The appointment of Remain-leaning Mark Spencer to Chief Whip in Boris Johnson’s incoming government has excited Conservative MPs from across the benches. Many will be wondering who else will be chosen to join what could be a broader coalition than had been expected.
Perhaps though they should show some caution. Speaking on The Spectator’s Women with Balls, former minister Tracey Crouch MP revealed that when No. 10 staff tried to inform her of her promotion to Under-Secretary of State for Sport in 2015:
‘I actually thought it was a joke! So I genuinely didn’t believe that they were trying to contact me and then I was reassured by an insider that I really was on a list, and by the time they’d got through to me I was already back in Kent, so I couldn’t do the totty walk down Downing Street…’
She clarified:
‘There are many cruel colleagues – and I may or may not have been in that category once upon a time, where we would ring overly ambitious parliamentarians pretending to be Downing Street.
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