The Prime Minister will do an impersonation of Margaret Thatcher and say shortly:

Dave and Sam stepped out to Oslo Court in St John’s Wood last night before he departs for the states. Lovely anorak…

From: 1922 Committee
Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2012 07:30 PM
Subject: Election Results

Please find attached results for today’s elections. I am very grateful to all colleagues who participated as candidates or by voting. Turnout was approximately 95%. Graham Brady

1922 COMMITTEE
SECRETARY

The following candidates were elected:

KAREN BRADLEY
NICK DE BOIS

1922 COMMITTEE
EXECUTIVE MEMBERS

STEVE BAKER
GUTO BEBB
GEORGE EUSTICE
GRAHAM EVANS
ROBERT HALFON
GEORGE HOLLINGBERY
BERNARD JENKIN
SIMON KIRBY
PENNY MORDAUNT
SHERYLL MURRAY
PRITI PATEL
HEATHER WHEELER

1922 COMMITTEE
BACKBENCH BUSINESS COMMITTEE

The following were elected to be the Conservative members of the Committee:

DAVID AMESS
BOB BLACKMAN
JANE ELLISON
MARCUS JONES

Wow! 11 of 18 Tory MPs on 1922 committee voted for In / Out EU referendum. Big shift towards those wanting referendum—
Douglas Carswell MP (@DouglasCarswell) May 16, 2012

Call it a draw. Good turn out for the 301 but a dozen “Better Off Out” Members…

Without the Coalition, the Tory MP reckons the government would be very different:

From: “LEWIS, Julian”
Date: 16 May 2012 13:49:32 GMT+01:00
Subject: 1922 Committee … Just in case:

Dear Colleague,

In case you have not yet seen the hard-copy letter I sent to you via the internal mail, this is what it said:

The 1922 Committee needs to represent the full spectrum of opinion in the Conservative Party, not just that segment of it most compliant with the daily ‘line to take’.  We do the Prime Minister and his team no favours if we fail to communicate with them frankly, openly and honestly.

In 2001 I was briefly a member of the Executive of the 1922 Committee – stepping down on appointment to the Whips Office, then serving as a Shadow Minister until 2010 when the coalition was created.  In my view, coalitions in general distort democracy and coalitions with the Liberals empower our opponents.

Had we not entered one, we would now have a Conservative majority – as Nick Clegg admitted in his 1 May 2011 Observer interview: “If we hadn’t gone into coalition with the Conservatives, as night follows day there would have been another election within a few months.  You probably would have had an outright Conservative victory.”

A suspicion exists that some of our ‘strategists’ prefer the present arrangement to a return to a majority Conservative government.  Occasionally, such people suggest that we should retain the coalition, even if we win a majority in 2015.  I utterly reject this view.

U-turns and rebellions are characteristic of parties which make up policy on the hoof and fail to consult their own rank-and-file.  When mistakes are being made – on EU referenda, on House of Lords reform, on hoarding petrol or on selling off our forests – the leadership needs to know, and needs to know quickly.

If elected to the Executive, I shall work to ensure that the Committee ‘tells it like it is’ whether or not that is what the leadership wants to hear.

I should be most grateful for your support in today’s ballot.

Yours ever,

Julian

Guido isn’t too confident of Julian’s chances. Results imminent…

With the sudden, and possibly unwilling, departure of Cabinet Office Permanent Secretary Ian Watmore, the job has been given temporarily to Melanie Dawes. AKA “her in doors” to one Ben Brogan…

The switch-over makes today’s column by the Telegraph’s Deputy Editor about Steve Hilton versus the civil service all the more interesting:

 ”Without Mr Hilton, how much will survive? His [Dave's] proposed public sector reforms, let alone his ideas for slashing the Civil Service, are likely to stall..”

Slashing the civil service doesn’t look to be stalling this afternoon…

As mob unrest continues and the country is on the brink of economic collapse, who should land in Athens?

Boris. Orator and traveled diplomat. Remember his speech to the scousers? He speaks Greek.

What could go wrong?

UPDATE: He has gone to pick up the Olympic torch.

@GuidoFawkes Apparently he's there to pick up some torchy-thing? Can't be the first time Boris has visited Athens in pursuit of an old flame—
James Willby (@JamesWillby) May 16, 2012

With the right and hard left backing it, the scrapping of Section 5 of the Public Order Act seems like a no brainer…

In a further sign of Ed’s position shifting on this game changer, his newly appointed policy coordinator backs an In/Out referendum:

A party would never promise a referendum and then change their minds, right?

Not Ali versus Foreman but International Development Minister Andrew Mitchell versus Congo’s cash strapped politicians.  Guido noted that last week Congo politicians rejected UK aid, claiming it to be a kind of ‘guilt payment’ to secure access for British controlled offshore mining interests. The UK is giving the Democratic Republic of Congo £790 million in aid over 4 years. DfID is determined to increase aid payments to the Congo despite Congolese opposition politicians rejecting UK aid as a sham. Andrew Mitchell is making UK taxpayers the Congo’s biggest bilateral donor and it was not even a former British colony.

The IMF and World Bank, with the backing of British taxes, are also channeling billions to the Congo Government.  Surely in this austere climate it is time to give the Congolese what they want themselves – aid stopped until the Congo government honours the loan covenants it made to the IMF. Namely “Publish What You Pay“ conditions for mining interests to be honoured, mining assets sales to be made via open tender and an independent anti-corruption body to be established to oversee it all. Yesterday Lord Chidgey raised questions about the activities of British companies via offshore operations in the Congo. Something very fishy is going on here with the tacit connivance of DfID by default. The overseas aid budget should not be used to secure access for British companies to corruptly under-priced minerals…