Party Whips Considered Harmful

For a long time I've had a serious issue with the concept of Party whips.

When we elect an MP we choose them to represent us. Their party alliegance gives us some indication as to what sorts of policies they support, and on the whole I would expect an MP to be more likely to vote with their party than against it. But when there's a conflict between representing their constituents and supporting their party it's the constituents who should win. It's the constituents who pay their wages after all through their taxes. But is that what happens? I don't think it is. Most of the time party loyalty wins.

There is an argument that the party often supports an MP's election campaign, and therefore should expect some loyalty. I think this is bogus though. That's a matter for the parties selection process to deal with. If they select a candidate who they know (and the public expects) will vote in a particular way on some issue then they have no cause to complain later. If an MP were to represent themselves one way to the party and then change their tune once in office then the party would have the option to deselect them at the next election. In other words MPs should behave honourably or expect deselection by their party.

Of course, that in itself is a form of coercion. And it's likely to get candidates standing who say they will support the party line even if that's not how they feel. Of course, they should then behave as they said they would during their campaign. But then changing their tune after getting into power is nothing new, although now it's done at a party level rather than an individual level.

What it boils down to is that right now we have a system where we effectively vote for the party we want. Not the person. Given the existance of parties it's very hard to unpick this, and no system is going to be perfect, but right now I feel that it's swung too far in the parties favour.

But what really is offensive about this is that the whip system is a major mechanism leading to the centralisation of power in the party executive. For the governing party that's typically pretty close the PM and cabinet. Centralisation of power is a bad thing. It is directly in conflict with the most basic principles of democracy. And this has been getting worse. It's a trend Thatcher started, but Blair has continued apace.

New Labour for example is a radical departure from Old Labour. Many Labour voters are voting for older Labour principles and Labour MPs who've been in office, or at least in politics since well before New Labour existed. But the party they have actually got now is getting more like the Tories every day. (So much so that Cameron almost seems to be trying to position the Conservatives to the left of Labour!). Without the whips this would have been virtually impossible, because the Labour MPs would have had more power.

So, what I'm essentially arguing for is that every vote in the house should be a free vote. The Lord's works more that way, and it does seem that generally it's more effective at engendering real debate. And that's ultimately what we want. When policy is suggested by Cabinet, we don't want Parliament to rubber stamp it. We want them to debate it. To tear the idea apart, to test it to destruction, and in doing so make sure it's a good idea and make sure it really will do what's wanted. Right now we have a system where debate is stifled, and any idiot idea dreamt up by cabinet gets forced through. And that's why we've had so many policy failures - because those policies haven't had to withstand the fire of debate first.

In the extreme this would mean the collapse of the party system. And it's interesting to note that this is not a new idea. In the early days of the US republic parties were banned. This was because they lead to exactly the problems we are seeing know, and that was considered corrupt. The Republican party was the first party the reemerge as a power block, and there the idea of a party-less system died.

I'm not convinced that a system entirely without parties would work - it would be too hard o keep track of, but getting rid of the whips would at least restore some honour to a tainted system.

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