If Andy Burnham has been accused of being a people pleaser by his critics, the same most certainly cannot be said of his chief whip.
“I’m not going to take any shit and I don’t fuck about,” said Anneliese Midgley, the Labour government’s newest head of party discipline, shedding some light on her direct approach to keeping MPs in line.
Midgley, the MP for Knowsley, who is one of the prime minister’s closest friends in government, has surprised some Labour MPs with her strikingly “frank yet glam” interview in Vogue in which she said she was determined to win. She also highlighted her unlikely journey from a deprived Liverpool housing estate via the arts world to the heart of government.
But it was her honesty in regards to being tough that caught attention from her Labour colleagues who hoped Burnham’s reign would be marked by an end to Keir Starmer’s strict party management style.
Burnham wrote to MPs back in July: “I want to create a different culture where MPs are happy and fulfilled doing their jobs, where everyone has a part to play and where opinions and approaches are respected, even where there’s difference … the whips’ office should be our HR department, not something to be feared or where discipline is used to stifle debate.”
At the time many Labour MPs, particularly those on the party’s left wing, breathed a sigh of relief – until he appointed Midgley as his chief whip, with some even going as far as saying they would be in “her bad books” because “I’m not one of her buddies she hangs and drinks with on the parliamentary terrace”.
Midgley, who worked as Jeremy Corbyn’s deputy chief of staff and Starmer’s senior special adviser, criticised the former prime minister’s approach to managing the parliamentary Labour party (PLP) and praised Burnham’s approach – a man she said she “would run through the walls for”.
On party discipline, Midgley said: “These are grown-ups who should be treated with absolute respect, who’ve got a wealth of ideas and advice – not just treated as a number to go through a voting lobby.”
When challenged on whether she thought Starmer had treated MPs “as a number”, the chief whip replied: “Yeah, I do think that.”
Despite her celebration of Burnham’s collegiate approach, Midgley told the magazine: “I’m very determined. If there’s things I want to do, I will do them. Basically, I will win,” she said, laughing, according to the magazine.
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“Obviously, I said all of that stuff before about team-building, and that’s absolutely right. But like, I’m not going to take any shit and I don’t fuck about. Do you know what I mean?”
One MP described the interview as striking, not just because chief whips usually keep their heads down and far away from the spotlight, but because Midgley managed to articulate herself as an MP bringing a new era into the “dark arts” of “chief whipping”, being one that has artistic taste, fashion sense and the determination to rise from child poverty to being an influential minister.
The interview appeared to mark another way in which Burnham’s government was attempting to start a new phase in Labour politics, or simply making itself appear more human, while “scaring the shit out of the PLP”, according to one senior Labour MP.
