Most of Labour’s 411 MPs arrived in Parliament’s Westminster Hall on Monday afternoon for a photo with their new messiah. The former Starmtroopers (or perhaps now Burnham’s babes?) swarmed the new MP for Makerfield in an attempt to cosy up to the likely future Labour leader and prime minister. Andy Burnham may have felt popular then, with hundreds of new friends, but the honeymoon won’t last.
Much has been made of the machinery of government and how, under Sir Keir Starmer, it has appeared to grind, splutter and stall as the state struggled to deliver. Yet one of the least discussed causes of this paralysis – which Burnham will now have to fix – lies not in Whitehall but in Westminster itself. The trouble is this: Labour is terrible at whipping.
Burnham appears to want to replace the authority of governing with the imperative to be your authentic self. Like a social media influencer
The Whips’ Office is one of Westminster’s more curious institutions, with roots stretching back to the 18th century and a name derived from the ‘whipper-in’ – a huntsman’s assistant whose job was to stop hounds straying from the pack. Without someone cracking the whip, the hounds go where they please.
There has long been much theatre about the whips and its dark arts; the veiled threats and peculiar rituals (which are mainly present in the Conservative school of whipping). Former chief whip Gavin Williamson kept a tarantula named Cronus on his desk. The most junior Tory whip, by tradition, must pour champagne into silver goblets that grow in size with the seniority of their fellow whips. It is silly, of course. It is also effective in reminding their MPs that they are part of something bigger and can be put in their place by others more senior in the party who set the direction. But unlike their Tory counterparts, Labour MPs haven’t taken to the whipping role with the similar gusto.
