Will the Whips keep control?

menacing backbenchers. That could not come at a worse time for the embattled Mrs May, who is struggling to control her party in a hung parliament.

She is reluctant to use prime ministerial patronage such as handing out government jobs and peerages and her office has been robbed of the power to trigger general elections by the Fixed Term Parliament Act. The traditional methods of enforcing party discipline are disappearing with nothing to put in their place.

Today’s whips frequently insist that their reputations as scheming bullies are largely based on myth. They say that much of their job is taken up with easing frayed consciences and massaging battered egos. Their role is also to keep the Government in touch with the feelings on the backbenches.

Both Mr Smith and Ms McVey appear well suited to their new roles. The new chief has risen through the ranks of the Tory whips and is known as a consensual and not overbearing figure. His deputy, returning to the Government after a spell out of the Commons, is a popular and gregarious MP with ministerial experience who is tipped for high office.

Yet their talents for gentle persuasion are bound to be tested to the full in the current febrile parliament where the sex abuse scandal is having a corrosive effect on allegiances in all parties. Mrs May desperately needs a whipping operation that can find new ways of regaining control.

As the Commons goes through another period of traumatic change forced by public scandal, the Prime Minister is running out of resources to keep her increasingly fracturing parliamentary party in line.