Friends of Andrew Feldman have launched a vigorous defence of the party chairman ahead of this afternoon’s board meeting. A long-serving member of the party board, a Cabinet Minister and a senior Number 10 source have been phoning around offering their backing to him. They argue that when Shapps and Feldman were co-chairmen, there was a clear division of labour with Shapps involved in the ground campaign and Feldman taking charge of the money and administrative matters. So, it should be Shapps—not Feldman—who takes responsibility for what went wrong with Road Trip 2015.
One Cabinet Minister tells me that because Lynton Crosby had taken over so much of the traditional role of the party chairman, Shapps was given particularly free rein when it came to organising Team 2015 and the like. Friends of Shapps, however, are insistent that the decision to bring Road Trip into the official campaign was taken collectively.
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