Jake berry

It’s been a pretty bad-tempered leadership race thus far but at least most of the scrapping has been done by high profile ‘outriders’ of the two main candidates. Now though it seems that this penchant for ‘blue-on-blue’ attacks has spread to the backbenches too as Tory MPs take to Twitter to attack each other’s campaigns. First up this morning was Michael ‘Fabbers’ Fabricant launching one of his by-now routine attacks on Rishi Sunak, suggesting that everything about his campaign is ‘stage managed, preplanned, and never authentic.’ It prompted Simon Hoare, the standbearer of the Tory left, to fire off a terse response that seemingly poked fun at Fabricant’s infamous blonde

Boris Johnson is hoping that his MPs have calmed down over the Christmas break and that this term will be slightly less turbulent than the autumn. There is not, though, much evidence that this will be the case. Worries about the cost of living, ongoing Covid problems and the unwinding of various Tory party rows will mean that Johnson needs to be on top form to tackle this spring. There is not yet much evidence of that, either. Johnson is not the kind of man who makes new year’s resolutions to transform his character There is a consensus among Tory MPs that the Downing Street operation needs to change. There