What is "the whip" in politics?

[Dilbertian]

What does it mean? Also "three line whip" and "losing the whip", what do these mean?

Totally agree. No need for it at all.

Sneery

Well I for one found all the above explanations very interesting. I vaguely knew what the whip was but not the three line whip or the origin of the word. So thanks for asking the question OP!

This sneery attitude to not knowing things seems to be gaining popularity on here lately. It’s a real shame as all it does it make people too embarrassed to asked questions and instead stay ignorant.

I agree, and those with the sneery attitudes pop up to show us how superior they are - whereas to me they simply appear to be sad little people with nothing more interesting to do with their time than try to belittle others.

Can you or others explain again please!

🤣🤣🤣

Do you tell people in RL to google rather than ask questions or have a discussion?

I love these type of threads because it is more like RL in that a group of people are just discussing things that randomly come up in conversation.

@FlakeySalt that's hilarious

The number of lines indicates how important it is that you turn up to vote.
When the order of the say was written the important votes would be underlined 3 times, hence 3 line whip.
These days it is indicated with 3 hash tags.

Sorry 3 slashes not hash tags!

Thanks for the explanations. So whips refers both to a way of telling MPs whether they must vote according to the party line, or according to their conscience/constituents' wishes, and to the people who enforce the instructions, and to being chucked out of/accepted back into the party?

Do other democracies also have 'whips'?

Re Tory/Conservative, I'd be interested to know if my half-baked understanding is correct about them. Before the Industrial Revolution and the change around that time from a monarchy with some actual power to a purely constitutional monarchy, the two main parties in government were the Whigs and the Tories. I don't know what they stood for or where their names came from (yes, I could Google ). The parties evolved into the Conservatives, who wanted to conserve the status quo, and the Liberals, who were more open to change. I expect that the Conservatives evolved from the Tories, and retained the original name. (Now I'm off to Google, but also await with interest MNers explanations.)

I'm not bothered by the sad little thread police choosing not to ignore a question they think too pathetic to grace with the effort of a reply. Of course I could just Google, but a conversation where you can ask questions to clarify, and the discussion can evolve to related subjects, is much more interesting.

I thought of got it straight in my head, now I'm confused again!

Don't MPs have to turn up to vote on every thing that is debated, whether or not there join in the debate?

Is the assumption that MPs will vote according to the party line?

Honestly. I consider myself a pretty intelligent person but for the life of me I couldn’t have explained why the conservatives are called tories beyond perhaps vaguely thinking it was something to do with conservatories 😂😂

I think Tory was originally an Irish insult

No they don't have to turn up and vote for all things.

And some things are a free vote - ie should we ban abortion -stuff that is outside the usual manifesto pledges. Vote with your conscience.

Whether MPs have to turn up depends on how contentious a bill is and how heavily whipped. A lot of votes have cross party support or are purely administrative so there's no real pressure for anyone to attend that doesn't happen to be in parliament at the time.

For three line whip votes, like the recent fracking bill, even abstention could in theory get you chucked out of the party. Obviously this causes problems if an MP is at the other end of the country in their constituency, or ill in hospital, or forbidden to enter the chamber because they're being investigated on charges of rape. So because these problems apply to both sides, there is a system of "pairing" whereby two people from each side of the vote mutually agree to abstain and cancel each other out. That's essential to keep the system running without breaking MPs, but if the government has a knife edge majority then it has been known to be suspended.

I just don't understand how in a supposedly democratic system there can be people appointed to 'bully' MPs into voting a particular way

Re Whigs and Tories, I was half right. This article is informative. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Whig-Party-England But it took a but of search-tweaking to find it, because so many American results came up first. I had no idea that these were also terms in historic American politics.

I was thinking exactly this!!

It's a talk forum! If nobody said anything it would be a desolate and lonely place.

Do you carry on like this in real life?

What does ODFOD mean. And please no one tell me to "Google it"

Because the MPs stood in a General Election as members of The X Party. And The X Party put forward a manifesto of the legislation they would enact if elected.

At its simplest, if you get elected on that promise and then fail to stand by it, then you forfeit the right to call yourself a member of Party X. You can stay an MP, draw a salary, vote, sit on committees perhaps, and stand for reelection (fat chance), but if you're not standing by your government they retain the right to chuck you out of the party.

Ditto any votes of confidence in the government and passing budgets. If you vote to bring down the government then you're out.

There's much more to it, and it gets much fuzzier for votes that are outside the remit of the manifesto, but the whip system has value in getting three hundred odd individuals to get into line behind a single platform of measures voted for by the public.

Goodness is this a thread about the political whip system or an opportunity for the internet police to berate people with their special made up thread rules.

Oh do fuck off dear

If only arseholes didn't 🤷‍♀️

Other posters have explained it well but it's essentially about discipline and supporting betting things through parliament.

Quite often this can mean MPs voting against their own personal feelings for the good of the party and that where having PMs who are extreme right or left and having a whip can cause damage to a country. It's unfortunately a very easy way to get questionable policies through the door.