Conservatives in crisis: where whipping stops and blackmail begins
Whips are key players in Westminster. They act as a two-way channel of communication between the party leadership and backbench MPs, feeding information from the leadership to MPs and vice versa. If the leadership wants MPs to vote a certain way, it's the job of the whips to make sure that MPs do just that. But, equally, if MPs have concerns about a policy position, it is the job of the whips to feed that back to the p