Daily Times

Less than five months before Britain leaves the European Union, Prime Minister Theresa May’s parliamentary enforcers are on the prowl.

For now, the government “whips” whose job it is to ensure parliament backs whatever Brexit deal May agrees with Brussels are taking a softly-softly approach. But Chief Whip Julian Smith and his team have a powerful armoury at their disposal to force politicians into line.

With an agreement likely to go before lawmakers later this year, May’s team and the whips she appointed are quietly sounding out who might vote against it, several politicians told Reuters.

Their task is complicated by her ruling Conservative Party’s lack of a parliamentary majority and its bitter divisions over Brexit.

To persuade them to support the government, some eurosceptic Conservatives have been wined and dined, including at May’s Downing Street office.

Others, including some members of the opposition Labour Party, have been invited to private meetings at which they have been asked their opinions and subjected to painstaking explanations of the prime minister’s position.

But few, if any, eurosceptics have been won round.

“I am not going to change my mind, no matter how nice a dinner might be,” said one Conservative lawmaker on condition of anonymity, explaining that he had refused three invitations to Downing Street for such a meal.

“Clearly they are trying to pick off people who they think might be malleable … but frankly first of all, before they get to that point, they should be able to explain what the government is going to do, and at the moment no one has a clue.”

Whipped Into Line

Government and opposition parties each have their own whips — a term with its roots in fox-hunting that dates back to 1742 and refers to the “whipping” of lawmakers to get them to attend votes and support the party line.

They also act as tellers for parliamentary votes and manage the pairing system with rival parties that ensures genuine absences do not skew votes in parliament.

Smith outraged lawmakers in July when he told some Conservatives to break a pairing arrangement, in what May said was “an honest mistake”. One then voted with the government at a key Brexit vote even though his Liberal Democrat “pair” was away as she had just given birth.

Tactics used by whips in the past are the stuff of parliamentary legend. A series of votes on the Maastricht Treaty on deeper EU integration in the early 1990s brought reports of blackmail, threats to expose lawmakers’ indiscretions and even physical “manhandling” to win support.

One former Conservative Chief Whip, Gavin Williamson, kept a pet tarantula on his desk — named Cronus after the Greek god who ate his own children. He once said that while he preferred the carrot to the stick, “it is amazing what can be achieved with a sharpened carrot”.

Such practices have inspired television shows such as the British and US versions of House of Cards.

But for many in parliament now, such behaviour bears little resemblance to the reality of everyday political life. The strongest coercion so far over the Brexit vote, lawmakers say, has been the promise of budget sweeteners to curry favour.

Published in Daily Times, November 12^th 2018.