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

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MPs feel its force immediately, because it’s the Whips’ Office that allocates them their parliamentary office when they arrive: spacious penthouses at the top of Portcullis House for favoured MPs, and dark little cubbyhole basements for lowly ones. 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

Purchasing a book may earn the NS a commission from Bookshop.org, who support independent bookshops 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 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.” The most harrowing thing” about Grayling, Dunt writes, “is that he is a completely standard example of the quality of the ministerial class in Britain.” But this book is more than a harangue about why we get the wrong politicians. It explains, chapter by chapter, the classes of people who hold political power in the UK: from the voters (once in a while) to parliament (barely at all), the prime minister (less than you think), cabinet ministers (more than you think), the Treasury (just as much as you think), the civil service and the press. Dunt’s analysis is refreshingly focused on reality, rather than academic abstraction. When he advocates change, it is because his book has shown how an existing set of incentives is ensuring failure. Read it and you will see just how deep our problems run.

In May 2017, Dunt was part of the team that launched Remainiacs, a political podcast about Britain's departure from the European Union, as seen from a pro- Remain perspective. In January 2020 the same team launched The Bunker, a podcast similar in format that discusses political issues other than Brexit. [8] In October 2020, Remainiacs was renamed Oh God, What Now? [9] Bibliography [ edit ] 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. Those terms remain in use today. Most government legislation involves a three-line whip to ensure it goes through, but the circumstances can become even more acute than that. In 2021, for instance, Tory MP Owen Paterson was found guilty by the Committee on Standards of an “egregious case of paid advocacy” after he used his parliamentary position to promote two companies that hired him as a paid consultant. The committee recommended that he be suspended from the Commons for 30 days, but the government moved to protect him.

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

While the culture of the Whips’ Office has become less explicitly bullying, the fundamental nature of the operation and the extent of its influence remains nearly as strong as ever. In almost every stage of the parliamentary process, it acts to stifle debate, limit scrutiny, close down avenues of interrogation, reduce independent thought and strengthen the power of the political parties. 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”. Ian Dunt (born 4 February 1982) is a British author, political journalist and broadcaster. He currently writes as a columnist for the i. [1] He previously served for many years as the Editor of politics.co.uk. He was also a host on the Remainiacs podcast. [2] [3] [4] Early life [ edit ] The problem is not that the politicians are corrupt or lazy; it's that the system is simply not fit for purpose The parties organise little training. MPs are given no instruction in how to scrutinise or even read legislation, let alone introduce it. Most remain largely ignorant of parliamentary procedure throughout their time in Parliament, no matter how long they’re there. And this is not a failure by the political parties. It is a choice. If there is something they want, like support in a Commons vote, they make sure they get it. But it is simply not in their interests to tell MPs how Westminster works or what they’re supposed to do. Because if MPs are ignorant, they will rely on the whips to explain everything to them – to tell them where they need to be and what they need to do.

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At this point, the whips will go into action. If the situation is desperate enough, they’ll sometimes resort to trying to manhandle MPs into voting for the party line. “I have literally seen people being physically pushed into the aye lobby or the no lobby,” MP Caroline Lucas says. “They’re still protesting, saying, ‘I’m not sure if I want to vote this way.’ And the whip pushes them in, because once you’re over the line, then the convention is you can’t reverse out again.” In a series of deeply informed and carefully worked out examples, Ian Dunt takes us through the Westminster labyrinth to reveal an omnishambles. It is not – and he is clear here – because the people involved are corrupt or lazy. It is because the system is not fit for purpose. MPs are impossibly burdened by having to do two jobs simultaneously, first as local representatives and then as national politicians. Most of their constituency work is stuff that should be done by councils, were these not also failing. Cabinet ministers often appear poorly briefed, but they may have up to 20 meetings a day and can’t always start on their red boxes until the rest of us have already gone to bed.

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. 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.