PA
Holing up at Downing Street with a tuna sandwich to wait for Liz Truss to resign was among the most surreal moments at the helm of the influential Tory backbench committee, its former chair has said.
Sir Graham Brady oversaw a string of leadership contests and was the keeper of letters of no confidence from disgruntled MPs in his 14 years chairing the 1922 Committee of Conservative MPs.
He told the PA news agency: “That was one of the most surreal moments because I was in an office with a mug of tea and a tuna sandwich… watching the rolling news on the TV and watching stuff on my mobile phone” while waiting media thought he was meeting for two and a half hours with Ms Truss.
“Up there with that” was the morning after the Brexit referendum in 2016, where Sir Graham was live on the BBC to back David Cameron staying in his post, only to see on a monitor the then-Prime Minister walking up to a podium outside Downing Street to resign.
“I’d let the chief whip know that I was going to be out on the media round and would be making clear that the Prime Minister should remain in office,” he said. “Nobody then called me back to say ‘I wouldn’t bother if I were you’.”
He takes pride in having been discreet as committee chair, but is revealing “important material for the record” in his autobiography, titled Kingmaker after the nickname he earned thanks to the 1922’s role in deciding the fate of successive prime ministers.
“I waited until after the general election and, rather than taking it to my grave, I’ve published it now,” he said.
He said he did decide to keep the names of colleagues who submitted no confidence letters to him private unless they had gone public themselves.
As committee chair “it’s essential to just keep quiet” about the number of letters received, he says.
But the “persistent rumour” that he had told Rishi Sunak he was on the cusp of a no confidence vote and that prompted him to call an earlier election than planned made him decide to divulge that this was not the case, he says.
He only received 10 such letters for Mr Sunak before the former prime minister called this year’s election, nowhere near the threshold required to trigger a vote of no confidence, he has revealed in published excerpts of his book.
But he says MP Simon Clarke briefed the press around the time that “around 50” no-confidence letters had been submitted.
“It was complete nonsense, but I couldn’t say that it was complete nonsense, because that would then lead people to other conclusions,” Sir Graham said.
Sir Graham says Mr Sunak never gave the impression he knew he could not salvage public support for the Conservative Party.
“I like Rishi a lot. I think he’s a very open, very relatable person. [He] has far less ego than I’ve encountered in senior politicians, almost without exception,” he says.
“I thought one of the most impressive things about Rishi Sunak was that he was relentlessly positive in the most incredibly difficult circumstances where everything seemed to be going against him, everything seemed to go against the Conservative Party.”
The tone of his meetings with five Tory prime ministers varied.
“David Cameron was very casual. Would have his shoes off and his feet up on the table. Theresa [May] wasn’t like that. She was always very proper. We’d drink tea with a teapot and China caps and saucers.”
Sir Graham says he was not shocked when Boris Johnson in a meeting described backbench critics as “contemptible” and “spineless chicken shit” for their criticism over his adviser Dominic Cummings’ visit to Barnard Castle during a lockdown.
“Boris always has a great turn of phrase, hasn’t he? It was not shocking in that sense.”
The committee chair had gone to the then-prime minister to relay the message that what his adviser had done was not acceptable.
“And it was very interesting, for Boris’s first instinct was to just reject it completely and criticise the people who wouldn’t stand up for Dominic Cummings.
“But then a few days later, he phoned me, and he apologised for being intemperate, and said that of course, he agreed with me.
“And I guess that’s part of the frustration of political life – I think Dominic Cummings had been a very important adviser, who is a hugely able person. So there was obviously a desire to keep him, but ultimately, what he’d done was obviously wrong.”
He is remaining tight-lipped about who he favours to become the next Tory leader.
“I’ve had the luxury for 14 years of not being able to say who I was supporting in leadership elections. Now I’m going to take the luxury of taking a bit of time to watch the candidates.”
However, he says he may take a view when the candidates are whittled down to the final two.
The biggest recent source of frustration among backbenchers has been the conduct of ministers, he said.
“We found that there were many, many instances where members of the government were leaking, were working against each other, sometimes very openly, and that was quite frustrating.
“There are a number of occasions when I felt that backbench colleagues were actually being more disciplined and more constructive and helpful to the leader of the party than members of the government.”
He was first elected as an MP in 1997, when the Conservative Party was defeated by a Labour landslide. Now his party faces a similar situation.
“We agreed much more than we disagreed, and I think that’s almost certainly still true.
“And one of the problems we’ve had over recent years is too many parliamentary colleagues have got into the habit of disagreeing with each other and doing so in public as well.
“And we need to get back to that sense that the real – not just the real job for us as a party – but the duty of an official opposition, is to be there holding the government to account.
“And as you do that, you tend to find that it helps to weld the party together.”
Sir Graham stood down as an MP at the most recent general election and entered the House of Lords as Lord Brady of Altrincham earlier this month.
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