“Charles Moore has an important column”

Don’t – it’s too hot to roll about laughing. Charles Moore is an utter buffoon and the paper he writes for, (for which he writes, as I’m sure he’d insist on putting it), has been turned into the irrelevant rantings of a collection of people who’ve completely lost touch.

What anyone at the Spectator thinks about has just as little relevance to anything at all.

Charles Moore should go to prison for not paying his TV licence. And not be allowed to write while he’s there.

He organised a putsch: he turned up mob handed, with some of HMG payroll who weren’t entitled to vote, and they voted his changes – which include them having a vote while in government – through.

Try that in a golf or bridge club and no-one would ever forget.

John Redwood, referred to per 1995, knows that this is their last shot: or so I judge from this: –

http://www.johnredwoodsdiary.com/2010/05/22/the-1922-committee/

Hospitable cove, don’t recall him rejecting comments.

Doubt the same would be true of Major or Chameleon.

Charles Moore is an utter buffoon and the paper he writes for,

We might think that, but Tories still take him seriously.

Trouble for the tory right is that they are getting a reputation for being all mouth and no trousers.

When push came to shove with John Major they backed down. The tory Mps have already backed down on the issue of the 1922. They are little prep school boys who want a nanny to wipe their bottoms before they go out to play, acting tough for the cameras.

Sunder, Labour lost. Tory MPs might be less confident in Cameron than in Major, but the public has absolutely no confidence in David Miliband, who will be the next Labour leader. Get over it, and start coming up with some constructive ways to engage or oppose the government, rather than this tittle tattle.

“Tory MPs less confident in Cameron now than in John Major then”

C’mon. With due respect, entirely different issues were at stake.

In the 1995 Ballot on the Conservative leadership, the choice confronting Conservative MPs was between more John Major as PM or the Vulcan, John Redwood, and his “barmy army”. The amazing fact is that just over a quarter voted for the Vulcan.

The 1922 Committee has traditionally always been a forum for backbench Conservative MPs. Cameron’s proposals to change its constitution to allow Conservative ministers to attend its meetings alters the functions and the inherent chemistry of the 1922 Committee. The implication is that Cameron and his ministerial colleagues don’t trust their backbench colleagues to come to “sensible” conclusions in the absence of ministerial guidance. All things considered, that may be wise and prudent but it does not correspond with the choice at stake in the 1995 ballot on the party’s leadership.

You’re comparing two different questions. It is feasible that someone ‘has confidence’ (if such as nebulous concept can be defined) in David C, but doesn’t agree with his policy on the 1922 committee. Opposition to that is no indicator of a wider opinion, regardless of desperate attempts to make it so.

Cameron and Osborne are both bullying chancers. They like to think that their “project” copies the best from Blair & Brown’s one, survival & re-election being top priorities.

But some of the tories know exactly what they are, and its not just right wingers like Simon Heffer who have little but contempt for them.

Within a very few days they have confirmed many of the worst suspicions of perhaps a third of their party. Their stock of good will is running down, and 5 years is a very long time.

Major on the other hand became their leader because he was great at networking, and kept the right side of Mrs Thatcher before she went.

Cameron and Osborne breed enemies.

@8 Well then stop the rightwing foreplay and split off, if you’re so annoyed with Camborne. I’m sure UKIP would love to have you.

The late Tory MP Julian Critchley said of the 1922: “The first three MPs who speak at its meetings are, by definition, mad.” and this is reflected in many of the comments to Moore’s article which are barking and make quite amusing reading.

I have no doubt the Tory backbenchers will turn on Cameron one day.

This is not to claim that the two votes are not directly comparable in every respect.

Or, indeed, at all comparable in any respect. Although a rogue double negative has, I think, reversed your intended meaning.

This was not a leadership contest. I expect Cameron would do better if he were able to (under the old rules), challenge himself in a leadership contest as Major did.

Gee, you think? You think that backbench MPs might vote differently in a leadership election to a vote on a procedural change to a party committee? Who’d have thought it?

What we can say is that Tory MPs have less confidence in David Cameron’s treatment of his own Parliamentary Party than they had in John Major’s crisis ridden party leadership in 1995.

No we can’t, it would be absurd to say any such thing. On the one hand you had a leader who had lost the confidence of his party to such an extent that he was forced to resign the leadership and force an election. On the other you have a leader who is making controversial and divisive decisions at the only moment that he is likely to be strong enough to make them. If Cameron really was as undermined as Major was then you can bet your bottom dollar that he wouldn’t be mucking about with the party structures.

Shouldn’t you be worrying about which Oxford-educated 40-something white former SpAd is best placed to embody the hopes and dreams of the down-trodden masses?

@10: “The late Tory MP Julian Critchley said of the 1922: ‘The first three MPs who speak at its meetings are, by definition, mad.’ and this is reflected in many of the comments to Moore’s article which are barking and make quite amusing reading.”

How come so many barking mad loonies get selected as Conservative Parliamentary candidates for safe seats?

Will Cameron being doing anything about this?

Just asking.

How come so many barking mad loonies get selected as Conservative Parliamentary candidates for safe seats?

Because selection is in the hands of local constituency associations, and local political activists (in any party) are not known for their level-headed sanity.

Will Cameron being doing anything about this?

Yup. He’s extending the open primary/caucus selection method as widely as possible. That ought to have the benefit of winnowing out the true loons.

The backbenchers may be unhappy but Cameron’s changes to the 1922 Committee make long-term sense for him. Now he has imposed members of government on the committee it will be much harder for it to be a source of rebellion.