theredbladder

IF THERE is one thing that the ordinary Conservative backbencher enjoys above all others it’s getting into a bit of a spat with his, or her, colleagues.
It might well be full-blown dong-dong like those we saw over Europe a few years ago or it might be a minor affair such a tiff in the tearoom over who has got the cleanest moat, should lady’s slippers be called mules or will the Eton Wall Game be declared and Olympic sport but they do like a bit of a Barney amongst themselves.
So no more than a week in office and having only just got used to the feel of the carpet of the chamber under their feet and they’re at it all ready.
This time it is all about exactly who can attend meetings of the 1922 Committee.
Throughout recorded history, across the near-countless decades of parliamentary chronicles and since the days before the invention of the mobile telephone - in fact since, strangely enough, 1922 the committee had been the sole preserve of the rank and file foot soldiers of the Tory Party’s Westminster cohort during their spells in government.
Now the lad Cameron wants to change all that and insists that the prefects be allowed into meetings of the fourth form common room.
Some of the old sweats, members who have got their knees brown and their numbers dry, are a bit miffed about this, seemingly, heavy-handed approach and have told him, in the politest possible terms, to sling his hook.
Not a job for the United Nations or even ACAS; in fact more of a storm in a glass of halfway decent Port but a row for all that. Something is brewing and there is more discontent bubbling away just below the surface.
Before long plotters will be meetings, coded messages will be being sent and knives will be sharpened. So what’s behind it all? What is the row really about? Backbench power, or lack of it, probably, but time will tell. It will come out in the wash and be soon forgotten, these things always are. But it didn’t take them long to get started at each other, did it?