How Westminster Works . . . and Why It Doesn't

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There’s a small army of people involved in the parliamentary whipping operation. On the Government side you have the chief whip, who is appointed by the Prime Minister, along with three senior whips, six other whips and seven assistant whips. The opposition has a chief whip, a deputy and perhaps 12 or 13 others.

How Westminster Works … and Why It Doesn’t by Ian Dunt review

A discussion with Ian Dunt and an expert panel about his recent book on the perceived problems facing the UK political system. For many MPs, the moment of rebellion (during a vote) is traumatic. “It was horrible,” Lisa Nandy says. “You’re walking through the division lobby and your colleagues are swearing at you. These are people I’d been mates with.”As well as enforcement, the whips deal in intelligence. One of their chief roles is to gather information on the mood of the parliamentary party and then pass it up to the leadership, so it can assess the threat of rebellion. But information is also itself a form of enforcement. It is the whips who explain parliamentary procedure to MPs. Ian Dunt’s new book reveals Britain as a country of inept civil servants, deluded ministers, blinkered journalists and unscrutinised power. You’re humiliated by the whips, who force you to vote on the party line day in, day out,” Rory Stewart says. “There’s barely any point reading the legislation. It becomes clear your promotion has nothing to do with expertise. It’s about loyalty and defending the indefensible. The culture in the tearoom is very gossipy and trivialising. You can’t earnestly grab someone in the corridor and try to talk seriously about a policy issue. It’s not the done thing. It’s a very unserious culture. It doesn’t reward earnestness in any way.” Whip scandals

Ian Dunt’s How Westminster Works … and Why It Doesn’t Ian Dunt’s How Westminster Works … and Why It Doesn’t

Purchasing a book may earn the NS a commission from Bookshop.org, who support independent bookshops The book is at its most illuminating when it focuses on one of the least scrutinised power blocs in the UK: the civil service. Dunt cites the example of Antonia Romeo, the civil servant who carried out Grayling’s ruinous probation reform, which was cancelled in 2018 after offences spiked, costs spiralled and probation providers went bankrupt. Romeo was nevertheless promoted. “No one lost their job, or was penalised, or even rebuked,” Dunt writes, echoing Dominic Cummings’s fundamental criticism of the civil service, that promotion bears no relation to performance. Deputy Tory chief whip Chris Pincher resigned in 2022 following allegations he had sexually assaulted two men. The government initially insisted Boris Johnson had no knowledge of previous complaints about Pincher – a position that became untenable when new evidence emerged. The scandal ultimately led to Johnson’s departure from Downing Street. Dunt began his career as a journalist for PinkNews. He then switched to political analysis for Yahoo!, before becoming Political Editor of Erotic Review, a position he held until January 2010, when he became editor of politics.co.uk. He regularly appears on TV, commenting on political developments in the United Kingdom. [7]Tim Fortescue, Tory chief whip in the 1970s, admitted in a 1995 documentary that the whips office had covered up MP scandals. “If we could get a chap out of trouble,” he said, “then he will do as we ask forever more.” Tory chief whip Andrew Mitchell resigned in 2012 after an altercation with police in which they reported he had called them “plebs”. Officers involved later issued a statement in which they apologised for misleading the public, but a subsequent libel trial saw the judge rule that Mitchell had said “the words alleged or something so close to them as to amount to the same”. It put MPs on a three-line whip to dismiss the committee report and scrap the existing standards system. Many Tory MPs were dismayed by what they were being asked to do: 13 rebelled against the whip. Others abstained, which means they refused to vote either way. But the party disciplinary system held together. It won the vote by 250 to 232. It’s changed enormously,” veteran Tory rebel Peter Bone says. “When I first came in in 2005, it was very much ‘you’ve got to do what you’re told’. I remember being summoned in with Brian Binley by the senior deputy chief whip about some abstention we made and being talked to like we were schoolboys by the headmaster. They would threaten you with your career. I’ve been sworn at. All that sort of stuff.”