Did Tory whips blackmail Red Wall MPs?

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

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🗓️ 20 January 2022

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

As the Prime Minister has a stay of execution after the pork pie plot came to nothing, today allegations are flying that Tory whips have been using unsavoury methods to threaten wavering MPs into line. Christian Wakeford, the newly defected Labour MP to Bury South, says that whips threatened to withdraw funding from a local school; while William Wragg claims that MPs have been blackmailed with information about their private lives. But how much of this is true, and how much, as some in SW1 are saying today, is this just a part of being a whip?

On the podcast, James Forsyth points out how some of this comes down to 'the fact that some of the new intake of Tory MPs have been quite shocked at how aggressive the "flush-out" tactics have been', when it comes to using newspaper headlines to publicly name rebels (for example the pork pie-ers earlier this week). Meanwhile, Katy Balls tells Isabel Hardman that this will be a troubling development if more revelations come up: 'Any piece of news that can fit into the general narrative of Boris under pressure on party-gate and... give it a fresh lease of life, is a problem'.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Spectator magazine combines incisive political analysis with books and arts reviews of unrivaled authority. Absolutely free. Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher.
0:24.6	Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shop, Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast.
0:29.3	I'm Isaba Harman and I'm joined by James Forsyth and Katie Balls.
0:33.1	Well, the big story in Westminster today is allegations by the public administration select committee
0:39.2	chair, William Ragg, that MPs have in effect been blackmailed. James, please explain to us
0:47.1	what is allegedly going on. So Will Rag at the beginning of his select committee hearing today
0:54.0	and it's worth noting that
0:55.1	Will Rag is one of the MPs who has sent in a, it's publicly said that he has sent in a letter
1:00.7	calling for Boris Johnson to go, said that those people who were considering having no
1:05.1	confidence in the Prime Minister were being threatened with a variety of things, including
1:09.6	kind of revelations about their life and
1:11.8	their private life and their behaviour and, you know, the threat of withdrawal of funding for
1:17.6	projects in their constituency. Now, I think there are two different reactions to this.
1:24.4	One is a kind of Westminster reaction of, well, that's what WIPP's offices do. They are the kind of
1:31.1	sewers of Westminster and it's not a particularly attractive site. The second is, well, maybe this is
1:37.7	another kind of expensive style scandal. There's something that everyone in Westminster knows goes on and we
1:43.1	don't get shocked by it because
1:44.5	we're kind of aware of it but when the general public come to hear of it they are appalled now
1:50.0	I think what is interesting here is Christian Wakeford the Tory MP who defected to the Labour Party
1:54.6	yesterday had said that he was threatened with not getting a high school if he didn't vote
2:00.1	with the government on a certain
2:01.7	on in his constituency on a certain measure now i think because christian wakeford has just left
	...

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