The Ideas Universe
The whip is a fox-hunting job
No. 5
The whip was never official
The run so far
More on Statecraft
- A mandate is a real thingBritain has its fifth prime minister in four years, and for the third time in that run the job changed hands without a general election. The constitution says that is fine. The constitution is answering a question nobody asked.
- Nobody's FaultReviews are announced, lessons are learned, inquiries report - and no one is ever answerable. That is not complexity's accident. It is the architecture, and it is working as designed.
- The Shared InstitutionA country cannot assume the trust between strangers that lets it function. It has to be built, in places where people who would otherwise never meet are made to rely on each other - and Britain has quietly let most of those places close.