Understanding Tuesday night's vote

After every Budget, a Finance Bill is brought to Parliament to enact the Chancellor's announcements. To begin that process, Parliament needs something called a 'ways and means' motion – this allows the government to bring forward the Budget's measures. Normally, all these measures are voted through en bloc as Parliament's way of saying "let's get started so we can debate the issues properly." The vote does not mean the Budget's policies have become law.

Occasionally, MPs recognise that a policy within the Finance Bill is so controversial it warrants a separate vote. This is what happened on Tuesday night with the Agricultural Property Relief and Business Property Relief (APR and BPR) reforms (now known as Resolution 50).

The vote took place and Labour won, despite opposition from the Conservatives, Reform, and Liberal Democrats.

Nevertheless, it revealed some interesting information. One Labour MP, Markus Campbell-Savours, formally voted against the resolution. He deserves enormous respect – he voted against the measure because he had promised constituents during the election that he would never support such reform, and he kept his promise knowing he would surely be punished. And punished he was: Labour removed the whip from him, effectively expelling him from the parliamentary party.

But interestingly, around 80 Labour MPs abstained. Some of these abstentions were for other reasons – overseas diplomatic trips, industry or constituency functions. However, we believe around 30-35 Labour MPs abstained because they did not want to support the IHT reforms.

Our job now is to convert these abstentions into "no" votes when the real vote comes early in the new year. That won't be enough to defeat the government, but it would represent a major rebellion.

The government cannot sack them all – it would be too embarrassing. It is within this dynamic that further concessions become possible. That, in a nutshell, is our gameplan.