Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O’Flynn

The rampant egotism of Boris’s backbench MPs

(Photo: UK Parliament/Jessica Taylor)

The post-war Conservative statesman David Maxwell Fyfe once claimed that loyalty was the Tory secret weapon.

Like many of his ideas – he was also a notable advocate of European integration – this one did not stand the test of time. Indeed, it crashed and burned when he became one of the highest profile victims of Harold Macmillan’s ‘Night of the Long Knives’ reshuffle. Jeremy Thorpe wittily characterised that brutal event as showing that a Tory leader was willing ‘to lay down his friends for his life’.

These days the disloyalty primarily flows the other way in the Conservative party, with backbenchers increasingly viewing bids to topple the party leader as opportunities to improve their own profile and prospects.

Christian Wakeford led the way this week by actually crossing the floor of the House to become a colleague of Richard Burgon and Dawn Butler as he delivered condemnatory broadsides against Boris Johnson. But he was far from alone. The veteran David Davis had a dotage moment in the chamber by absurdly invoking Leo Amery’s war-time plea to Neville Chamberlain; ‘For God’s sake go’.

It won him some headlines so cheap that they would undercut a pound shop’s January sale. Yet the effect was not to lead to any feeling among colleagues that Davis had captured the mood of the House, but rather to expose the rampant egotism of those attempting to hasten Johnson’s demise.

In their haste to grab a share of the media action, some backbenchers are surely playing into Labour’s hands

The next day it was William Wragg who placed himself centre stage by claiming Tory whips were up to all kinds of nefarious things in their bid to prop up the PM and inviting colleagues to report them to Cressida Dick at the Metropolitan Police.

Then we also had the so-called ‘Pork Pie Plotters’ who went around briefing that 20 no confidence letters would be sent to 1922 Committee chairman Sir Graham Brady in one Big Bertha batch.

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