[Gayle]

I hope so for the sake of common sense.

There is such thing as a whip and there are ocassions where Councillors are instructed by the whip as to which way they should vote. The situation there is that you can either vote against (and be in a whole heap of trouble with your party), vote for or abstain. As I'm not a Councillor (yet) I don't know how this works in practice.