Allegations this week that party whips have attempted to blackmail MPs to protect Boris Johnson have had some clutching at their pearls in mock horror – and others genuinely distressed by what they regard as a blend of bribery and bullying that could require police investigation.
The role of a party whip down the decades has been to secure the government’s business and the protect the prime minister. They are portrayed as democracy’s unsung heroes, as necessary as sewers for civilisation.
In the job description there is no exact rulebook as to what is off-limits. As in most walks of life, persuasion can take many forms, from low-grade patronage to flattery; a filthy look; intimidation, mainly verbal; or more agreeably permission to go on a two-week fact-finding tour with the all-party UK-Bali parliamentary association. It is pretty routine for MPs ahead of a vote to be reminded of the pending link-road scheme in their constituency.
But one former chief whip looking at the current controversy claims the dividing line on legitimate persuasion is nevertheless clear. “Yes to threats on preferment and honours. No to abusing public money and private lives.” The Tory MPs who spoke out on Thursday claim the threats, including withheld investment in a school, fell into the latter category. No 10 insisted: “We are not aware of any evidence to support what are clearly serious allegations. If there is any evidence to support these claims we would look at it very carefully.”
It is even more controversial if MPs’ private lives are dragged into the discussion. In the past whips’ interest in MPs’ private lives was largely pastoral – to ensure damaging information about their flock does not reach the public domain. But privileged information of this sort – about drunkenness, infidelity and indiscretions – can also be passed, or threatened to be passed, to the press.
Andrew Mitchell, a former chief whip, in his recent memoir Beyond a Fringe discloses not only that Tory whips had a notebook containing all sorts of indiscretions, but that this was as a matter of course sent to John Major, the prime minister – and a former whip himself.
In a 1995 BBC documentary, Westminster’s Secret Service, Tim Fortescue, a whip under Ted Heath between 1970 and 1973, explained: “Anyone with any sense who was in trouble would come to the whips and tell them the truth, and say now, I’m in a jam, can you help? It might be debt, it might be … a scandal involving small boys, or any kind of scandal.
“And we would do everything we can because we would store up brownie points … and if I mean, that sounds a pretty, pretty nasty reason, but it’s one of the reasons because if we could get a chap out of trouble then he will do as we ask forever more.”
But just as a whip likes nothing more than an MP with a debt of gratitude, conversely there is nothing they fear more than an MP with no sense of obligation. Mitchell recounts once seeking the vote of a pro-European, Sir Peter Tapsell, only for the larger-than-life MP to turn on him and say: “You see Andrew, there is nothing I want from your office. I am rich – very rich – I am already a knight and I certainly have no wish whatsoever to be a member of this benighted government. The only thing I want is my dead son back and there is nothing you can do about that.”
For some MPs the task of being a whip is a profession, a calling, an ability to see around corners and read personalities. The old cliche about the Labour whips’ office was that it was staffed by many working-class MPs with a union background delivering the votes required for policies conceived by a Balliol-educated cabinet. In the Tory whips’ office by contrast the style is a mix of a military background and an academy for fast-tracked MPs heading up the ranks of government.
Between the two whips’ offices there is also an esprit de corps across enemy lines – born of a respect for their mutual task of shepherding their wayward flock through the division lobbies.
Critical to the success of a whipping operation is the relationship of trust between the prime minister and the chief whip. One former whip said: “It is essential that you can go to the PM and say ‘This is not going to work,’ and then to be taken seriously.”
Stanley Baldwin indeed wrote an emotional letter to his chief whip, David Margesson, telling him that “there is no relationship between men so close as that of a prime minister and his chief whip”.
In reality that is not always true. Martin Redmayne, chief whip during the Profumo affair, thought Harold Macmillan should resign – and engineered for Douglas Home to succeed him.
Tim Renton was a curious choice of chief whip for Margaret Thatcher. In 1989 he was an ally of Sir Geoffrey Howe, pro-European, urbane and socially liberal – three things she had come to hate. After her downfall she blamed him for giving a “characteristically dispiriting assessment” of her chances in a second ballot. He was one of those she had in mind in referring to “treachery with a smile on its face”. Renton maintained in leadership contests the whips’ office must be neutral, a tradition that has got lost at present.
Regardless of whether MPs are more independent-minded now – on which there is conflicting evidence – the consensus is that the era of the macho whip has ended. Labour has had three female chief whips in recent years, reflecting a wider change in political culture.
If it emerges the whips, under chief whip Mark Spencer, have overstepped the mark, and even that recordings have been made, it will be an extraordinary moment, not just for Boris Johnson but the future of parliament.
