While she is speaking here about her personal experience around 15 years ago, not much has changed since then. There are more women in Parliament who might be more likely to support victims, and more men living in the 21st century, thus inclined to believe women, but the reality is that women coming forward with accusations about powerful men still do so at their own risk.
This is where gossip comes in: if something unpleasant or awful has happened to you and you do not want it to happen to others, how do you warn them without going public? You let the whisper network do its thing. By telling a few people who will then tell a few others, you can hopefully manage to build a reputation that will stick. As well-intentioned as this is, two problems can arise.
The first one is that malevolent souls can always take advantage of these networks to try and destroy one of their opponents, and that due to the nature of the whole thing, something that started small can quickly go big. An example of this can be the left-wing activist who behaved poorly to a woman after a date; while this was worth sharing as a piece of cautionary information, it had turned into a story about him raping a woman at knifepoint in an alleyway in only a few weeks.
The second is that it means people are left unsure what to do if they come across worrying whispers. ‘There was a rumour that I must have heard dozens of times about a minister who had allegedly beaten up his wife, put his wife in hospital,’ says one former Labour adviser. ‘And to this day I have absolutely no idea whether it was true or not, but the possibility that it isn’t true is actually quite shocking given that so many of us had heard about it. I never ever saw any evidence that it was true, but it might have been.’
In that case, what do you do? You can investigate it if you’re a journalist or ask a journalist to investigate it if you aren’t one, but allegations as serious as this are actually tough to stand up. To start with, the name of the person it may or may not have happened to usually gets lost quickly, either to retain their anonymity or because they tend to not be a well-known figure. Even if you do have the name, it is very likely that the person will not want to talk to you, for reasons discussed above. To top it all off, journalists are mostly overworked and underpaid and there are a tremendous amount of rumours floating around Westminster, so if they decided to thoroughly look into each one of these stories they would never get anything published.
What you’re left with, then, is a story about a male MP groping young female aides when drunk, to pick an example so common the author cannot get sued by one MP in particular. What do you do with it? Realistically, it was told to you third hand, so you cannot exactly go over to the person and ask for more details. Still, you’ve learnt something that sounds true about someone who is presumably senior to you and can be a potential danger to other young women like you. Do you decide to warn them in case it is true? If so, how do you do it?
This is a conundrum which has been made far more complex by the growing importance of social media, both in Westminster and in society. Telling one or two people something is different from sending it to, say, a WhatsApp group of 20 or so female staffers. Still, it is the way people tend to communicate nowadays (much, much more on that later) and it cannot be avoided.
Just take the spreadsheet that was splashed across the front page of the Sun in 2017, detailing a number of unsavoury allegations against a number of Conservative MPs. It is still unclear who originally made it, though reliable fingers pointed towards female staffers, and it listed a number of Conservative MPs, along with a list of bad things they had allegedly done. ‘Bad things’ in this context is quite wide; indeed, reading the spreadsheet without knowing what to expect might cause a degree of whiplash.
MPs earned their place on the document by allegedly (in order); getting a former researcher pregnant and making her have an abortion, having ‘odd sexual penchants’ (no further details), being ‘perpetually intoxicated and very inappropriate with women’, being urinated on by three men, having used sex workers, not being safe in taxis and having had a relationship (not an affair) with another single MP.
The line between fun gossip, concerning behaviour and deeply serious allegations here is so blurry it might as well not exist; what is said to have been a list written up to keep young women in Westminster safe simply turned into a repository for salacious stories. On top of that, several of the stories were completely untrue, some of them had a kernel of truth to them and others were true, but about someone else (awkward).
An interesting detail here was the speed with which the spreadsheet travelled across Westminster; its existence was made public one evening by the Sun, though it was not published in full, and within under 48 hours, discussions were started in the bubble with the assumption that every present party had knowledge of all the names.
Crucially, though, the existence (and publication) of the spreadsheet entirely derailed coverage of the #MeToo scandal in Westminster. After a few weeks of focusing on trying to out MPs whose behaviour in Westminster had been unacceptable, the spotlight shifted on to guesswork about who might have created the spreadsheet, which of the lesser (and funnier) allegations were true, and so on. Not for the first time, the political bubble got distracted by lurid gossip and looked away from structural issues.
Parliament eventually launched an inquiry about it all, though at the time of writing, it is impossible to tell if it will change anything or not. The inquiry will not only focus on sexual harassment, but on the culture of bullying, which largely works in similar ways.
There are people in positions of power who abuse it and people in junior positions who are too afraid of what might happen if they speak out publicly; you could call a number of MPs a ‘bully’ to the well-informed of Westminster and they would not bat an eyelid; it is up to informal networks of people to try and curtail the power of these bullies.
Like creeps, MPs who bully people tend to get away with it, because those who could stop it are rarely aware of it, as the people they bully – parliamentary aides, clerks, junior civil servants – mostly move in different worlds. As a journalist, there is nothing quite as disappointing as getting to know an MP, finding them thoroughly decent and respecting their work, only to later find out that they treat their staff appallingly.
Things are slowly starting to change, but until recently, some very senior MPs managed to leave Parliament with a clear record even after decades of being thoroughly horrid to anyone more junior than them. While some aides managed to not ever work for them as they had been warned off, it is always easy enough for bullies to hire people who are new to politics, so have no way of accessing those informal networks of knowledge.
When it comes to clerks, things are slightly different: as a relatively closed-off part of the Palace, they have a level of inherited knowledge, from the more senior clerks to the newer ones. ‘When I first joined we had a lot of discreet advice about dealing with members, but as a block; no individuals were named,’ says one clerk. ‘But then as you progress through the organisation and you begin to work with more and more MPs there are sometimes situations where people say, you know, be aware of that person, or keep this in mind while working with someone.’
This is not an overreaction; according to a Newsnight investigation broadcast in 2018, clerks, as anonymous faces away from the spotlight, can and have been routinely treated appallingly by MPs. Knowing what you’re in for if you’re about to go to work for a certain select committee can be vital.*
There is, in theory, one place those mistreated staffers and clerks could go to if they wanted something done internally; a few groups of people who deal with bad behaviour and sometimes trade on it. They rely more on gossip than perhaps any other parts of Westminster, and are absolute treasure troves of clandestine information – or are they?
Turn down the lights, fire up the smoke machine, and do not under any circumstances get too close to them – here come the whips.
WHIP IT GOOD
The whips of a political party have a fairly straightforward j
ob: they are the MPs who are tasked with making their colleagues vote the way their party leader wants them to vote, as well as generally making sure that parties retain a vague appearance of unity. How they go about it is an entirely different matter. Let’s take a look at some of the things that have been written about them.
First, there is the story about Gyles Brandreth’s first encounter with the whips as a new MP, which he recounted in his book Breaking the Code. All the government whips sat on the platform in a line and we new boys (plus the four new girls) sat, cowed, below at school desks – yes, school desks with ridges for your pencil and square holes for inkwells,’ he explains. The whips gave a short speech to the new crop of parliamentarians, explaining just what was expected of them, including that ‘when there is a three-line whip you will be here to vote – unless you can produce a doctor’s certificate (pause) showing you are dead.’
Then there is former Conservative MP Jerry Hayes, who recalled in his memoirs very nearly missing an important vote because he was away from the Palace, but being saved at the last minute by then Labour leader Neil Kinnock, who made him jump in his car. ‘So there I was in the back of the leader of the opposition’s car with the man himself, sweeping through Carriage Gates,’ he wrote. ‘Heaven knows what people would have thought. Neil read my mind. “Leave it to me, boyo. Look those whip bastards in the eye and tell them you were with me. I’ll ring the Chief and explain.” To his credit, he did. And my genitalia remained intact. For the time being.’
Finally, there is an anecdote in Who Goes Home? by Robert Rogers, about Labour MP Maurice Edelman, who once told Chief Whip Michael Cocks that he might miss a crucial vote as he was hosting a dinner party at his home. ‘Cocks exploded. “Snapey, go round to Edelman,” he instructed his whip colleague Peter Snape, “and tell that bastard that if he isn’t in the lobby tonight he’s dead. Dead!” Snape went round to Edelman’s house and delivered the message, then as he drove home, heard on the radio that Edelman had just passed away. In a somewhat nervous state he got home, parked his car and was unlocking his front door when he heard the telephone in the hall. He rushed in. It was the Chief Whip. There was a two-word conversation: “Snapey? Overkill.”’*
Are you spotting a pattern yet? If you’re currently picturing a group of shadowy figures inhabiting dark corridors and wearing thick black velvet capes (vampire fangs optional), that is because it’s the image whips want to project. They are not to be messed with, and any MP who is foolhardy enough not to take them seriously and vote however they see fit might one day wake up with a horse’s head on their pillow. This is all a slight exaggeration, of course, but whips’ offices do have a flair for the theatrical; there is a bona fide whip in their office, which looks like it would hurt.
There are a bunch of reasons why they are seen that way. The first one is that in order to do their jobs properly, they must retain an impressive (and up-to-date) cache of personal information about MPs. The story goes that whips usually have a ‘Black Book’, or ‘Dirt Book’, kept under lock and key in the Chief Whip’s office. It is unclear whether this is true, used to be true or is just something they like people to think is true, but in any case, their meticulous collecting of potentially damaging information isn’t as sinister as it seems.
After all, their role is to ensure that a party wins the votes it puts through Parliament, and they would be useless at it if they didn’t know what really motivated MPs. Politics is about people, and politicians won’t always vote for or against something purely based on the merit of the policy.
If whips want to know how people are going to vote, they need to see them as just that – anything else will make them ineffectual. In fact, Jerry Hayes has a good example of this, from his days in the Commons:
‘Years and years ago when Thatcher was under threat, Mike Brunson, who used to be ITN political editor, and I sat down a whole load of seriously bright people, psephologists, to work out how the voting was going to go. They kept saying, “Oh well, he’s a wet, he’s a dry, he’s right-wing, he’s left-wing,” and we said, “No, no. It’s not going to work like that.” And what Mike and I did is make up this list of: Who’s she pissed off? Who’s she overlooked? Who hasn’t she promoted? And we got it within three votes. That’s the reality: people get upset and vote against leaders for a whole range of reasons, and it’s not always about policy.’
So, how do the whips gather all that information? They’re everywhere in the Palace. The whole team is usually around 15 MPs for the party of government, and slightly fewer for the opposition. The Chief has better things to do than hang around and eavesdrop, but most of the others are expected to loiter and make sure that their MPs aren’t misbehaving. In her book How to be a Government Whip, Helen Jones explains: ‘The tea room, the dining room and the bar are as much your places of work as the office is. Listen to what people tell you and try to assist them if they have a genuine grievance. […] All this hanging about is not time wasted but, rather, time invested.’*
Each one will have their stalking grounds and will keep an eye on their colleagues then report back to the Chief if they see anything particularly untoward. Some of them will even get a bit creative, as one former MP explains, ‘Toilet whips are really interesting. One thing that guys do is that, when they’re having a piss, they talk. Always my advice to new MPs is to push every cubicle door to make sure that there’s no one there listening, because there used to be a whip designated to sit for about an hour, listening to the gossip.’
To be fair to them, one of the reasons they aim to physically be around the House as often as possible is also so they can act as makeshift counsellors. If an MP has some personal problems and, for example, life is not rosy at home back up in the constituency, they might need to go and spend more time there, and would need to explain to the whips why it isn’t simple laziness on their part. Because everyone knows what it does, the whips’ office can also be used by MPs who have got information they want to pass on, either because it will make a person they loathe look bad, a person they like look good, or because they think being useful to the whips might be a good move for them.
‘I worked for four years in the government whips’ office and it either willingly or unwillingly becomes a lot of the collecting point of parliamentary gossip,’ says Conservative MP Greg Hands. ‘Sometimes willingly, as the whips’ office wants to find out what’s going on, particularly if it’s something that might bring the party or the MP into difficulties. Then sometimes unwillingly because sometimes people think that the role of the government whips’ office is to investigate parliamentary misbehaviour, for want of a better term. So suddenly you get somebody bursting into the whips’ office and saying, “I’ve just seen MP X do something with MP Y! What are you guys going to do about it?” And your initial reaction is, “Well, we’re a bit busy at the moment.”’
Beyond walking around and talking to their colleagues, whips must also develop good networks to try and gather information from all possible sources. One of them can be their staff; aides and MPs will often have a chatty relationship, but it takes on a new level when the MP in question is in the whips’ office. Being seen in a good light by the whips can do wonders for someone, so ambitious staffers will be keen to be the foot soldiers of their bosses. The Chief Whip of the party in power also has a special adviser, which means that they can easily report back on what happens in that corner of Westminster.
On top of all this, whips must rely on their personal contacts and their wit to collect other pieces of intelligence. In her book, Jones gives a nice example of this: ‘One group of disaffected ministers in the last government met for regular suppers outside Parliament. Stupidly, they had this regular engagement put into their ministerial diaries and the whips always knew when this was happening through a contact with one of their diary secretaries. […] Being nice to people on the lower rungs of the Whitehall ladder pays off in the long term, often in unexpected ways.’
The obvious follow-up question to thi
s is: why do whips need all that information? Getting a broad sense of who your MPs are is one thing, but being aware of their peccadilloes, affairs and drinking habits is another. The received wisdom is that whips then use those secrets to twist the arm of their colleagues if they are threatening not to vote with the whip on something. The problem with this, however, is that the only way to do this would be to tell the MP in question that the night they once had on the terrace and would rather forget about might be making its way to the front page of a newspaper.
There are definitely stories about this happening. One amusing one is about a woman standing to be a Labour MP in the election of 1997. In her first meeting with the whips, she and other new parliamentarians were told that they needed to fess up to anything embarrassing and potentially newsworthy they might have done in their past; if the whips knew about it, they could help you with it and make sure it didn’t get out.
As everyone went on to tell them about their sexual and/or drunken shame, the woman realised to her horror that she had never done anything bad enough to be a story, and had mostly had what some might call a dull life. The social awkwardness took over, as she didn’t want the whips to think that she was hiding something from them, so she made something up; in her university years, she went through a shameful period of being a white witch. The whips thanked her and moved on.
Years passed and the woman enjoyed her time as a reasonably docile Labour MP, until one day when she found herself profoundly disagreeing with a bill her party had put forward. Word reached the whips that she was planning to vote against the government and she was brought in for a meeting. ‘So, we’ve heard that you’re planning to rebel on this,’ they told her. ‘It would be a shame if your years as a white witch were to become a story, wouldn’t it?’ She then had to gladly tell the whips that she’d unwittingly outsmarted them and went on to merrily vote the way she wanted to.
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