The letters are mounting up and colleagues are on manoeuvres. So what better way for Boris Johnson to heal the tensions within his divided parliamentary party than by hosting a jolly-old away day? For this morning all Tory MPs have been invited by their Chief Whip Mark Spencer to attend such a gathering in Blackpool next month.
It will be held the day before, and the morning of, spring conference in the seaside town and comes after a planned away day in the West Midland last month was cancelled due to the Omicron variant. Details of the Blackpool bash are yet to emerge but according to Spencer, it will be: ‘An opportunity for us to exchange views and discuss party and political matters together.’ Well, that’s one way of putting it…
Given the tensions of the past few weeks, the occasion could make for some strange bedfellows. Steerpike wonders if Johnson will be sat in a circle with his disgruntled backbenchers, tossing back an ‘ideas ball’ as depicted in BBC satire The Thick Of It. Spencer himself might enjoy having some more time with backbencher Nus Ghani, after she last week accused him of raising her ‘Muslimness’ as an issue when he, er, sacked her in February 2020.
Such jollies were a staple feature of the late 1990s and 2000s but one has not been held since David Cameron was in charge. Insiders hope the experience will bond a fractured party, with a virtual parliament denying many younger MPs the chance to get to know their older colleagues. On one such exercise during Iain Duncan Smith’s troubles leadership almost a quarter of backbenchers stayed away – a portent of his downfall which was to come a few months later.
How many will turn up this time?
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