Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a podcast from Politics Home with me Alan Tullhurst.

This week, looking at the so-called dark arts of politics, inside the system known as whipping,

where MPs are corralled by fair means or foul into voting with their party leadership in Parliament.

But in the modern era, have things moved on from the threats of punishment to more pastoral care, and have the days the Little Black Book, filled with politicians' misdeeds, ready to be used against them, as made famous by Francis Urquhart, the fictional chief whip in the classic TV show House of Cards, been banished to a bygone era, or the whip still holds sway over their flock.. We'll be to discuss all that, and also the changes made by Kirstarmer to his own whipping operation

last week in the reshuffle, and delighted to be joined by Seb Whale, journalist and author of a new book,

The Usual Channels, which unpicks the mysterious world of political whips, as well as Lord Mark Harper, the Conservative peer and former cabinet minister,

who served as Chief Whip in the Commons on a David Cameron's premiership.

So I'm going to start with the name, first of the book, the usual channels.

How did you come up with that and what was it kind of referred to?

And why you kind of so interested in this particular part of politics itself?

Well, I think if you tell any journalist that there's this group that

really runs the show, but they operate in secret, and they have these routines and practices,

which are quite eccentric by nature. You know, it's like bait, isn't it really? In terms of the

usual channels, it's a byword really for the discussions that take place behind the scenes,

including the whips. But it's also a byword

for a senior civil servant in the WIPPS office. And I wanted to include a title that embodied

all of it, because as the book explores, this person is also very important to the running

of Parliament. The WIPS have always intrigued journalists. It's intrigued writers. It's intrigued playwrights because it's one of the most exciting aspects of life in Parliament, I think.

Well, Mark, you became Chief Whipp in 2015. Did you kind of have a fascination with the idea of kind of whips? You hadn't worked in the WIP's office before you were made chief. You know, what was it kind of like once you stepped into it? Is it more prosaic than is kind of imagined in kind of fictional versions like most things in parliament? Or was it was everything you'd imagined? No, it's nothing like the versions that you get on TV, much, I'm afraid, much less interesting. Or certainly with some of the more salacious bits. Yeah, that's, best fix an ex-chief. If I just say, if I just say, one thing, if I just briefly, yeah, go for it. So on the usual channels and the people thing, of course, really important on how did civil servants work? And obviously, it was tragic news this year when we lost Sir Roy Stone. So when I became chief whip, almost the first person you see is your principal private secretary. And he has a very interesting role in government,

and he did it for 20 years, because they are both responsible for the government Whips Office

and the opposition Whips Office. And there's a sort of Chinese wall in between the two.

They make the machine work. So they kind of keep the, however,

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