The House Opinion Article | It’s Time For The Whips To Find Their Voice

ASTIK

7 min read36 min

Why don’t whips speak in public? Is there, perhaps, a helium leak in their lairs just off Members’ Lobby? It would, after all, hardly help instil fear if when they spoke it was not in a menacing growl but a squeak.

Nonsense of course, but no less silly than some of the myths about them churned out by the Westminster rumour mill that go largely unanswered as whips stick to their omertà.

Now that Andy Burnham has vowed to reform the whipping system as Prime Minister, they are about to find their roles under intense scrutiny. And this time they should answer for themselves – in public.

Keir Starmer’s relationship with the bulk of his MPs went from bad to worse and his successor wants the whips’ office to act as more of an HR department than a disciplinary organisation.

Among his arguments is that he doesn’t believe the whip should be used to punish people on matters of conscience. “I didn’t see that done in the Blair and Brown years,” Andy Burnham told LBC.

A laudable point, but it does beg the question: when were Labour MPs punished on matters of conscience?

Such issues – think abortion reform, the death penalty, or assisted dying – are typically left well alone insofar as whipping is concerned. There was a bit of a commotion earlier this parliament when a Labour MP complained to the office about the issuing of a three-line whip ahead of a division on decriminalising abortion – but the line of the whip refers to attendance, not how MPs are expected to vote. In this instance, backbenchers were issued with a three-line whip to attend, but a free vote on the matter at hand.

This is a subtle difference unknown to some Westminster dwellers – even the odd MP. But can they really be blamed when the institution at hand remains so quiet on how it works, what it does, and why it exists?

Traditionalists shy from the light. The likes of Gyles Brandreth and former chiefs Tim Renton and Simon Hart – all one-time Tory whips who wrote about life in the office – are still persona non grata to certain diehards.

“Chief whips should never write memoirs nor give detailed interviews about their work or their flock,” argued a former Tory chief whip. During his tenure, the ex-chief handled “one coming out, three marriage problems, and other personal difficulties”. But he would rather go to jail for contempt of court than “reveal any secret of the office or what colleagues said”.

This omertà may seem extreme but his argument is simple and compelling: “If Conservative MPs thought that whips would be writing books or giving detailed interviews then no one would talk to us again.”

Such an outcome would be disastrous. The whips’ pastoral support for colleagues has, on occasion, been life-saving. Were top whips of all political colours to publish what they witnessed in the office, “then we could outsell Nadine Dorries, Jilly Cooper, and God knows how many Shades of Grey”, the ex-chief said, “but we don’t and should never do so.”

Undoubtedly, however, the code of silence has waned – 64 politicians who served in the whips’ office spoke to me for my book – with many now happy to rebut untrue rumours and half-truths, all within clearly defined parameters that don’t dwell on the personal.

So much the better. Where once it made sense for the whips to remain aloof, thereby inculcating respect and fear among new arrivals to Westminster, now the fog has partially lifted. It is time for full disinfecting sunshine.

Some would argue that the whips’ office is already scrutinised and held accountable through the leader of the House, who takes questions in the Chamber related to the Commons and legislation. The office also issues statements and context in response to journalists’ queries or reporting.

It’s not completely unheard of, either, for whips to appear in the media. Labour chiefs in particular have typically been more comfortable speaking to journalists.

There is, too, a degree of accountability in Parliament. Whips from rival parties are constantly negotiating in the ‘usual channels’, through which agreements (and disagreements) are hashed out. These lines of communication have long been a key thread of parliamentary life, and there are consequences for skulduggery – over the decades, opposition whips have refused to co-operate in the wake of perceived wrongdoing or double-crosses by the governing party.

“We could outsell Nadine Dorries, Jilly Cooper, and God knows how many Shades of Grey”

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Chiefs have even spoken from the despatch box. In 1975, government chief whip Bob Mellish addressed the House after a prank by his legendary deputy Walter Harrison, who asked Labour MPs to vote twice, once in each lobby, while wearing disguises (the Tories, in an attritional opposition measure, had taken to calling divisions but not voting). Mellish defused accusations of cheating (the vote was never going to stand, as there weren’t enough people to constitute a quorum) by saying: “I spend all my time trying to get as many MPs as I can to go in one lobby. I’m overwhelmed at the enthusiasm of those who voted in two.”

A more sombre example came in late March 1979, when Mellish’s successor, Michael Cocks, announced to the Chamber that an unidentified person had been seriously hurt in an explosion on the parliamentary estate. The person in question was Conservative MP Airey Neave, who died from injuries sustained after a car bomb detonated under his Vauxhall Cavalier.

But I believe it’s time to go further, and have more direct scrutiny.

Whips would be better served by occasionally putting up spokespeople for interviews or having the chief whip and other seniors face the equivalent of a whips select committee or departmental questions in the Commons, perhaps once a parliamentary term, or on an ad hoc basis, such as during business questions.

This could be set with limitations. They should not, for example, discuss individuals or private information. Instead, they would speak about the parliamentary process, the government’s approach to particular votes, or broader whipping principles that may have informed the behaviour in question.

Speaking publicly would help the whips push back against misconceptions and clarify their essential role. From ensuring attendance at unheralded bill committees, responding to procedural prompts in the Chamber, to facilitating two-way communication between No 10 and backbenchers, the whips keep the place going. The public deserves to know that, and understand the whips’ core purpose beyond cajoling MPs into the ‘correct’ division lobby.

There’s a second powerful argument – though few traces remain of the brutality of old, the whips are nonetheless recipients of a potent form of political power: information. And where there’s power, there will be the wrong people attracted to it.

No matter how few the wrong ’uns are in comparison to the good, there will always be friction where whips are privy to MPs’ personal lives, while at the same time lobbying them for their votes. Having more accountability would help to neutralise this threat, reassure backbenchers wavering over who to trust, and preserve the ethos of good whipping that predominates.

The whips’ silence is starting to hurt them: reputationally, strategically, politically.

Everyone with an interest in politics knows they’re not the fearsome enforcers of old, and yet misconceptions about ‘issues of conscience’ persist. With pragmatism going out of fashion, a forthright argument for their raison d’etre has never been more urgent. And who better to make the case than the all-knowing actors at the heart of the parliamentary nexus? 

Sebastian Whale is author of The Usual Channels: Inside the Mysterious World of Political Whips