And replace it with what? The American system whereby nothing radical and necessary ever gets done because trying to get it passed when your own party is a majority is like herding cats, and when you’re own party is a minority all but impossible? Sod that.

Abolishing the three-line whip is the wrong way to go. Reforming the system of whips is a better idea; for example, forcing parliamentary parties collectively to choose what sort of whip should be applied in any given vote.

Additionally, if a parliamentarian asks for a decision by his constituency party or the constituency party passes a motion at GC, that should override the imposition of a three line whip by the parliamentary authorities.

My idea for reform would be to get rid of useless talking shops like Power 2010, Convention on Modern Liberty and the rest of that London set nonsense, force warbling do-nothings who run them to pick a party-political side, or start their own, and actually do something constructive for a change.

typical loony left idea without thinking of consequences of the overall system and governance.

And the basic assumption is wrong that we elect MPs — we actually vote for a party based on its manifesto — otherwise independents would have running the show. And when we elect a party to govern us in a parliamentary democracy — you should expect the party to deliver.

You cannot have the executive beholden to backbenchers and have a free for all. We are after all a parliamentary democracy and do not have the separation of powers. To govern a government must have majority in the parliament — otherwise all the opposition has to do it add a no confidence motion to every legislation.

This article is a typical loony left, latte drinking wanna be liberal ideas which have no basis in the real world.

This is not a left-wing idea, Shamit, although it is a crackpot one.

I mostly agree with Dave here, although I don’t think a decision made by 30 people in a GC should over-ride a manifesto commitment. (I do accept it would probably encourage more people to join and attend GCs if they had that kind of power, though.)

It’s worth remembering that Labour backbenchers since 1997 have been the most rebellious crop in history, and none have been chucked out of the Party for voting against a three-line whip. The idea that “no-one ever votes against a three-line whip” is just plain inaccurate, and to get something so basic wrong doesn’t reflect well on your organisation.

Tim is right. Three line whips are defied by MPs who feel strongly about it. Abolishing whipping would, as Dave says, be like in the US where MPs don’t vote coherently [and, if anything, are swayed by donors]. Furthermore, it would then be easy for MPs to vote for popular thing like spending rises and tax cuts and not vote for the measures to pay for them. At least a whipping system means a party has to come up with a view on this and defend it.

There are so many mistakes in this article that it’s difficult to know where to begin. The anonymous author is unaware, for example, that the party whip does not actually state the party’s position. It simply states that votes will take place and that the Members’ attendance is required.

Then comes the biggest howler. The author appears to believe that in the event of a three-line whip, not only do all MPs attend, but that if they vote against the instructions of the party, they are expelled. The fact is that attendance at votes is almost never more than 80%, with MPs routinely allowed to miss votes for other Parliamentary and constituency business.

Defying a three-line whip happens routinely. In the past fortnight 18 Labour MPs voted against a three-line whip on Equitable Life, 12 on the 10:10 campaign, and 11 for Marine Conservation Zones conserving the marine ecosystem as a whole (you know, that great high-profile partisan campaign that has totally crowded all other political issues off the agenda). None of these MPs have been expelled and none of them are going to be. Not one of the 139 Labour MPs who defied a three-line whip on the liberation of Iraq was expelled for it. Tim f is right to describe present-day MPs as the most rebellious in recent history.

Underlying that is the author’s perverse belief that most divisions involve great issues of principle. Not so; the 10:10 campaign vote is a good example as this was opposed because the Government already has commitments to reduce its carbon emissions which were agreed before the 10:10 campaign was thought of. They are more strict than the 10:10 campaign so signing up to it might actually be to loosen the Government’s commitments on the environment.

The author offers no way in which the whip system is supposed to be abolished. Unless votes are actually secret (which the author does not mention), party headquarters can always exert pressure on their MPs to vote the preferred way. If I as a Labour voter have a Labour MP, I expect them to vote for Labour policies: support for the NHS, investment in public services, making society inclusive, preventing social exclusion and supporting families. I expect the party to make sure they do.

Have just noticed that the author is not anonymous, but named as Josh Plotkin who states on his own blog that he was a Lib Dem MP’s researcher (the Parliament website identifies the MP as Chris Huhne). That brings up an interesting point: of all parties, the Lib Dems have the greatest hypocrisy, attacking other parties for failing to tolerate dissent. However the Lib Dems on whipped votes are almost monolithic in their uniformity. The number of occasions on which a Liberal Democrat MP has voted against their party on a three line whip is almost nil.

“My idea for reform would be to get rid of useless talking shops like Power 2010, Convention on Modern Liberty and the rest of that London set nonsense, force warbling do-nothings who run them to pick a party-political side, or start their own, and actually do something constructive for a change.”

Damn, Dave Semple, it’s almost like you’ve got a chip on your shoulder or something.

The idea that the only proper way to campaign is through a political party is ridiculous. Constitutional campaigns like Charter 88 and the Scottish Constitutional Convention, forerunners to Power2010 and CML, had a massive impact and managed to shift opinion both inside and outside the parties. Their legacy, in terms of devolution, the HRA, FOI, London mayor etc is undeniable.

Are you saying these were just “talking shops” run by “warbling do nothings”? Or is that just the two more recent campaigns that I’ve been involved with?

Abolish the whips and the voters could vote for an MP who represents a certain political viewpoint (Lib, Lab or Con) while knowing that the MP may vote against the party in the interests of their constituents. Personally I rather like the idea.

My idea for reform would be to get rid of useless talking shops like Power 2010, Convention on Modern Liberty and the rest of that London set nonsense, force warbling do-nothings who run them to pick a party-political side, or start their own, and actually do something constructive for a change

lol. I know. Instead people should spend the whole day accusing others who even slightly deviate from Marxist theory as traitors and constantly stress the need for a revolution that has no hope of coming anytime soon. That’s the productive option I guess.

This feels a bit like the ‘crabs in the jar’ scenario to me. No one managed to get out of the jar because they don’t want to help others and as soon as someone gets up slightly the others pull it down.

Whatever the merits of the idea – the bickering doesn’t make you look any more productive or on the ball.

[deleted]

The factual errors in the post have been pointed out but surely we have to start from the standpoint that the status quo is not an option.

Party HQ parachute candidates onto supine constituency parties. They are adopted as PPCs, elected as MPs and then whipped into supporting the policies of the executive. We have a dictatorship not a real democracy.

Voting only allows the electorate to substitute one party dictatorship with another.

Never let it be said I never agree with David Boothroyd. On this issue I do, absolutely. He does at least have some idea of how the whipping system works. And it doesn’t seem to have inconvenienced serial rebels of the Jeremy Corbyn type.

The problem is rather in the selection process: broadly speaking, anyone who puts themselves forward to be an MP is ipso facto not the sort of person any intelligent constituent would want in the job. An open primary system would enable us to compare the shortcomings of the sundry egoists who offer themselves and hopefully choose the one who is the least damaged.

The probability of a commitment to abolish the whip system in the next Parliament is verging on zero with this:

“The next general election is ‘very likely’ to produce a hung parliament, former deputy prime minister Lord Heseltine has said.

“This was because to take overall control, the Conservatives needed the biggest electoral swing, ‘with two exceptions, since the war’, he said.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8335377.stm

With that said, I doubt professional politicians and political activists fully appreciate just how deeply unimpressed most of the electorate are with political parties and politicians. Apart from the shameful matter of MPs’ expenses, the votes on the Iraq war were whipped to ensure all accepted Blair’s lies.

“Public funds totalling £500 million a year are being spent on an army of at least 29,000 professional politicians in the UK, according to new figures.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/feedarticle/8605308

The turnout at the election in 2005 was the second lowest since 1918 and Blair won the election with the lowest ever recorded share of the total vote. A larger percentage of the electorate didn’t vote in the 2005 election than voted for Labour candidates. Only a quarter of the electorate voted for Labour, so much for the New Labour claim to have an electoral mandate for government.

My assessment of the EU has risen now that it looks unlikely Blair will be made the first President of the Council of Ministers.

If we want indepdendent MPs then we need people with a career which has involved obtaining a broad range of experience before entering politics. It also helps if MPs have independent incomes as they are not so financially dependent on the whips for appointment to a position as a minister or chair of a select committee. As they say in the USA “. F..k You ” money helps independent action.

Many of the mistakes made by politicians occur because they they no relevant experience for the decision they have to make. The days when engineeers, industrialists and experienced military personnel were happy to sit on the back benches and offerr their wisdom to the H of C are long gone . It used to be said that it did not matter what was being discussed in the H of L, there was usually a worlds class expert who could offer the wisdom of their experience.

Charlie2, you say it would be good if MPs had an independent income. That seems to me a call for parliament to me made up of rich people and people from wealthy families. That was the situation before 1911. I don’t see any reason why we should go back to it, if we want people without family wealth to get into the Commons [if their electors vote for them].

In recent years, there has been a drift towards the formalisation of parliamentary politics. The clearest example is the registration of political parties. There is some logic with that rule which was aimed at keeping Literal Democrats and Conservation Party spoilers off the ballot paper.

This formalisation does not recognise party whips, so “abolition” is a logical nonsense. The Chief Whip of the governing party is traditionally given a nominal ministership and a place in the cabinet (to receive instruction, rather than to participate). The various party whips are provided with accommodation within the buildings of parliament. However I am not aware of any legal privilege that is provided to the whips. Whilst they may receive organisational privileges in the conduct of debate, that is a convention rather than a set of rules.

“Taking the party whip” is an informal contract accepted by successful parliamentary candidates. (I daresay that somebody can name an MP in days gone by, elected as a party representative, who declined to take the party whip. Tom Driberg almost fits that case.) If that informal contract is “abolished”, it and the whipping system will be replaced by something else.

As Mike Killingworth said, it’s the selection process that is the problem.

The title of this thread is currently misspelled: “Reform parliment: abolish the whip”. It makes us all look rather foolish.

Sunny, doesn’t comment 11 violate the comments policy in about four different ways?

[18] Ignore it, Dave.

yes it did. sorry, was out whole day and just got back…

Guy and Sunny, in response to the more substantive points which each of you made, I’ve actually written a full-length article. It’s awaiting publication on my own site and may be up later tonight or tomorrow morning.

Reform p-a-r-l-i-a-m-e-n-t…

Vera, if you’re thinking of Syd Rapson, I think you have the wrong target. He was a longstanding local councillor who had fought the usually Tory held seat for many elections before finally winning in 1997.

Some of the trade union MPs back in the 1950s and 1960s were not very good (Bill Stones, MP for Consett, is the canonical example) but others could be excellent. The NUM’s hard policy that its sponsored MPs had to retire at the next election after their 60th birthday, whether good or bad, and that tended to remove a lot of the genuine talent.

It comes down to the issue of how we want to be governed again, and the mismatch between who we vote for and what we receive.

Simply put, if we are voting for MPs we are electing individuals to parliament to reflect our constituency views as best as they can, with their own knowledge, beliefs and biases included. In this system there should be no whip, because everyone should be an individual, not a party member. Party power in terms of governance is just a side effect of public support for MPs that belong ideologically to these different groupings.

Of course we know realistically that there are also a proportion of people that vote for their MP not because of the individual but because of their party. They are, for all intents and purposes, electing a prime minister in a way such as the American Presidential system. In this case whips make perfect sense as people need to know that they are getting the policies they voted for actually enacted.

The problem here is not whips, it is that our first chamber is duly representative and legislative. We can talk about these little ideas until the cows go home, the ONLY reform that needs to happen is for representation and legislation to be seperated in to two distinct houses in some form; personally I’d prefer abolition of the Lords, AV votes for representative MPs and a separate STV vote for a legislative chamber.

“The number of occasions on which a Liberal Democrat MP has voted against their party on a three line whip is almost nil.”

The same can be said of most parties, that’s kind of the point of a three line whip. More than your assertions it begs the question as to whether Lib Dems are more ideologically in sync with one another than the other parties, or whether dissent only really manifests within the comfort of power and size.

No, Lee, no it can’t be said that MPs in other parties almost never vote against three line whips. Comparatively, Liberal Democrat MPs are far less likely to cast dissenting votes in whipped divisions than any other party. Philip Cowley wrote “Liberal Democrat cohesion on whipped votes is astonishing”.

I think lying behind this comment, and possibly other comments, is the belief that a three line whip is a relatively rare thing. Three line whips are not rare. Almost all Government business and all business put down by opposition parties is subject to a three line whip. The two line whip has fallen into desuetude, and a one-line whip only applies to Private Members’ Bills and to debates on which there will be no vote.

I saw Syd Rapson’s contribution to ‘Brass Eye’ when it first went out. But the point is that his getting hoodwinked into saying stupid things is irrelevant both to this argument about the whip system, and also to your argument about the quality of trade union sponsored MPs. Syd Rapson was not trade union sponsored.

16.Anonymouse. What would be desirable is tha MPs had established a career before entering politics and were prepared to leave without having to worry about a loss of income. The Whips have the power to increase an MPs income; if they have independent means this type of offer is tempting.

32. Mistake is last sentence .

The Whips have the power to increase an MPs income; if they have independent means this type of offer is less tempting.

28. Regardless of Lib Dem cohesion, that doesn’t point to any kind of “hypocrisy” necessarily, it can simply be ideological conformity that comes through the differing process of policy creation the Lib Dems afford. It could also be hypocrisy of course, but one doesn’t automatically prove the other. You chose to make this partisan on no factual basis whatsoever and it’s just a bit disappointing.

For Manifesto commitments, there should, absolutely, be a three line whip. It is the platform upon which the party was elected to govern. On matters of conscience (abortion, fox hunting etc) there should be no whip at all. Everything else should be 0,1 or 2 line depending.

Actually, as I understand it, all MPs are technically independent. They may state that they intend to take a particular party whip at election time and let the voters decide on that basis. That is how MPs can change parties without forcing a by- election. Upon election they take the whip and agree to follow the party line where required in return for access to the levers or power, government positions etc. If they fundamentally disagree with a manifesto commitment they shouldn’t be taking the whip. Conversely it would make for better laws if differing points of view were listened to and amendments made to proposed laws,

Just a thought to be thrown in the mix…

Is the justification for the Whip in the Lords (a revising chamber) the same as for the Commons? What proportion of the Lords – assuming we continue to have a nominated second chamber – should be cross-benchers?

maybe HoL should be entirely independent and cross-bench with no party whip at all. Independent panel chooses candidates who then accept or decline.