My understanding of the UK election system is that while you're technically voting for an individual, you're really voting for the party.
It's an uneasy mixture of both, really, but skewed towards the party thing, especially as the prime minister is (essentially) voted in by Parliament rather than from a separate popular vote. So even if your favoured party's local candidate is a bit of a doofus, you pretty much have to vote for him or her if you want your party to form the government. (And because there's no such thing as primaries in the UK -- only paid-up party members get to participate in selecting candidates -- it's not your own fault if your local candidate is a doofus.)
Virtually no one votes with their party 100% of the time.
Just for completeness I should add that not quite all votes in Parliament are the subject of a whip. Ones that aren't are called "free votes", and the convention is that Parliament is given a free vote on "issues of conscience", or in other words moral or ethical issues that don't necessarily divide on party lines: abortion, the death penalty, that sort of thing.
Peter
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