Graham Brady – 1922 committee chairman and the only one who knows how safe TMay is
But should he have let his own views known?
Pictured above is Graham Brady, Chair of the Conservative 1922 Committee and MP for Altrincham & Sale – which is just down the road from Old Trafford where Manchester’s second football team plays.
Under Tory party rules 48 MPs have to write letters to Brady to trigger a confidence vote in the leader. This process was last used in 2003 when IDS got the chop and Michael Howard took over.
What we don’t know is how close to 48 letters the total is. There were stories last week by Harry Cole in the Sun that the total was getting very close and Brady was saying that now was not the time for a leadership contest.
Given the high level of dissatisfaction with TMay that is reported to exist within the parliamentary party there must be a strong chance that the confidence vote would go against her.
The very fact that a confidence vote was being held would be highly damaging for the Prime Minister.
One group of people who we can expect to be amongst those sending letters will be a group of MPs who have become disenchanted following the reshuffle. The sacked and the overlooked are not likely to feel kindly to the woman who made a huge gamble last April going for an early election which resulted in the party losing its majority.
Is it going to happen? That is hard to say but certainly the mood appears to have changed in the last couple of weeks.
It was always going to be difficult for Theresa May, having lost the party its majority, to continue in a post following the June election. Clearly it has been a massive dent to her confidence.
What has kept there until now has been that there is no obvious successor and the party itself is quite split or the sort of Brexit it wants.