Conservative party

Despite having to answer questions about whether or not she is a 'quitter', Theresa May must be reasonably glad that she's got a few days' escape from her domestic agenda while she is visiting China. But being away does mean that she has left her party to stew without her, and it's not clear that those around her are doing much to calm things down. Over the past few days, I've spoken to a range of Conservative backbenchers and ministers who either privately or publicly hold concerns about the way May is leading (or isn't, as the case may be). All agree that things are rather critical for the Prime Minister, and have a number of thoughts about how she might survive. But barely any of the MPs I spoke to have had any sort of contact from the Tory whips.

Can Theresa May really solve the latest crisis affecting her leadership? Previously, her survival owed a great deal to Conservative backbenchers, who vowed to protect her against a badly-behaved Cabinet, but everyone is restless now. So what can she do? The Prime Minister isn't going to have a personality transplant, but this doesn't mean that she is destined to continue doing absolutely nothing. She may never be able to conjure up small talk with her own MPs, but she has in the past shown that she can make bold decisions (the snap election was, admittedly, a bad example of this) and have a reforming zeal. The absence of any activity or vision for the domestic agenda is what has agitated Tory MPs quite so much in recent weeks.

Since Georgia 'Toff' Toffolo won I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here, the Conservatives have been left with a dilemma over whether to utilise their celebrity supporter. A proud Conservative, Toff kindly volunteered to utilise her million followers for the party only for brains at CCHQ to block any such move over concerns she’s ‘too posh to win over Labour supporters’. Although the Conservative consensus has since changed in favour of bringing her into the tent, it seems it may be a case of too little, too late. In an interview with Sunday Times Style magazine, Toff comes across a little bit disgruntled about her recent interactions with the Tories.

‘We take the view that while things are bloody awful, we don’t want to risk making things worse.’ That is how one senior Tory backbencher sums up the mood of the parliamentary party. No one disputes that the Conservatives are in the doldrums. There is no wind in the government’s sails. No. 10 doesn’t know where it wants to take the country. This general sense of drift is interrupted by the occasional squall. The latest storm was caused by Nick Boles’s criticism of Theresa May. On Friday evening, the former housing minister took to Twitter to lament the lack of a radical government agenda and to tell the Prime Minister to raise her game. Immediately, Westminster began wondering what he was up to. Who he was speaking for? After all, Boles has form.

With the new Tory vice-chairman for youth, Ben Bradley, currently making headlines for ill-judged blog posts from 2012, it's safe to say that Theresa May's plan to revamp CCHQ by appointing 13 MPs as vice-chairs, hasn't gone entirely to plan. However, one vice chairman is determined to make a success of her brief – no matter the cost. Step forward Kemi Badenoch. The MP for Saffron Walden has been put in charge of selecting Conservative candidates for the 2022 general election. However, in this week’s edition of The House magazine, Badenoch reveals that her first task consisted of knocking a white public schoolboy off the list.

If you thought the main fallout from Theresa May’s reshuffle was last week, think again: over the past few days the Conservatives have been appointing their parliamentary private secretaries, which means the reshuffle has only just about ground to a halt. These PPS jobs are unpaid but count as government payroll, meaning the MP in question must be loyal to the government as well as carrying a minister’s bag around. The problem is that not every ambitious MP can be made a PPS. Worse, not every PPS can be made a minister, which means that there are a fair few Tory backbenchers and PPSs swirling around who are feeling a little sore.

What is Michael Gove up to? The Environment Secretary seems to be on a tree-hugging rampage at the moment, announcing a new green measure every week. Not content with unveiling the Tories’ 25 year environment plan last week, Gove has given an interview to today’s Sunday Times in which he attacks the water companies for using tax havens. The water companies are interesting enough, given Jeremy Corbyn has called for them to be renationalised. But what’s really revealing about what Gove’s overall mission is comes later in the interview, when he says: ‘Brexit creates opportunities, particularly in my area. Brexit could be the catalyst for some of the biggest, boldest environmental steps forward as we transform our fisheries and agriculture policy.

Ben Bradley had an inkling that his first week back at work wasn't going to be an ordinary one when he received a text at 7am on Monday. The MP for Mansfield was summoned to 10 Downing Street for 11.30am with no explanation as to why. Given that this was the day Theresa May was expected to reshuffle her Cabinet, it was an odd request for an MP who had been in Parliament for less than a year, after taking the seat from Labour in the snap election. 'I thought if it's health, I'm not sure if I want it,' Bradley jokes.

With Theresa May's reshuffle now complete, a consensus is forming that it's been a rather underwhelming rearranging of the deck chairs. All the big beasts remain in place and some junior ministers appear to have been moved from their briefs just for the sake of moving them. Matters weren't helped by a shambolic roll out which saw Chris Grayling falsely announced on Twitter as the new party chairman – and reports of disarray with ministers refusing to budge thanks to hacks tweeting the time each had spent in Downing Street. It's clear that no-one in No 10 has mastered the art of completing a reshuffle in the digital age.

Brexit could split the Tory party. So many people wrote articles arguing this before and after David Cameron called the EU referendum, but it was generally assumed that the split would involve disgruntled eurosceptics claiming they had been betrayed after Britain voted to stay in the bloc after all. It was also generally assumed that the split would at least involve something quite serious. But today MPs are locked in a war of words over whether or not they should get a ‘meaningful’ vote on the final Brexit deal. Those in favour defeated the government last night: Theresa May’s first serious Commons defeat since the snap election.

In the midst of the confusion over whether the UK and Ireland have agreed for Northern Ireland to remain in the customs union, Tory MPs have been invited to a party meeting this afternoon at 4. Some backbenchers who are particularly interested in scrutinising Brexit had requested that they be given the same sort of off-the-record briefings on policy and developments as are offered on a regular basis by the Ministry of Defence, so this may well be one of those meetings. But the presence of Gavin Barwell, Theresa May’s chief of staff, suggests that it’s not just an off-the-record update from Brexit minister Steve Baker.