Behind the battlefront

As election-day approaches the amount of position-jockeying within the Conservative party is hotting up.

Despite more moderate Tory poll leads in recent days, those who’ve been in the parliamentary party for a while are adamant they shouldn’t be left out when the jobs are divvied up after an election victory.

The problem for them is a raft of new MPs that will flood into the Commons if they do win, many of whom Cameron is sweet on.

The likes of Nick Boles, for example. He is the candidate for Grantham, where Lady Thatcher grew up (corrected Events and Old Rightie), currently held by the defector Quentin Davies.

Boles was also the founder and former director of the favoured think tank Policy Exchange and, with Francis Maude, leads the Conservative’s policy implementation unit.

He is Notting Hill set and apparently close to Cameron personally – “that’s what he likes to tell people anyway,” commented one Tory MP.

If the Tories do win Cameron will need, for a while at least, to have a number of people in Government positions who know how Parliament works.

That bodes well in the short term for the MPs who have made his opposition function in the Commons.

But I suspect that after a couple of years in Government we may see Cameron clean out what will then become the old guard, and replace the majority of them with the “young turks” who win seats at the 2010 election.