Will Cameron last as PM until Election 2015

**Panda** Thu 29 Nov - 11:43

Cameron will pay a heavy price for the feebleness of his whips

The PM’s haughty disregard of his own party is reminiscent of Tony Blair at his peak

Will Cameron last as PM until Election 2015 George-young_2412798b

Will Cameron last as PM until Election 2015 George-young_2412798b

Sir George Young, the latest Chief Whip, "has so far appeared incapable". Eight MPs are now reported to be in secret talks with Ukip, and the Nadine Dorries business shows an extraordinary failure of grip Photo: Eddie Mulholland

By Peter Oborne

8:20PM GMT 28 Nov 2012

Will Cameron last as PM until Election 2015 Comments

212 Comments

When I became a parliamentary reporter approximately 20 years ago, the chief whip was a disagreeable man called Alastair Goodlad. I used to enjoy watching him paddling, never at more than one and a half miles an hour, out of the Conservative Whip’s Office, across the members’ lobby, into the Commons chamber. He never answered questions. The best you got was a grunt. Only once did I extract a sequence of words out of Goodlad. I was wearing a pair of brown shoes. The chief whip’s eyes very slightly bulged: “Goin’ rattin’?”

I resolved to write a profile of Goodlad. A wall of silence was erected. I persisted, and after some time an envoy asked to see me. Over a glass of whisky this emissary told me nothing except to state, in vivid terms, that if Mr Goodlad disliked the profile my job as a political journalist would at once become extremely difficult.

I always suspected that there was less to Alastair (now Lord) Goodlad than met the eye. Nevertheless, he remains the last government chief whip who can be compared with Francis Urquhart, the sinister anti-hero of Michael Dobbs’s enjoyable series of novels about late 20th-century parliamentary life. Goodlad knew how to exude menace. He commanded the respect of the prime minister, while his office ran an impressive intelligence operation that kept the minority Major government in power right up to the last moment.

When Tony Blair became prime minister in 1997, the government Whip’s Office was to all intents and purposes dismantled. Mr Blair appointed a string of second- and third-rate chief whips, none of whom commanded the trust of Downing Street or the respect of the Commons. Of great importance was the way Mr Blair appropriated to himself almost all the powers of patronage which had historically been vested in the whips – above all control over junior ministerial appointments and distribution of political honours.

The whips were also removed from their traditional base, the splendid Georgian mansion at No 12 Downing Street, and parked instead in temporary accommodation inside the Cabinet Office. Meanwhile, the prime minister’s media operation took over No 12, an extremely important public statement that the prime minister’s senior press officer, and not the chief whip, had become the primary agent of political enforcement and control. Errant ministers and MPs were from this point disciplined through media leaks and secret briefings, while the traditional Whip’s Office fell into irrelevance. Popular portraits of the workings of government quickly picked up the change. The anti-hero of the television satire The Thick of It is a deranged spin-doctor, no longer the chief whip.

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This was the arrangement when David Cameron became Prime Minister in the early summer of 2010. I hoped and expected Mr Cameron to revert to the traditional system, and to begin with there were signals that he might indeed do so. The whips, for example, were informed that they would soon be relocated to No 12, which was then undergoing refurbishment. But this never happened: No 12 was duly captured by Andy Coulson, the former News of the World editor who had been appointed director of communications, and is today facing a battery of criminal charges. It soon became obvious that David Cameron, just like Tony Blair, had resolved to govern through a Downing Street clique and could not care less for the parliamentary party.

It is now obvious that this was a grave mistake. Though constitutionally distasteful, there was some sense about Tony Blair’s resolve to govern without serious reference to his MPs. He enjoyed such a large majority, and the wider Labour movement felt such profound gratitude for being in power, that traditional techniques of party management could, for the time being, be safely ignored.

But this has never been true since 2010. The Conservative Party is in a minority in the Commons, and rather than gratitude its MPs feel a sullen resentment at being forced to share power with the Liberal Democrats. The situation today is therefore much closer to the mid-Nineties, when Mr Goodlad was at his taciturn peak and the government clung on through one touch-and-go late-night division after another, than it is to the heady years of New Labour.

The Lib-Lab pact of 1977-8, when matters were so desperate that nobody knew when the government might fall, is a yet closer analogy. Jim Callaghan’s embattled government boasted the services of chief whip Michael Cocks and his even more thuggish (if that were possible) deputy Walter Harrison, who died in October. This House, a superb play currently showing at the National Theatre, tells what life was like in those years. Their methods were unpleasant and often disgraceful, but Cocks and Harrison knew the Labour Party like the back of their hands.

Yet the Prime Minister, it appears, has not woken up. He carries on with the same haughty disregard as Tony Blair at his peak. Let’s take the case of the recent reshuffle. A traditional Conservative chief whip would have been centrally involved. Members of the Whip’s Office sit in on every debate, marking down how well the minister has performed, who has spoken well, who has been disloyal, who has shown talent from the back benches. All this gets noted, discussed at the following morning’s meeting, and in due course used to form the basis of all ministerial promotions and demotions short of Cabinet level.

Last September, I am told, the outgoing chief whip, Patrick McLoughlin, was scarcely canvassed, and promotions were handed to those who had caught the eye of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. This level of personal patronage explains, for example, the otherwise baffling promotion of Mr Osborne’s favourites, Elizabeth Truss and the talentless Matthew Hancock.

Almost as amazing was the treatment of junior whips. Under the traditional arrangements there was a deal: serve out two years of drudgery and anonymity and in return they were guaranteed a ministerial job. Six whips were sacked in September; only three promoted.

More recent events provide fresh cause for alarm. Sir George Young, the latest Chief Whip, has so far appeared incapable. Eight MPs are now reported to be in secret talks with Ukip, suggesting that the once famed Whip’s Office intelligence operation has collapsed. The Nadine Dorries business shows an extraordinary failure of grip. Her expenses returns stunk, she has shown persistent disloyalty to the Prime Minister – on one occasion calling for him to be “killed” – and dereliction of duty by abandoning her job to take part in a television show. Any chief whip with an ounce of guts or moral principle would have slung her out. Hapless Sir George dithered.

In recent months, two votes have been lost, and the situation will get worse as the Coalition disintegrates. Difficult challenges lie ahead: Leveson, the Autumn Statement, the European budget. The Prime Minister desperately needs a first-class whipping operation, and is starting to pay a heavy price for his very culpable failure to pay attention to party management. A significant minority of MPs are no longer frightened to rebel: certainly more than 42, the number needed to mount a leadership challenge. Before long it will be too late.

**Angelina** Thu 29 Nov - 22:31

He's a bloody shambles and so are his cronies. Time he kicked some of them out, starting with Osborne. What a hopeless bunch and even worse, there's no alternative except Labour. Been there, done that...wish we hadn't!

We are done for.

**Panda** Thu 29 Nov - 22:52

Angelina wrote:He's a bloody shambles and so are his cronies. Time he kicked some of them out, starting with Osborne. What a hopeless bunch and even worse, there's no alternative except Labour. Been there, done that...wish we hadn't!

We are done for.

Hi Angelina, there is not ONE Government Dept functioning well and Cameron plays to the gallery too much, thinking he is amassing kudos by listening to the people etc but of all the Politicians the only one who seems to have made strides is Vince Cable. Your'e right there is no alternative Government , no wonder Britain has one of the worst percentages for Elections, only 45% turn out to vote. I will be very surprised if Cameron lasts full term as PM he really has blown any chance of re-election over his friendship with Rebekah and Murdoch.

**Panda** Fri 30 Nov - 21:06

Judging by some of the comments on sky........Cameron hasn't a clue.!!!

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KPTC

5:42 PM on 30/11/2012

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Are newspapers running this country?
You would think by the comments made that they think they are?
Yes, their support definitely helps Governments .... but not surely at the price of the truth?
Newspapers are dying unfortunately, but their particular bad behaviour seems to have got away with murder and endorsed by a flailing Prime Minister who is running out of friends daily.
Everyone was asked. A top quality judge appointed. He made his recommendations after hearing so many complaints made about the press. He made it clear.

And the Prime Minister ignores it and goes in the opposite direction because it might harm him and his party? How many Eton boys are on the Press then? It seems to me that the country is being played by a load of cheating wealthy people who have fixed the outcome? It's a very big nasty game full of nasty people.

Come on Rebakah spill..... what do you have 'on' Cameron?

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