Is it worth the trouble?

People I know and like have told me that I was wasting my time on the 1922 Committee. Who really cares, said they, on the shenanigans within the party formerly known as Conservative? Nobody, of course, except the ever decreasing number of members. However, the structure of British politics, hollowed out by various agents, including the EU, is of importance. One day we shall want to use it again. Building from scratch is never easy as a number of post-Communist states have demonstrated.

On a far more important level, I have been following, together with his many supporters, Cranmer's battle with the ASA. Any reader who is unaware of the ASA's outrageous and dishonest behaviour and of His Grace's capable fight with them, ought to spend a little time catching up.

In his most recent posting Cranmer wrote:

It is a question of impartiality, which matters profoundly in political processes where force and influence compete with manipulation and facts: if an organisation with quasi-judicial authority professes to be objective in its investigations, then its senior staff and officers must not only be impartial, they must also be seen to be impartial. There cannot be even the merest hint of a political agenda subverting that professed neutrality or corrupting the overriding commitment to fairness and justice.

He then goes on to detail why the Chairman of the ASA, Lord Smith of Finsbury, formerly known as Chris Smith MP and Culture Minister, cannot be said to be impartial or objective.

Cranmer is absolutely right. These things are of importance. Some of the discussion on the blog is interesting though, I note the presence, comme d'habitude, of a ninny who advises the blog author to get over it and start writing about something else. He gets short shrift from the others, I am glad to say.

So, for the last time I hope, here is a little more about the 1922 Committee. The "modernisers" by which one means the people who ensured that the Conservatives did not manage to win against the least popular government in living memory, are rejoicing. Graham Brady, the Chairman, is calling on everyone to unite and stop the infighting, which would indicate that things are truly bad and the Committee's meetings may well start resembling those of Tower Hamlets Council.

Modernisers hope the group, which has traditionally acted as a “safety valve” for the party, will now form greater links with Tory HQ and its volunteers around the country.

They also hope meetings can be moved from Wednesday to Monday so MPs can unite around key events in the Parliamentary week, and want the 1922 to become an “umbrella” for other policy groups right across the party.

New executive member George Hollingbery said the election had shown an “appetite for change” but stressed the new MPs wanted to work with colleagues on the changes.

“This stuff will all take time, none of this will happen overnight,” he told the Standard. “The ’22 has been here a lot longer than I have and will be here for a long time after I’ve gone.”

So the plan is to use the Committee, which is supposed to be the voice of the backbenchers separate and, sometimes, against the leadership, to establish complete control of the Parliamentary party and local associations by the leadership. Time for a 2012 Committee, perhaps? After all, the 1922 was created at a time of a creaking coalition.

Not all is smooth sailing, though. It seems that the Treasurer of the "influential 1922 backbench committee" has criticized William Hague for "criticizing British firms", which is hardly the Foreign Secretary's job and neither is addressing the CBI Conference. Instead, Mr Binley thinks, Mr Hague should be doing more to free British business from EU red tape, though he does not actually explain how that can be done. Clearly, the intelligence level of the new Executive Committee is not spectacularly high.

A thought comes to one: does this mean that Conservative MPs will be allowed to attack Mr Hague to show their supposed independence of the leadership?

How fares the 1922 Committee?

Two weeks ago this blog mentioned that David Cameron and the Whips were once again trying to undermine the 1922 Committee, this time by putting up a slate of candidates for the Executive Committee from the 301 group, all people who can be relied upon not to rock the boat too much (and that goes for the much-lauded but ever so cautious Ms Pritti Patel).

Since then I have been told by a veteran Tory MP that while this was undoubtedly a plot by the Whips it was not going to go anywhere as long as the Cameroonie loyalists did not get any of the important positions. To be fair, Graham Brady remains Chairman and John Whittingdale, one of the Vice-Chairmen.

Well, we have had the election. Who won, who lost and what will it mean for the parliamentary party, formerly known as Conservative? Reports are somewhat mixed. The Guardian, who, as readers will recall, broke the story of the slate, thus managing to annoy a lot of Tory MPs, says that it was win some, lose some for Cameron.

Supporters and opponents of David Cameron achieved a score draw in elections to the executive of the 1922 committee on Wednesday, which were seen as a test of Tory backbench mood amid fears that Downing Street is losing its touch.

A bold move by loyalists to achieve "seismic change" in the elections, by removing "bloody rude" members of the old guard, achieved partial success when some critics of the prime minister were unseated. But the modernisers on the 301 Group, who had published a slate of candidates that was handed out to MPs as they voted on Wednesday afternoon, also suffered some setbacks.

The main battle for the two coveted secretary posts on the executive of the 1922 executive resulted in a draw. Karen Bradley, who was on the 301 Group slate, won a post. But Charlie Elphicke, a Cameron loyalist, failed in his bid to take the other.

That post went to Nick de Bois, a popular figure with all wings of the party who was not on the 301 Group slate. But the Thatcherite Chris Chope, who had been strongly supported by the traditional right, was unseated.

And so it goes: Bernard Jenkin survived, Peter Bone did not; some MPs got in with the support of the 301, some like Robert Halfon, part-time rebel, without it and Ms Patel managing to get the support both of the Cameroonie loyalists and of his opponents.

James Forsyth in the Spectator thinks that 301 Group have managed to purge the 1922 Committee, though he acknowledges that Bernard Jenkin and Nick de Bois (the non-slate candidate who got one of the secretarial positions) managed to win because of personal popularity and despite not being part of the slate. There is no mention of Robert Halfon.

Curiously enough, Mr Forsyth thinks this makes the 1922 Committee more powerful because it now definitely represents the parliamentary party as a whole. The fact that the Executive is now full of Cameron loyalists who stood specifically to ensure that the Committee, from now on, toed the line, seems to him unimportant.

Paul Goodman on ConHome is clear: it is a victory for the 301 Committee. He sees it as a change of generations, though he does mention that undoubtedly glasses are being raised in Downing Street and the Treasury. Their boys and girls have won and will ensure that there will be no undue opposition to the leadership that the backbenchers will not have an organization through which they can express their discontents.

Incidentally, it is interesting to note that the definition of a rebel is now someone who voted for that benighted and pointless EU referendum. As this blog and EURef noted at the time, the referendum is a means of fudging the issue. Vote for it and you are a "rebel" though it is meaningless. The fact that most of those MPs, including the fragrant Ms Patel have never put their heads over the parapet on any issue that matters, becomes irrelevant.

The commenters on ConHome who ask whether there really is nothing more important going on in Britain fail to see the point. As far as the Boy-King and his camarilla are concerned the most important matter is controlling everything they can: party, Commons, backbench committees and, soon, the Lords. Nothing else matters to them.

Going after the 1922 Committee again

Readers of this blog will recall that very soon after the General Election of May 2010, the Boy-King who did eventually become the Prime Minister, leading a Coalition government nobody had voted for, showed that one of the most important things on his agenda was an attempt to exert control over the backbenchers' organization, the 1922 Committee. (Here, here and here.)

He lost that battle so now he and his minions have decided to undermine it, using other methods. Claiming that it is nothing but a grumbling post and a completely ineffective one at that, the "modernising 301 Group will be running a slate in an attempt to oust the Tory old guard". The Cameroonie hacks have been primed.

Among them is a youthful hackette, hitherto unknown to me, called Donata Huggins who "writes about politics and life in the Westminster village" in the Daily Torygraph and does so very badly.

In her article on the subject of the 1922 Committee and the attempt to subvert it, she commits the cardinal sin of telling her readers that this is a story because the Guardian is reporting it. Does she not know the scuttlebutt herself?

She then adds in her easily imitable way:

The Committee is currently run by a group of mostly cantankerous old farts who do little to further Right-wing ideas in Britain. Just last week they stirred up a fight with the Government on Lords reform. Just imagine if that brought down the Coalition? Not unemployment or economic growth: the things that matter to their constituents, but reform of a place many see as a retirement home for politicians. The Conservatives shouldn't allow Ed Miliband's repetition of "out of touch Tories" to ring true.

And ends the article with the words that fall somewhat short of Wildean with or Bagehot-like profundity:

Put simply, Right-wingers need to chill out and realise that they'll be more effective if they act like they're all in it together.

This, gentle readers, is the standard of the modern Daily Torygraph.

Other media outlets also reported the proposed coup. The Spectator, another Cameroonie rag thought that it was a fuss about not much at all. According to James Forsyth, who is also anxious to show that this is all about modernisation,

Also included on the list are two Cornish MPs, George Eustice and Sheryll Murray, who tried to block the so-called pasty tax. The intention is to show that while the slate is broadly supportive of the leadership and wants a Tory majority at the next election it is made up of people who will tell the Prime Minister when they think he is wrong.

If this slate succeeds, and I expect it will given both its voting weight in the party and its relatively modest aims, it will remove those who have used their position on the ’22 to campaign against the leadership. But the far harder challenge for it will be, as Tim Montgomerie says, to give the ’22 more of a campaigning focus.

One other thing worth noting is that these elections will vastly increase the standing of the ’22. The fact that the new intake are competing so vigorously for posts on it means that the likes of Louise Mensch can no longer dismiss it as an outdated body that does not speak for them.

Whether a 1922 Committee that is entirely in the pocket of the leadership and whose members will be allowed to show phony dissidence by opposing some unimportant measure while certain subjects like the European Union will be off the agenda, will really increase its standing is very doubtful.

Tim Montgomerie is cautiously in favour and thinks this is an attempt to rebalance the Committee in favour of the 2010 intake, which would, in his opinion, push aside a great deal of parliamentary experience. That may well be the aim of the exercise. Get the younger and less experienced lot in and it will be easier to control them. They might not stand up against bullying the way the Committee stood up to it in 2010. It is also useful to add that, despite all the predictions, the 2010 intake is extremely loyal to the leadership and will not do much against it.

Craig Woodhouse in the Evening Standard writes in that vein as well:

The new generation of Tory MPs was accused of being “government patsies” today as they launched a bid to revolutionise the party’s key backbench committee.

A group of broadly pro-leadership MPs took the unusual step of announcing a slate of candidates — mainly from the 2010 intake — they want to succeed in next month’s internal elections to the 1922 Committee.

The reason this election is happening, incidentally, is that next week will see the long-delayed opening of the new session of Parliament with the Queen's Speech on Wednesday, May 9. Though what exactly the extra-long session has achieved remains a mystery.