As part of the British Politics class I’m teaching at our London program I recently took my students to see a new political comedy, Whipping it Up! The play is a biting comedy about the role of parliamentary whips, the top party leaders in the UK who are responsible for making sure that members of parliament vote according to the wishes of the party leadership. Whips play a far more crucial role in the UK than in the US because party discipline is more important in a parliamentary legislative-executive system. The chief government whip is a top cabinet minister and is in constant contact with the head of government. One of the crucial jobs of the whip is to make sure that their party members show up for key votes. When a party member is ill or unavailable, the whip seeks a “pair” with another party whip, essentially making sure that an absence from one party is cancelled out by an absence from an opposing party.
Whipping it Up! is set in the near future under a Conservative Party government with a slim 3-seat majority, led by a young, charismatic, but lightweight leader (read David Cameron) who faces constant rebellion from within Tory ranks. An absurd attempt to levy a tax on tents (used by gypsy caravans and circuses, but also boy scouts) sets off a backbencher revolt while the prime minister is in the United States playing golf with the president. The hysterical play examines the various tactics employed by the whips (from both the governing Tories and the Labour Opposition) to win the vote. The pro-Tory Daily Telegraph called the play the “brightest comedy of the year,” though its reviewer lameted:There's mixed news for the Tories in Steve Thompson's superbly entertaining new play at the Bush. On the plus side, he is the first dramatist I can recall who has dared to depict the Conservatives back in power. On the downside they have a majority of only three under their energetic young leader, and are portrayed, as is traditional in British theatre, as a bunch of shamelessly devious bastards. Couldn't Thompson have had a good pop at the bad faith, posturing and stupidity of Blair, Brown, Prescott and Blunkett before New Labour bites the dust? The poor old Tories, after all, are still a long way from Number 10.
The pro-Labour Guardian was also impressed, calling it:
the funniest political satire since Alistair Beaton's Feelgood, which attacked New Labour spin doctors. Like that play, it not only lifts the lid on the process but exposes the fact that politics today is as much about short-term, tactical gains as it is about long-range vision.
Yesterday I took my class to watch a parliamentary debate about the failure of numerous private pension schemes. The government bill to remedy the situation was brutally attacked by the Tories, the Liberal Democrats, and quite a few Labour backbenchers, and together they proposed an alternative bill. The government was clearly on the defensive, and we watched the Labour parliamentary whips wheel and deal to amend the original legislation so that the government would not be defeated on the motion. In the end the government survived, but 15 rebel Labourites voted against the government.
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