Whips

a tidbit thrown into the new answers pit

It is ridiculous and he's right about the whip system. It's one of these parliamentary conventions that has been in place so long people don't really think about it - certainly not the people in parliament because they've become so institutionalised anyway.

Basically in the 19th century there was a big battle between 'party' and the idea of an independent MP, which party of course won. Once MPs stopped being drawn exclusively from the independently wealthy gentry, an individual MP realised that his best chance of winning was with the backing of a larger organisation. Meanwhile the heads of the organisations realised that the best way to ensure MPs' compliance was to turn the fluid notion of party-as-faction into the more structured party-as-organisation (hence the whips). With the extension of suffrage, also, party became a useful shorthand for voters without the time or resources to understand the position of individual candidates.

what we need is a free and open lack of debate. after all we're fighting for the freedom of democracy here. shit

marsden is my parents' MP: he looks like (or does he just have the same name as?) the TV hypnotist...

the drawback w.MPs with a rep for "independence" eg Tam Dalyell or Tony Benn or Gorgeous George Galloway is that they seem to tend to be enormously vain monomaniac bores/frauds, so that even when you strongly agree with them, you find yrself being snarky...

I notice people get pretty angry when their MP crosses the floor, though. People basically vote for one party or the other, if individual MPs want to make a name for themselves let them try their luck at the leadership conventions.

Mark'n'Dave - yeah - the triumph of party led to a system where people vote for party and so they're right to feel aggrieved. And the party system isn't a bad one neccessarily - but tight whipping is, especially since people vote for their idea of what a party will do, which isn't neccessarily what a party does do.

I can't help but think that if we had independent MP's again, they'd at least vote with their own principles, which can only be a good thing. Or bad, of course, because it might split every vote and we'd end up with rubbish minority administrations which do not much (see Earl of Derby 1800's - 5 minority admins! Also Britain's richest man). In the age of spin though I do think party politics will meet a sticky end sooner or later as the public becomes fed up with people toeing the line and being deceitful bastards even more than usual (e.g. Jo Moore (?) the 'cover up' woman.)

I'm undecided on Jo Moore - in one picture I saw she looked awful but in another one I quite fancied her. Also I worked with someone called Jo Moore once who was nice. These are the kind of considerations that animate a mature democracy.

So how on earth was Thatcher in power for so long???????

Consider the alternatives. David Steel num num I think not.

I suppose all those Tory voters viewed her as some kind of dominatrix figure hence voted. Was Kinnock in opposition to her for long? His Welsh accent could have got people going, couldn't it? (According to market research.)

What mental market research have you been reading?

I was watching Room 101 with George Melly. Scots and Welsh accents are seen as very powerful tools because women find them irresistable, apparently. Yorkshire is seen as trustworty and the less said about Scouse and Brum the better.

Ed, there are whips in American government too. It's kind of like being a prefect, though.

Yesterday I got called for an ICM poll. The questions were about whether I voted, would I vote for them again, was I confident about my future economic prospects, and just as many questions about ASTROLOGY: meaning, did I read stars, what areas was I looking for future guidance with, using stars, and the like.

Then I had to explain during the demographics bit what an 'atheist' was. Argh!

problem w.indie MPs equals — quite apart from the inevitable tendency to formalise "faction" (ie bunches of indies clubbing together and forming ARGH!! a party, the bogey of 18th.c Brit politics, which was incidentally FAR MORE CORRUPT) — equals requirement for you the voter to be on top of mnatters of economics, foreign policy, funding forv tech research blah blah. We are complicit in what we have because it takes responsiblity AWAY from us hurrah oh wait a minute.

Thatcher won because the opposition was utterly divided. Many voted for in spite of the sex angle yesyes, but this kind of dialectic is unreliable, as deep loathing can be a manifestation of repressed but unhappy lust. eg Derek Hatton = latent Thatchosexual surely

"Room 101 with George Melly" as market research = greatest political argt I haf evah encountered on the boards or off

Well actually it was Paul Merton reading it out so maybe that puts it in another dimension entirely?

paul merton = voice of occasional character dr dog in REX THE RUNT = risen at last to his true height

Well I dont know about a Whip's Office, each party in Canada does have a whip who is outcasted only slightly less than the Speaker. So I guess they are publicly funded indirectly though the funds given to all major parties.

Quite often the stuff they do is petty or quite obvious, like when they kicked Jag Burdurhai [sp?] out of the Liberal party for lieing about being an LLB [int] when he had really only taken a year of law school before flunking out.

Mark S: Do I detect that you are not Paul Merton's biggest fan?

Marsden has come out of this with credibility massively enhanced. New Labour's "get them all into line" techniques seem more dislikeable every day. There's a dislikeable core at the heart of that party, a curiously passionate distrust of individualism. Could another Tony Crosland *ever* come through today?

I like the *idea* of independent MPs (not trapped by excessive party political dogma etc etc), and I think Martin Bell did a fine honourable job for his four years in parliament and Richard Taylor is shaping up to be just as good. But I fear that the concept could well be exploited by those out only for their own gain, the politics of egotism. Depends entirely on the personal integrity and intelligence of the independent MP concerned.

yeah they have whips here that are publicly funded to a greater extent than other MPs. The hippie party here refused to have one and instead used the extra salary to fund a non-existent position called the "musterer".

Hi!