More talk of a ‘supermajority’; but what does this actually mean?

The front page of the Daily Mail today (24 June) features the headline “Ten days left to stop ‘disaster’ of a Starmer supermajority”.

The article previews a speech due to be made by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak today in which he was expected to warn against an “unchecked Labour government” and giving Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer a “blank cheque”.

But as we wrote last week, the term “supermajority” has no specific meaning in the UK parliamentary system.

The term has emerged as some opinion polls are projecting that Labour would win a substantial majority in the House of Commons, bigger than Labour’s win in 1997 under Tony Blair, when the party won a majority of 179.

The Institute for Government says, in parliamentary terms, the difference between an 80-seat majority (which the Conservative party won in the 2019 election) and a 200-seat majority is “not material”.

And the Electoral Reform Society says that a party with a majority of just one can legislate on anything it likes, as long as it can keep its back benchers “in line”, exactly the same as a party that wins a “supermajority”. 

Even foreign secretary David Cameron, Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, said the term “doesn’t actually exist in the UK”, when asked about it in a Channel 4 interview.

The term may have gained traction in the UK because it is a genuine part of the US federal system. There, a supermajority is a qualified majority of two thirds.

The number of seats a party wins in a UK general election can however affect how many select committee chairs, and members, it holds. As the balance of committee membership is intended to reflect the balance of seats in the House of Commons, a government with a large majority would also expect to have a proportionate majority on select committees.

Winning fewer seats as an opposition party does come with a financial cost. 

‘Short Money’ is allocated to all opposition parties whose members have sworn the oath, and that secured either two seats, or one seat and more than 150,000 votes.

This money assists them in parliamentary business, and is usually spent on research support, assistance in the whips’ offices and staff for the leader. The formula to determine how much cash they get relies on the number of seats the party wins in a general election.