parliament.

- DAVID MADDOX

But while the votes on abortion (Tuesday) and assisted dying (Friday) were officially matters of individual conscience, the evidence from both suggests that the UK is now closer than ever to a US-style party politicisation of moral issues.

If you vote Labour or Lib Dem, you are much more likely to get a "pro-choice" MP; if you vote Conservative or Reform, you are more likely to get one who is "pro-life". This is not an accident: it is increasingly by design.

How parties voted on life and death

On Tuesday, an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill to decriminalise abortion up to birth, laid down by Labour Gower MP Tonia Antoniazzi, won by 379 to 137.

Looking at these figures in detail, we can see that 291 Labour MPs voted in favour and just 25 against, while 63 Lib Dems were in favour and only two against. On the other side of the House, 92 Tory MPs voted against and just four in favour. Another four abstained by voting in both lobbies. No Reform MPs supported the amendment, and four voted against it.

The split was not as stark in Friday's assisted dying vote, but nevertheless revealed a trend. Kim Leadbeater's bill had the support of 224 of her fellow Labour MPs, with 160 against, and 56 Lib Dems, with 15 against. Meanwhile, the Tories split 92 against to 20 in favour, while Reform were three against and two in favour.

Kemi Badenoch put a two-line whip on the abortion vote rather than allowing a completely free vote. This indicated a party position without the threat of disciplinary action that would come with a three-line whip. But remarkably, after the abortion vote, senior Tories were complaining that Badenoch had not withdrawn the whip from the four MPs who voted for decriminalisation.

It was different in 1967