The whole male-dominated culture needs to shift and the whip system needs scrutiny. Whips are vicious and use the drinking culture and knowledge of MPs sexual incontinence to keep them in line.
Andrew Mitchell, a former chief whip, in his recent memoir Beyond a Fringe discloses not only that Tory whips had a notebook containing all sorts of indiscretions, but that this was as a matter of course sent to John Major, the prime minister – and a former whip himself.
In a 1995 BBC documentary, Westminster’s Secret Service, Tim Fortescue, a whip under Ted Heath between 1970 and 1973, explained: “Anyone with any sense who was in trouble would come to the whips and tell them the truth, and say now, I’m in a jam, can you help? It might be debt, it might be … a scandal involving small boys, or any kind of scandal.
“And we would do everything we can because we would store up brownie points … and if I mean, that sounds a pretty, pretty nasty reason, but it’s one of the reasons because if we could get a chap out of trouble then he will do as we ask forever more.”
www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/21/the-discreet-art-of-whipping-what-are-the-limits-for-parliaments-enforcers