How Westminster Works . . . and Why It Doesn't

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If the situation is desperate enough, they’ll sometimes resort to trying to manhandle MPs into voting for the party line. It’s the name of a document circulated to MPs on a weekly basis by the party, listing the business of the next fortnight and the expectation of when they’ll vote.

Ian Dunt - Wikipedia Ian Dunt - Wikipedia

Officers involved later issued a statement in which they apologised for misleading the public, but a subsequent libel trial saw the judge rule that Mitchell had said “the words alleged or something so close to them as to amount to the same”. Then, Thatcher rejected criticism of government policies and regarded all public service professionals as self-satisfied, inward looking, and out of touch with modern needs.So far as I can judge, the detailed accounts are accurate though, like most people, I lack Dunt’s experience of close observation of the system. Dunt describes how the lack of expertise among Ministers has been exacerbated by the fact that, increasingly in recent decades, MPs have become professional politicians—sometimes former “spads” (as special advisors became known) like Ed Miliband and David Cameron—rather than experienced professionals, lawyers, or businessmen, as was once normal. MPs feel its force immediately, because it’s the Whips’ Office that allocates them their parliamentary office when they arrive: spacious penthouses at the top of Portcullis House for favoured MPs, and dark little cubbyhole basements for lowly ones. Tim Fortescue, Tory chief whip in the 1970s, admitted in a 1995 documentary that the whips office had covered up MP scandals.

How Westminster Works … and Why It Doesn’t by Ian Dunt review

How has austerity impacted local government, bus routes, libraries, the judicial system, the selling off of the British state? The problem, he points out, is that, “Once a policy has been passed, it effectively ceases to exist for the lobby.Dunt rightly points out that, certainly since Blair was PM in the 2000s, party leaders have controlled local selections to curb backbench challenges. This has long been known to be heavily biased, notably against women which has been exposed in detail over time but is not discussed here. Dunt also describes how an independent-minded Speaker of the House of Commons, notably John Bercow, can encourage independent-minded, rebellious Members by facilitating debates on amendments to legislation, emergency debates, and urgent questions, ignoring established rules when necessary—hence Bercow’s unpopularity with successive governments. It explains, chapter by chapter, the classes of people who hold political power in the UK: from the voters (once in a while) to parliament (barely at all), the prime minister (less than you think), cabinet ministers (more than you think), the Treasury (just as much as you think), the civil service and the press. If you insist on assessing legislation on its own terms rather than simply voting as you’re told, you will sabotage your political career.

Ian Dunt, How Westminster Works…and Why It Doesn’t Ian Dunt, How Westminster Works…and Why It Doesn’t

However, Dunt argues that they have long had the potential to wield more power than leaders in many other countries because Britain’s first-past-the-post election system enables them to gain substantial majorities unlike states with Proportional Representational (PR) systems in which coalition governments are frequent, leading to compromise decisions rather than authoritarian power. In January 2020 the same team launched The Bunker, a podcast similar in format that discusses political issues other than Brexit. The recent book by journalist and author Ian Dunt provides a detailed and critical account of many aspects of the UK’s political system, including political parties and elections, parliament and the legislative process, the work of ministers and civil servants in Whitehall, and the role of the media. And the whip pushes them in, because once you’re over the line, then the convention is you can’t reverse out again.I was fortunate enough to be in the same parliamentary committee room as Boris Johnson when he realised his government was going to fall. So also should Ministers at all levels, even if this requires placing experts in the House of Lords to enable their appointment to a Ministry. The first step to implement these reforms is to commit ourselves to the ideas that inform them… it might currently feel hopeless, but it isn’t.