CRACKING THE WHIP: THE UK’S PARTY CONTROL SYSTEM - Tabitha Troughton

15 CRACKING THE WHIP 1.2: Appointment, renumeration and power The Chief Whip of the government is ‘one of the most powerful officials in the House of Commons’ and holds ministerial status.25 Prime Ministers appear to move ministers up and down a ministerial league table, but, wherever the Chief Whip is ranked (currently above the Leader of the House, the Attorney General and several Ministers of S. [...] ‘Such people are used all the time by the whips, despite the fact that they really shouldn’t be allowed to legislate’ Jones explains.75 1.6: Bribery and other weapons Part of the power of the whips lies in the access they have, and provide, to ministers and, for the Chief Whip, to the Prime Minister. [...] ‘One of their responsibilities is making sure the maximum number of their party members vote, and vote the way their party wants’ it adds, crystallising one of the issues at the centre of this report.91 What if what the party wants is not what the party leadership wants? To whom are the whips responsible? The answer, from whips themselves, is that they are responsible to, and the first line of def. [...] In his memoirs, Andrew Mitchell, curiously, uses one of the same analogies as Helen Jones, this time to describe the role of the whips: If the government decides to proceed with the Slaughter of the First-Borns Bill it is the whips’ job to secure the necessary votes by explaining that there are too many first borns around, fettering the chances of the second- and third-born children. [...] 35 CRACKING THE WHIP The necessity, for the Labour leadership at the time, was to defeat the cross-party amendment containing the assertion that ‘the case for war was not yet established’.136 On the other side of the House, the Conservative whips were also busy.