Bollinger and blackmail – how whips crush rebellions

As a young serial backbench rebel, I once left an answerphone message for my whip which went something like this: “I’m sorry I’m not here to take your call but if you want my vote I would like a knighthood and to be Governor of Bermuda; if you have a better offer, leave it after the tone.”

I doubt that many of today’s rebels will be recording similar messages to the beleaguered whips who have the Sisyphean task of getting Mrs May’s Withdrawal Bill through Parliament next month, although it is rumoured that peerages and knighthoods are among the baubles being dangled in front of some Tory MPS.

Based on my experience as a government whip during the passage of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, bribes and threats rarely work. We had an infamous whip of substantial weight – in every sense – who would physically grab difficult male customers by the genitals, Trump style, but such an approach usually misfired.

Being a physical wimp, I tried to make rebel MPS feel sorry for me. My technique was to spray champagne and lavish lunches at troublemakers at the Reform Club – although, sadly, with only occasional success. I learnt this skill from my first whip, Sir Spencer le Marchant, a Tory grandee of immense wealth and stature, who despaired of my incessant rebellions.

He would wait for me to exit the wrong lobby and frogmarch me to the smoking room where a half-pint pewter mug of the finest Bollinger would be provided “to give you Dutch courage before you see the chief whip in 10 minutes”.

Later I came to realise that some of my own regular customers enjoyed their lunches at my expense so much that they threatened to rebel even when they had no intention of doing so.

The great Sir Nicholas Winterton once rewarded me with his vote in the right lobby when I told him that the Whips’ Office had a bet on that I could not secure his support. Proudly I told the chief whip that “Nick is on board” – only to be reminded that the bet involved getting both Sir Nicholas and Lady Winterton – also an independent minded Tory MP – in the same government lobby at the same time.

I did successfully turn on the waterworks to another demanding customer, the late, great battleaxe Dame Elaine Kellett-bowman, whom I adored because she terrified me in the manner of Lady Bracknell. Richard (now Lord) Ryder, the chief whip, suggested that I tell her I was in danger of being sacked because I was so useless at getting my flock to vote in the right lobby. A bouquet of roses also helped seal the deal.

There was, it was rumoured, a “black book” of MPS’ alleged transgressions and weaknesses, kept by the chief whip alone – although if it existed I never saw it. Indeed, if it did, it begs the question as to how, given my own track record of indiscretions, I made it into the Whips’ Office myself.

The rather prosaic reality is that the “we’ve got dirt on you which we’ll use to embarrass you if you don’t vote the right way” approach is never used and would be unlikely to work anyway, especially in this age of oversharing.

The only realistic tools available to quell rebellions are charm and reasoned persuasion. But persuasion is a two-way process, especially – note to Mrs May – when governments act unreasonably.