Chief whip Wendy Morton is believed to have stayed on after a personal appeal from Liz Truss
(Picture: John Sibley/Reuters)The chief whip, Wendy Morton, reportedly resigned and then unresigned on Wednesday night, with a No 10 spokesman issuing a statement to say that the “chief whip remains in post”.
The events happened at the end of a busy day in Westminster, during which uncertainty surrounded whether or not Conservative MPs would be expelled for defying the whip in response to a motion on fracking proposed by Labour.
The motion, which was defeated, would have guaranteed Commons time to debate a new law to ban fracking once and for all.
But who is the chief whip and what is she responsible for?
Who is Wendy Morton?
Wendy Morton is a Conservative politician who has served as chief whip of the House of Commons and parliamentary secretary to the Treasury since September 2022.
Since 2015, she has been the MP for Aldridge-Brownhills in the West Midlands.
Before becoming a member of Parliament, Morton had a career in the diplomatic service, and also worked in sales and marketing. She set up an electronics company with her husband, designing and manufacturing electronic goods for the agricultural industry.
What is Wendy Morton responsible for?
As chief whip, she is responsible for maintaining discipline within the Conservative Party, ensuring that members attend and vote in Parliament as the leadership desires.
Each party in Parliament appoints a whip to co-ordinate their party's participation in parliamentary proceedings. Whips can be MPs or lords.
One of their responsibilities is making sure the maximum number of their members vote, and vote the way their party wants.
Why did Wendy Morton resign and then unresign?
Along with Morton, it was reported that her deputy, Craig Whittaker, had resigned.
The reason appears to have been that Wednesday afternoon’s vote on fracking was to be treated by the whips as a vote of confidence in the Government and Graham Stuart, the minister responding to the debate, indicated that it wasn’t – without Morton having been told.
This led Morton and Whittaker to tell their colleagues that they quit their posts in response to the chaos in the lobbies – presumably on the justification that, if the power of the whips is weakened, neither can continue.
Bloomberg’s UK political editor, Kitty Donaldson, took to Twitter to report that Truss chased Morton through the lobbies to persuade her to stay on, thus missing the vote, and initially being registered as having failed to support a confidence measure that she herself had called.
Downing Street then confirmed neither Whittaker nor Morton had quit. They both reportedly attended a meeting with Truss after the vote.
