As a part of the 1997 Labour landslide, Bob Marshall-Andrews QC was elected to Parliament for Medway, having failed to capture the seat in 1992. The victory was as unexpected for him as it was for Labour. Fellow MP Martin Bell later remarked that the party never would have selected Marshall-Andrews had they truly believed they were going to win the seat.
Despite his roots in the Socialist Campaign Group, Marshall-Andrews spent his first year as a New Labour loyalist, toeing the party line until June 1998. It was then that he first broke with the whip, beginning a parliamentary career defined by dissent. Over the 1997–2001 Parliament, he rebelled no fewer than 32 times.
That same year also saw the construction of Malator, his now-famous Earth house in Pembrokeshire. Nicknamed the “Teletubby House” for its distinctive design, it became a fitting symbol of an MP determined to stand apart.
The “Brutish” Canvasser
When the 2001 election came around, journalist Simon Hoggart followed Marshall-Andrews on the campaign trail. Hoggart was struck by the MP’s confrontational style of canvassing. At one point, after branding a voter a racist and telling them not to vote for him, Hoggart wryly observed:
“Mr Marshall-Andrews’s majority is 5,326. At the present rate of attrition, he should have it down to zero by polling day.”
Yet his bluntness resonated with enough voters to secure re-election. And with that victory came a new era of rebellion. Between 2001 and 2005, Marshall-Andrews voted against his government a remarkable 102 times.
The Iraq War: His Defining Stand
The most significant of Marshall-Andrews’s clashes with his own party came over Iraq. In March 2003, Tony Blair led Britain into the U.S.-backed invasion. Marshall-Andrews emerged as one of the loudest voices in opposition, amplifying his stance with a string of appearances on Have I Got News For You.
He declared:
“Those of us who oppose this war do so because we believe that it is ill-proven and unnecessary.”
His criticisms extended beyond Blair to Washington, citing America’s history of destabilising interventions in South America, the Middle East, and Asia.
In 2006, he was one of just 12 Labour MPs to back a motion calling for a full inquiry into the war. Among the other rebels were Glenda Jackson, Bob Wareing, and Jeremy Corbyn. Later, writing for The Guardian in 2010, he would condemn the eventual Chilcott inquiry for its lack of rigour and bite.
Civil Liberties and Rebellion Against Labour
Alongside Iraq, Marshall-Andrews’s other great battleground was civil liberties. The libertarian-leaning QC earned a reputation as “the single greatest critic, opponent and rebel ringleader” against his own party’s anti-terrorism legislation.
He opposed proposals for 90-day detention without trial and voted against his party’s measures on 43 separate occasions. When Blair’s government was handed its first Commons defeat on the 90-day proposal, Marshall-Andrews was a key figure in rallying resistance.
His legal background also made him an articulate defender of trial by jury. In 2003, he tabled an early day motion condemning attempts to restrict juries in serious cases, stating:
“The erosion of the 800-year-old right to trial by jury in serious cases is wholly unjustified.”
He counted this as one of his most important political achievements.
A Scathing Critic of Blair
Marshall-Andrews never hid his disdain for Tony Blair. After watching Blair’s speech at the 1996 Labour conference, he concluded that the future Prime Minister had become “dangerously delusional.” On one occasion, he told national television audiences that one would have to “go back to Wellington before one can find a Prime Minister who has treated his own people with more contempt and deceit.”
On election night in 2005, believing he had lost his seat, he delivered a now-famous tirade against Blair and the Iraq War live on the BBC. Convinced that haemorrhaging votes had ended his career, he remarked:
“I have not the slightest doubt that on a very bad night, my going in this constituency will be one of the very few things that will cheer the prime minister up.”
In the end, he scraped through with a majority of just 213.
Confrontations and Controversies
Marshall-Andrews’s blunt style earned him plenty of enemies. A physical altercation with fellow Labour MP Jim Dowd grabbed headlines after Bob allegedly used a homophobic slur. This sat uneasily against his voting record, which consistently supported LGBTQ rights, including the repeal of Section 28 and equalising the age of consent.
Such contradictions defined his career: outspoken, divisive, but always principled in his eyes.
Gordon Brown and Further Rebellion
Marshall-Andrews was no fan of Blair, but initially backed Gordon Brown as his successor. He even supported Brown over fellow socialist John McDonnell. Yet disappointment followed quickly. He later dismissed Brown as having made a “deplorable fool of himself,” and described Labour’s mood under Brown as “a tragic sense of misfortune on a massive scale.”
Hopes that Brown would protect civil liberties were dashed with the passage of the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008. In protest, Marshall-Andrews even campaigned for Conservative candidate David Davis, who had resigned his seat to force a by-election on civil liberties. Calling Davis a “valued ally,” he risked suspension from Labour, though none came.
He was also the first Labour MP to demand the resignation of Speaker Michael Martin, after Martin allowed police to raid Conservative MP Damian Green’s office over leaks from the Home Office.
Departure from Parliament
By 2007, Marshall-Andrews had already announced his intention to step down. At the 2010 general election, he followed through, declaring:
“I have been proud and content to serve my term on the backbenches attempting to scrutinise the executive. I believe that this is the primary and essential role of parliament.”
His Medway seat was abolished, split into two new constituencies, one of which was won by Conservative Mark Reckless. By his retirement, Marshall-Andrews had defied the party whip 238 times.
In his memoir Off Message, he reflected that what he would miss most was watching a new government dismantle “the worst, most incomprehensible, and dangerous legislation” of the New Labour years.
Leaving Labour
In 2017, decades after first joining, Marshall-Andrews finally left the Labour Party. His departure was as dramatic as his parliamentary career. He cited Jeremy Corbyn’s “abject failure of leadership” over Brexit as the final straw.
Speaking to The Times, he explained:
“At present there is manifestly a huge vacuum on the centre-left represented in substantial part by the 48 percent of the electorate who rejected Brexit and the lies on which it was based.”
He went on to praise the Liberal Democrats as the only party that had consistently opposed Iraq, stood for civil liberties, and unequivocally rejected Brexit.
Conclusion
Bob Marshall-Andrews remains a fascinating figure in British politics. Elected on the coattails of Labour’s greatest victory, he spent his career defying the very party that brought him to Parliament. Whether battling Blair over Iraq, defending centuries-old liberties, or campaigning with Conservatives against authoritarian laws, his career embodied a paradox: a Labour MP most famous for fighting Labour governments.
By the time he walked away, his legacy was not one of legislation or office, but of rebellion itself. He represented the conscience of a Parliament often too willing to follow. And while he often stood alone, Bob Marshall-Andrews ensured that dissent had a voice in the New Labour years.
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