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

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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.

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

The problem is not that the politicians are corrupt or lazy; it's that the system is simply not fit for purpose inews.co.uk https://inews.co.uk/author/ian-dunt . Retrieved 25 May 2022. {{ cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= ( help)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. It is not about the failure of a particular project. It is systematic and existential,” Dunt writes. “In short,” he says, prefiguring Succession’s Logan Roy, “it is about whether this is a serious country or not.” Any reader of this essential guide will struggle to conclude that we are. Dunt diverges from other books bemoaning the state of our politics: they often call for an elected House of Lords, but he argues it is “one of the best-functioning institutions in Westminster”, rigorously evaluating bills in a way the Commons does not. “There is no need at all to make the Lords democratic.” 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. Purchasing a book may earn the NS a commission from Bookshop.org, who support independent bookshops

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

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”. Jill Rutter, Senior Research Fellow at UK in a Changing Europe and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Government 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. 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.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 ] There’s a quote by the philosophical father of conservatism, Edmund Burke, about the role of an MP that often does the rounds in Westminster. It’s one of those lines that reliably pops up whenever there’s some matter of constitutional importance being discussed. He made it in a speech in Bristol in 1774, as he outlined what constituents should expect of their local MP. The central mechanism for enforcing the compliance of MPs is the Whips’ Office – the surveillance and disciplinary system for parliamentary votes. It threatens MPs who vote against their party, rewards those who vote with it, and passes intelligence up to the leadership about any possible rebellions. 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. Here and there Dunt finds reason to be cautiously cheerful. The House of Lords has shown remarkable independence, a real ability to affect the outcome of legislation by managing its own timetable and contributing much-needed expertise (the cross-bench system, he argues, works particularly well). And select committees turn out to offer a model of how things should be done – listening to the evidence and privileging cooperation and compromise over crude partisanship.

Westminster is broken - New Statesman Westminster is broken - New Statesman

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.”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. 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 word “whip” actually refers to three things: an instruction, a person and a process. It’s the name of a document circulated to MPs on a weekly basis by the party, listing the business of the next fortnight and the expectation of when they’ll vote. The recent book by journalist and author Ian Dunt provides a detailed and critical account of many aspects of the UK’s political system, including political parties and elections, parliament and the legislative process, the work of ministers and civil servants in Whitehall, and the role of the media. The book analyses various perceived problems, and proposes a range of possible solutions. In this seminar the author will presented some of his key arguments, before responding to questions and comments from a panel of experts and the online audience.