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They’re complaining about what?

A minister has claimed that Sir Gavin Williamson raised details about her private life during a conversation in an attempt to silence her while she was on the back benches.

The Tory MP, who told the Conservative Party at the weekend that she was willing to discuss the matter, said that Williamson had called her into his office when he was chief whip in 2016.

At the time she was campaigning on an issue that was causing the government difficulty. During the meeting Williamson is said to have raised a sensitive issue about her private life, which she interpreted as a tacit threat.

But that’s what the whips do. That’s their purpose and function.

Use anything – and everything – to get the damned MPs to vote the way the government wants. To complain about this is to miss the poit entirely – as badly as wondering why you’ve got to stand for election, that badly.

11 thoughts on “They’re complaining about what?”

  1. Exactly so. When I studied politics at Uni, this sort of thing – and worse – was referred to as being a completely acceptable aspect of political party discipline. We have raised a generation who are obsessed with gaining power, but who can’t bear to look at it.

  2. It’s rather unsporting of the governing party to help you get elected under its banner, only to expect you to reciprocate by supporting the government in key votes.

    Shame on them!

  3. “We have raised a generation who are obsessed with gaining power, but who can’t bear to look at it.”

    The Last Psychiatrist wrote a thing about some TV show where women were talking about how many more women there were in Congress, and how it showed the shift of power away from government, because the men were leaving. So work out where the men were going, because that’s where the power is now.

    And women really love projecting power, more than actually wielding power. Their dream is a top sounding job title, a nice office with a PA who brings them coffee, fancy business cards and being able to arrange meetings and wearing some power clothes. Beyond that, they don’t really care about much beyond keeping things ticking over as they were and things not getting uncomfortable. Number of female CEOs who have ever radically shifted a company? I’ll give Kate Swann at WH Smith some credit, but most of them just manage declining businesses down to their eventual death.

    And as far the men are concerned, how many are shaggers, which is a proxy for being powerful? Not as many as there once were.

  4. And as far the men are concerned, how many are shaggers, which is a proxy for being powerful? Not as many as there once were.

    New, unhappy lords.

    Does Bill Gates look happy? I think he looks like Kermit the Frog caught leprosy and his ideas are weird and off-putting. Bring back classic shaggers such as Charles II.

  5. BoM4

    Funnily in IT that had been exactly my experience, but also the number of senior managers in general who understood what their own businesss did declined dramatically in the 90s & 2000s.

    Carly Fiorino at HP springs to mind.

  6. the only point of becoming a back bench MP is to get on the gravy train that is the life of a retired MP. Walking through the designated lobby is surely a small price to pay!

  7. But isn’t this the role of whips, to maintain party discipline and keep MP’s out of the new for the wrong reasons?

    “And women really love projecting power, more than actually wielding power. Their dream is a top sounding job title, a nice office with a PA who brings them coffee, fancy business cards and being able to arrange meetings and wearing some power clothes.”

    For some who I’ve met, yes. Work for the title and not really the role.

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