Thread by @TelePolitics

🔴As the Prime Minister hunkers down in No 10, braced for Sue Gray's findings on the partygate saga, Downing Street continues to do battle with Boris Johnson's own Tory colleagues

Thread 🧵👇
telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/2…

➡️William Wragg has brought in police over complaints of “blackmail and intimidation” by the whips’ office.

Now the Government faces yet another inquiry over Nusrat Ghani’s claims that she was “reshuffled” in February 2020 because of her “Muslimness”

🗣️Yet amid the claims and counter-claims, with chief whip Mark Spencer vehemently denying that he made an issue of Ms Ghani’s religion...

...there is a tie that binds those currently causing Mr Johnson the most strife

🔵It has not gone unnoticed that Ms Ghani and Mr Wragg are both members of the executive committee of the 1922 committee of Conservative backbenchers

The group provides a way for backbenchers to co-ordinate and discuss their views independently of frontbenchers.

🗳️The organisation’s chairman, Sir Graham Brady, oversees the election of party leaders, or any Conservative party-led vote of no confidence in a current leader

➡️Also a member of the executive is treasurer Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, a regular thorn in the Government’s side.

He has called for Mr Johnson to “radically reform the way the No 10 operation works”

❌The executive committee’s secretaries, Gary Sambrook and Bob Blackman, have both been highly critical of the Prime Minister in recent weeks

🔴All six members of the executive committee rebelled over vaccine passports last month - another factor giving rise to suspicions of the 1922 leading a “coup” of sorts

💬As one senior Tory put it: “The thing that appears to unite the executive of the 1922 committee is their opposition to Boris Johnson and his Government"

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telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/2…