Well over 100 of the Conservatives’ 361 MPs are aligned with one or more of a string of internal pressure groups. Here are the main ones:

Peter Walker www.theguardian.com

Covid Recovery Group

Led by the former chief whip Mark Harper and the former Brexit minister Steve Baker, the CRG’s size and opposition to new Covid rules is essentially the reason why England has notably fewer restrictions than other UK nations. While informal in structure, the CRG has organised and disciplined messaging, employing an external PR consultant. Support estimated at 80 to 100 MPs.

Net Zero Scrutiny Group

Set up in the lead-up to the Cop26 climate summit, its members insist they are not climate emergency sceptics but believe policies such as emissions targets and the phasing out of conventional cars have not been fully thought out and will adversely affect poorer Britons. The NZSG has 18 MPs as public supporters and claims “many” more.

Common Sense Group

Partly based around culture war issues, and what its chair, the Tory backbencher John Hayes, terms a struggle against “subversives” such as Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion, its 136-page policy booklet sets out ideas on everything from immigration to the legal system and family life. Sixteen MPs contributed to the booklet.

Blue Collar Conservatism

Originally launched by Esther McVey in parallel with her brief leadership bid to succeed Theresa May, with policies including redirecting foreign aid to domestic priorities, it boasts 159 MPs as official supporters including several cabinet ministers. However, it is less active in terms of openly agitating for policy change.

Northern Research Group

Led by the former Northern Powerhouse minister Jake Berry, this is a geographical faction aimed at boosting spending and investment in the north of England, north Wales and Scottish borders. More than 50 members.

All-party group on fair fuel

Very low key, and not officially a party faction, as it has two Labour members and one from the DUP. But it is Tory-dominated, and is arguably the most financially significant pressure group anywhere in the UK. It has been central to parliamentary and media efforts to keep fuel duty frozen for 11 years and counting, a policy that has cost the Treasury somewhere north of £100bn.

European Research Group

The model for the other factions. Set up in 1993, gradually moving from being the voice of Euroscepticism to that of hardline Brexiters. Hugely influential in the Commons revolts that saw off May’s limited Brexit compromises, and then ejected her from Downing Street. Largely quiet now, in part as many members have moved on to other pressure groups.

Chair of the East Devon Alliance, Martin Shaw, writes in this week’s Exmouth Journal

I hope you’ve managed to have a good Christmas despite Covid. I’m sure we’re all hoping that 2022 will be better than 2021. and I want to pick out some signs of hope for the new year.        

But first we have to get through a very serious health crisis-without a responsible government to protect us. In the short term. the Omicron variant has up-ended much of the progress we were making towards normal lives. Its effects on people who’ve been vaccinated and/or had Covid seem to be less than previous variants on average, but because it’s far more infectious. far more people are getting ill.

The numbers being hospitalised are shooting up in London and the South West is likely to follow in the New Year. Local hospital, GP, ambulance and social care services are already under huge pressure. Omicron is adding a new wave of hospital Covid outbreaks which will take doctors and nurses out of action.

While I can’t emphasise enough that health professionals will always try to help you. and you should always call for help when you need it. we’re in a situation where you just don’t know whether the NHS will be able to respond adequately. Take extra care to avoid Covid, and indeed accidents or illness of any kind. Since the South West is behind London in this wave, we could have been saved much of Omicron’s effects if the Government had taken decisive action. Instead they’ve left it up to individuals – and largely abdicated responsibility for the workers and businesses who are financially affected. £6000 grants are better than nothing but they won’t stop many Devon businesses going under.

I suppose the good news with the fact that in 2021 most voters finally saw through Boris Johnson. In 2022. hopefully they’ll realise that Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss or any other Tory wouldn’t be much better. We’ve had eleven years of this party taking the country – and especially the South West – for granted. and enough is enough. Much fuss was rightly made of North Shropshire. where voters overthrew a bigger Tory majority than either of our MPs has. But do remember the sensible progressive politics that we have pioneered in East Devon.

Here, my East Devon Alliance colleague Paul Arnott heads an open and honest local administration. based on effective cooperation between EDA, the Liberal Democrats, Greens and Labour.

Hope can spring from small local beginnings, but it also needs to look out to the wider world.

2021 saw fine words agreed once more on climate justice we must make 2022 the year when these are turned into more radical policies.

2021 saw mass vaccination across the world – we must make 2022 the year that it is really brought to every town and village in every country We don’t know exactly where Omicron originated, but it was probably somewhere where vaccination rates are still very low.

Could next year be the year where we finally realise that none of us are safe until we all are?

2021 was the year where when we realised that Devon’s health, agriculture and university sectors – and the UK economy as a whole – are being progressively damaged by Brexit and the way it has driven away Europeans. Could 2022 be the year when we actually push the government to restore free movement and full UK access to the Single Market?

2021 was also the year when the public revolted against the cruel attitude which would condemn helpless refugees to drown in the Channel. Remember the huge surge in donations to the RNLI when they insisted they would always rescue people at risk in our waters?

In 2022. let’s press for genuine safe routes to allow people fleeing war and persecution to claim asylum in the UK without risking such dangers – and locally, support the admirable Ottery Refugee Response group. A very happy new year to you all!

In normal times, the absurd Jacob Rees-Mogg would have been regarded as, at best, a political curiosity, a self-consciously self-manufactured, affected toff who goes around with a plummy accent and double-breasted suit merely to goad members of the Labour Party.

www.independent.co.uk 

Indeed, while David Cameron and Theresa May were running things that is precisely how Rees-Mogg was regarded by some. Not even the most junior of ministerial roles would be awarded to the young fogey. Now, in the post-Brexit world, it would seem, he is a power in the land, clashing with the prime minister and, most recently, the chancellor of the exchequer. The government looks, and is, deeply divided, and “JRM” is becoming the leader of the internal opposition within government.

With an almost admirable impertinence he reportedly argued with the UK chief scientific adviser about Covid, and derailed Boris Johnson’s attempt to extend plan B before Christmas. Johnson was reduced to asking how Rees-Mogg would answer questions about it at a Downing Street press conference. Rees-Mogg gamely replied that he’d ask the British people to be responsible. Perhaps he mistook Johnson’s challenge for an invitation to chair the next live media presentation.

Emboldened by the prime minister’s visibly draining authority, on Wednesday, it’s reported, Rees-Mogg had the audacity to challenge Rishi Sunak (and Johnson) about the scheduled rise in national insurance in the spring. He wants the increase scrapped, because of the cost-of-living crisis. His policy is similar to Labour’s, but he doesn’t mind about that.

It is mark of how weak Johnson has become that he is being pushed around by Rees-Mogg. It is a measure of how fractious the cabinet is that Sunak can be told to abandon a central plank of his fiscal policy by this elegant anachronism. The post Rees-Mogg occupies, leader of the House of Commons, is an ancient and honourable one, but in brutal political terms one of the positions a premier will give to someone they want to marginalise or humiliate, or both. It has been used by prime ministers to park troublesome critics. The very notion of a minister given his job (and the right to attend cabinet) for a laugh chucking his weight around with the PM and chancellor should be ludicrous.

It is not, of course, because JRM is a veteran fundamentalist Brexiteer, a former chair of the European Research Group, a Eurosceptic long before the careerist Johnson clambered onto the bandwagon. JRM has a fan club among the “Spartans” and the wider, substantial, body of Tory MPs fed up with Johnson behaving (in their eyes) like a horrific cross between Jeremy Corbyn and Greta Thunberg.

They see JRM, even more than the likes of Liz Truss, as their champion in cabinet; and they are right to do so. Rees-Mogg is part-high priest, part-shop steward, part-kingmaker for a large faction of the parliamentary Conservative Party, and it is no joke for Johnson.

It is strange. A child of the Sixties (the 1660s), Rees-Mogg fits exactly into the pantheon of past colourful parliamentary eccentrics with reactionary views, now largely forgotten figures such as Nicholas Fairbairn, Sir Gerald Nabarro or, in our own time, Michael Fabricant. Norman St John-Stevas, a now half-forgotten figure, was a similar personality, a parliamentary boulevardier and “wet” Tory who was retained by Margaret Thatcher on sufferance, until one too many of his private jokes about “The Leaderene” made its way back to her ears, and he found himself relieved of his light duties as leader of the House of Commons.

The difference now is that Rees-Mogg is unsackable, even after his disastrous scheme to save Owen Paterson did so much damage to the party. If and when Johnson is replaced, Rees-Mogg will survive and probably prosper. The throwback is here to stay and, for the time being, debates in the British cabinet are increasingly a battle of wills, if not ideas, between two posh blokes who went to the same school. Floreat Etona!

“There must be no bullying and no harassment; no leaking; no breach of collective responsibility. No misuse of taxpayer money and no actual or perceived conflicts of interest. The precious principles of public life enshrined in this document – integrity, objectivity, accountability, transparency, honesty and leadership in the public interest – must be honoured at all times; as must the political impartiality of our much admired civil service.” (Boris Johnson in his forward to the Ministerial Code 2019)

David Conn www.theguardian.com 

The Conservative peer Michelle Mone referred a business to the Cabinet Office for potential multimillion pound PPE contracts before it had even been incorporated as a company, it has emerged.

The business, PPE Medpro, was fast-tracked by the government through its “VIP lane” for politically connected firms following the referral by Mone.

Within weeks of the company’s incorporation on 12 May 2020, PPE Medpro was awarded contracts worth £203m to supply millions of masks and gowns.

The Guardian revealed on Thursday that leaked files appear to suggest that Mone and her husband, the Isle of Man-based financier Douglas Barrowman, were secretly involved in PPE Medpro, despite both consistently denying any “role or function” in the company.

It has now emerged that Mone’s referral of PPE Medpro occurred five days before the company was formally registered.

Responding to a recent parliamentary question from the late Labour MP Jack Dromey, health minister Edward Argar said: “Departmental records indicate that Baroness Mone identified Medpro as a potential supplier on 7 May 2020 and highlighted this opportunity by email on 8 May 2020.”

Mone referred PPE Medpro to the office of her fellow Tory peer Theodore Agnew, a Cabinet Office minister responsible for procurement during the Covid pandemic. PPE Medpro was then added by Agnew’s office to the VIP lane, which analysis later showed gave companies a 10 times greater chance of being awarded a contract.

PPE Medpro was not incorporated in the UK until 12 May 2020, five days after the initial referral. The UK company was effectively a subsidiary of another PPE Medpro, registered in the Isle of Man on 11 May. The director of both companies was Anthony Page, who works for Barrowman’s Isle of Man-based financial services firm and runs his family office.

Lawyers for Mone, who ran a lingerie company before David Cameron made her a member of the House of Lords, have always said she “was not connected to PPE Medpro in any capacity”.

They also said she had no “association” with PPE Medpro, and “never had any role or function in PPE Medpro, nor in the process by which contracts were awarded” to the company.

Contacted on Friday, Mone did not respond to questions about why she referred PPE Medpro the week before the company had even been incorporated. Both Mone and Agnew have declined to say what, if anything, she disclosed about her own links to the company when she referred it.

A Cabinet Office spokesperson said Mone’s emailed referral is considered “private correspondence” that would not normally be publicly disclosed.

Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, wrote to Cabinet Office minister Stephen Barclay on Friday, expressing concern about “the lack of transparency around the award of significant sums of public money to PPE Medpro”.

“I would ask now that the government … commits now to place all correspondence and records relating to the award in the library of the House [of Commons] for parliamentary scrutiny,” Rayner said in her letter.

The timing of Mone’s referral of PPE Medpro also appears to be significant because it seems to have occurred days before the company had even secured the crucial business deal that enabled it to supply PPE to the NHS.

Documents seen by the Guardian suggest it was not until 11 May – the same day the Isle of Man PPE Medpro was registered – that the company secured its agreement with a London importing company, Loudwater Trade and Finance.

Under the terms of the business deal, documents suggest Loudwater promised to supply the PPE, whereas PPE Medpro appears to have committed to use its “extensive network to seek to secure … contracts with the NHS and other government bodies within the British Isles”.

It appears PPE Medpro undertook that commitment just days after Mone had made the referral to the Cabinet Office.

Documents seen by the Guardian also appear to show Barrowman was personally involved in setting up PPE Medpro’s deal with Loudwater’s director, Maurice Stimler, as well as related business matters.

Barrowman’s lawyers have also repeatedly distanced him from the company, saying he was not an investor, director or shareholder. They have said the Guardian’s reporting amounted to “clutching at straws” and was “largely incorrect”.

Mone’s lawyers have said the Guardian’s reporting is “grounded entirely on supposition and speculation and not based on accuracy”, adding: “She is under no obligation to say anything to you.”

They have also said that after she took the “very simple, solitary and brief step” of referring the company to Agnew, she “did not do anything further in respect of PPE Medpro”.

However, WhatsApp messages believed to have been sent by Mone in late June 2020, over a month after the referral, appear to show her discussing the gown sizes and purchase order details with a person in PPE Medpro’s supply chain.

The messages, which Mone appears to have sent shortly before taking off in a private jet, occurred shortly before PPE Medpro secured its second contract with the government.

Mone’s lawyers said she could not be expected to comment on “unknown and unattributable WhatsApp messages allegedly sent 19 months ago”.

Her lawyers have also refused to be drawn on why, according to a Financial Times report, Mone was in contact with officials as recently as February 2021, and appeared to be “incandescent with rage” over the treatment of PPE Medpro.

The government’s failure to enable local politicians to meet virtually is hampering councils, worrying older councillors and shutting out new participants, according to Jackie Weaver, who shot to fame thanks to a video clip of an ill-tempered council meeting 10 months ago.

Alexandra Topping www.theguardian.com 

Weaver, who became one of the most unlikely breakout stars of 2021 after footage from the Handforth parish council meeting she was attending went viral, has issued the rallying cry amid fears that current high infection rates could hit participation in local politics hard.

In April the high court ruled that from May council meetings in England must take place in person – after coronavirus restrictions which allowed virtual meetings lapsed.

“It is completely unreasonable that we are having to cancel council meetings or hold them only in emergencies for goodness knows how long. Where is democracy?” said Weaver in an interview conducted, inevitably, over Zoom.

This week Lawyers in Local Governmentthe Association of Democratic Services Officers (ADSO) launched a petition calling for councils to be allowed to meet remotely because “they know best” what type of meetings work in their area.

After a tumultuous 10 months in which Weaver, the chief officer of the Cheshire Association of Local Councils, has played herself in the Archers, opened the Brit awards as “Weaver the Cleaver” and featured on Celebrity Mastermind, she is also calling for legislation that will, once again, allow council meetings to be held online.

The public can only hope that it will lead to more filmed exchanges like the Handforth meeting that gripped the nation in the dark days of last February’s lockdown, when Weaver was commanded by Aled’s iPad to: “Read the standing orders, read them and understand them!”

Weaver said: “Despite everyone and their cat and dog saying it should be local councils that are able to determine how they hold meetings, that legislation has lapsed and the impact is quite profound.

“Because of the demographics of many of our parish councils, we have a lot of parish councillors still very reluctant to attend. And should we even be encouraging attendance?”

She said the lack of virtual meetings was a blow to the government’s “levelling up” agenda, making democratic participation more difficult for those with caring responsibilities and disabilities. A recent Local Government Association (LGA) survey of councils, conducted before the emergence of Omicron, found that 72% had recorded a drop in councillor attendance at statutory council meetings and 73% had reported a fall in public attendance.

The LGA has called on the government to urgently bring forward emergency legislation, saying the gathering of up to 200 people in one room is an “unnecessary public health risk”.

James Jamieson, the chair of the LGA, said emergency legislation would help curb the spread of the virus and make sure “councils can continue to make democratic decisions, even during times of emergency”.

A spokesperson for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said it was considering a call for evidence on the matter, which closed on 17 June, and would be responding shortly.

Reflecting on the year that made her a particularly British type of hero, Weaver said that while she relished being given the “opportunity on a plate” to spread the word about the importance of local government, the line between Jackie the local government champion and Jackie Weaver the viral star had become blurred in recent months.

“I can’t say it annoys me, that just would be ungrateful,” she said. “But at the same time, it costs.”

But with the no-nonsense good humour that saw her booting several Handforth parish councillors out of the meeting during the infamous fracas – two have since stepped down – she brushed off any suggestion she was indulging in a “pity party”, expressing her dislike of moaners and admiration for people who get stuck in.

“People feel like the only way you effect change is from the top, and I don’t subscribe to that at all,” she said. “I think often we end up doing nothing, because we can’t change the world.”

As for her own future, after writing a book, You Do Have the Authority Here, based on her own wisdom, she “doesn’t have a plan as such” for this year beyond calmly carrying out her day job and continuing to bang the drum for local government.

“I hope that every time we’re coming up to elections, there is something that helps us capture ordinary people’s imaginations and makes them feel that they actually can make a difference,” she said. “For me, that is always the most important thing.”