In our latest ‘Whipping Yarn’, we talk with Simon Hart, former Conservative Chief Whip during Rishi Sunak’s Premiership. Hart opens up about his time in one of Westminster’s most demanding and discreet roles, chronicled in his new book, ‘Ungovernable: The Political Diaries of a Chief Whip’.
From late night phone calls about MPs stuck in compromising situations to managing high-stakes parliamentary votes, Hart gives a candid account of navigating one of the most turbulent chapters in British politics. He lifts the lid on the daily challenges of keeping a restless party in line while balancing scandals, shifting alliances, and the relentless demands of government business.
Hart also takes us behind the scenes of the Whips’ Office – a place often shrouded in secrecy. Beyond the headlines and power plays, he gives us a rare glimpse into the day-to-day work of the Whips – part disciplinarian, part therapist – shedding light on their lesser-known pastoral and administrative responsibilities, from safeguarding MPs’ well-being to orchestrating the daily rhythms of Parliament.
Reflecting on his time in office, Hart shares insights into what makes a good MP and why so many arrive in Westminster unprepared for the job and the reality of life as a parliamentarian or minister. He argues that political parties must do more to identify and nurture talent early, to raise the standard of future leadership across the board.
Simon Hart
The Rt Hon Simon Hart was the Conservative MP for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire from 2010 until 2024. His ministerial career began under Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who appointed him Parliamentary Secretary for the Cabinet Office in July 2019. Just three months later, he was promoted to Secretary of State for Wales, a role he held until his resignation in July 2022 during a wave of criticism surrounding Johnson's leadership. Hart returned to government in October 2022 under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, taking on the influential role of Chief Whip (Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury). Before entering Parliament, he worked as a chartered surveyor and served in the Territorial Army. He was also a member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life from 2017 to 2019.
Ungovernable: The Political Diaries of a Chief Whip by Simon Hart
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Ruth Fox: Welcome to Parliament Matters, Whipping Yarns, our series peering into the hidden world of Westminster's Whips. I'm Ruth Fox.
Mark D'Arcy: And I'm Mark D'Arcy. And in this edition we talk to Simon Hart, the Chief Whip in Rishi Sunak's tortured government. His book Ungovernable, the Political Diaries of Chief Whip, is a tell all memoir by the head of a profession that's supposed to stay permanently silent. When we talked over, it must be admitted, a less than ideal internet connection, I began by asking him if he'd broken the whip's code of omerta. Their code of silence.
Simon Hart: I don't regret it. I think it's unquestionably going to be uncomfortable reading in some respects, but the more I reflected on the last few years, the more I'd [00:01:00] come to the conclusion that there was this sort of narrative creeping in, which was that the only reason we lost the 2024 election was because we chose July rather than October or November. And if only we hadn't done that, then everything would've turned out. Well, the reality is that is just fundamentally wrong and we lost in 2024 partly because we've been in 15 years or nearly 15 years, and that's a long stretch for any government. But our reputation for integrity got done over towards the end of Boris' regime. Whether we think that is warranted or not, it is unquestionably the case. And our reputation for economic competence got done over during Liz's short term in office. Again, we can have an argument about whether that's a legitimate charge, but it is nonetheless charged. So we suddenly found ourselves slipping to 20 points behind Labour, our nearest competitor, in the second week, I think, of Liz's regime and we never recovered. We never went up. We [00:02:00] never went down. The nation had just taken a collective view that the joke had worn a bit thin, and that we were no longer the party that they wanted to be running the country. We have to ask ourselves, if we're serious about not letting that happen again, we have to ask ourselves what were the root causes of that?
And so, that's what I've attempted to do. Yeah, it's a bit colourful in parts. I accept that, but it does demonstrate that we were contesting very strong headwinds coming out of all quarters. I tried to be careful about how to demonstrate the variety and ferocity and frequency of the winds that we were contesting and just to do my little bit in reminding people that Rishi Sunak was a very decent man trying to do a decent job, but it was bloody difficult.
Mark D'Arcy: I mean, there are people who will now say that no future conservative MP who's trapped in a brothel being extorted will feel able to phone a chief whip because he is in trouble.
Simon Hart: Maybe that's true. Maybe they might think twice about going to the brothel in the first place. You know, the Whips office is not the [00:03:00] department of covering up. I think this is exactly the problem. I think there was this sort of belief that somehow it didn't matter what went on, the whips were there to sweep up the mess, bury the damage somehow, and never speak of it again.
Well, that's all very well. But the problem is that that doesn't exactly force us into examining actually other ways we can adjust the modus operandi of Parliament, the way in which we select our candidates, the way in which we help and mentor and support MPs and ministers in a way that actually ends up in them not being.
In these difficult positions, and I feel really strongly about that. You know, the, the reason we lost the 2024 election was because the public got bored of the psychodrama. And it might have been a sex scandal, a financial scandal, a probity scandal, or it might actually, I attach just as much significance in some respects of, of failure being attributed to the fact that there were defections going on. There were threatened defections. There were at least at one stage, I think there were, formal [00:04:00] alternative leadership campaigns going on. You cannot run a political party, expect to be taken seriously by the public, if that is what is happening. And so back to your original question Mark, have I, you know, breached an ancient code. To some extent there was this belief that Chief Whips don't write books, but that is to sort of suggest well we just carry on as normal forever, and big deal.
I think we were past that change. We were reduced from 353 to 123. And that was not because we went for July rather than Autumn for the election. It is much more deep seated.
Ruth Fox: Explore that question then Simon, about who is being selected as candidates. It's a problem not just for the Conservative Party. We've seen it in other parties as well. And you highlight in the book that you came to realize a system of candidate selection, training and mentoring was flawed and at the root of all the problems.
And that was one of the key things I took from reading it. So what should be done differently? Because the huge sense of entitlement that some of this cast of [00:05:00] Conservative MP characters in the book. We don't know their identity, but you know, there's, there's quite a lot of them. They seem to have just a huge sense of entitlement and as you say, expect you to come along and clean up the mess.
Simon Hart: I think you're right that none of this is unique to the Conservative Party.
Ruth Fox: Yeah.
Simon Hart: We've seen the first few months of the new Labour administration, them have to contend with all sorts of unforeseeable and difficult issues around some of their new MPs. So this is not all about us, it's a, it's a problem.
One of the reasons I think it's a problem is that when we select candidates, this is my, this is my personal view, I'm not sure we ask the question often enough or loud enough, or scrutinise the question, which is what makes a good MP? And for that matter, a good minister. A lot of these people will end up in charge of huge departments with multi thousands of people and multi-billion pound budgets.
So we have to think that career progression point as well. And one of the answers I give to that question is we shouldn't be asking just about your [00:06:00] policy expertise or your experience in your previous job. Actually, for politics to work, there has to be the ability to deal with disappointment, to deal with frustration.
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