This is the man who made the right call on Tuesday on the Religious Hatred Bill. In his first eight weeks as Chief Whip, he's developed a fearsome reputation, defeated the government twice and made clear to Tory MPs that he will do the job in the traditional way - gone are the eccentricities of the Maclean era. It's back to basics in the Whips Office. And a good thing too.
8 comments:
Does Mcloughlin decide how Tory MPs vote? I don't think so!
Our hero is Hilary Armstrong for allowing those Labour MPs go off to Dunfermline.
Your post must part of your A-list campaign. Another OBN!
Hi Iain. For those not quite as familiar with Conservative whips as you, please could you explain/elaborate upon the following comments:-
i) How McLoughlin "made the right call". I thought it was his opposite number who played the crucial role in the vote going against the government.
ii) what does it mean to do the job "in the traditional way" and what were "the eccentricities of the Maclean era"?
Anonymous, er, yes he does. He decides whether it should be a 2 line or 3 line whip. By making it a 2 kine whip he lulled Labour into a false sense of security. If he had made it a 3 line whip Hilary would have hauled them all back from Dunfermline.
I don't do OBN. And I don't have an A List campaign. Clear?!
JT, see above for the answer to your first point. On your second, David Maclean seemed to spend half his time campaigning in by elections, and taking busloads of MPs with him. Fat lot of good it did!
In defence of David Maclean, he took over his seat by a majority of just 700+ in a 1983 by election and has built it up to the second (I think) safest Tory seat (majority 12,000). He has done this through hard work, esp. during the Foot & Mouth outbreak. In Carlisle (which is not in his seat), some people turned to him when they were flooded out because they felt they had no response from their local MP. Mr Maclean was in a Shadow Cabinet meeting but phoned them back in half an hour to help. He held down his Whip post whilst suffering from MS and has never to my knowledge used this as an excuse. It would have been very easy to have not gone to these three by-elections, after all they were not in marginal seats, but did so and made the MP's come up to help in order to motivate more party members to help out. He is active in Penrith nearly every weekend and this has resulted in Penrith & the Border remaining Tory whilst neighbouring Westmorland & Lonsdale fell to the Lib dems (having been a more safer Tory seat at one time).
I believe some candidates who struggle to overturn small Libdem majorities or who help fail to get their man in to a top job might take a leaf out of his book such matters.
Patrick is my home MP, and I am extremely proud of his role in the Hatred Bill. He has even impressed my usually 'all politicians are cretins' inclined Grandad, no mean feat!
Patrick is my MP so I'm biased, but yes, he's a top man!
PS I don't do OBN either. And I certainly don't have an A-list campaign!
to be accurate on maclean's majority, the seat was very safe tory at the 1983 general election. 58.8% Tory vote. At the by-election he came within an inch of losing, as is common in by-elections when the seat was held by the governing party.
So it was always a very safe seat, except at the byelection. He didn't really build up a majority...
Although he did do quite well in 1997, with a small swing against him, and he did do much better than Collins in westmorland & lonsdale, who had an extremely similar seat.
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