People I know and like have told me that I was wasting my time on the 1922 Committee. Who really cares, said they, on the shenanigans within the party formerly known as Conservative? Nobody, of course, except the ever decreasing number of members. However, the structure of British politics, hollowed out by various agents, including the EU, is of importance. One day we shall want to use it again. Building from scratch is never easy as a number of post-Communist states have demonstrated.

On a far more important level, I have been following, together with his many supporters, Cranmer's battle with the ASA. Any reader who is unaware of the ASA's outrageous and dishonest behaviour and of His Grace's capable fight with them, ought to spend a little time catching up.

In his most recent posting Cranmer wrote:

It is a question of impartiality, which matters profoundly in political processes where force and influence compete with manipulation and facts: if an organisation with quasi-judicial authority professes to be objective in its investigations, then its senior staff and officers must not only be impartial, they must also be seen to be impartial. There cannot be even the merest hint of a political agenda subverting that professed neutrality or corrupting the overriding commitment to fairness and justice.

He then goes on to detail why the Chairman of the ASA, Lord Smith of Finsbury, formerly known as Chris Smith MP and Culture Minister, cannot be said to be impartial or objective.

Cranmer is absolutely right. These things are of importance. Some of the discussion on the blog is interesting though, I note the presence, comme d'habitude, of a ninny who advises the blog author to get over it and start writing about something else. He gets short shrift from the others, I am glad to say.

So, for the last time I hope, here is a little more about the 1922 Committee. The "modernisers" by which one means the people who ensured that the Conservatives did not manage to win against the least popular government in living memory, are rejoicing. Graham Brady, the Chairman, is calling on everyone to unite and stop the infighting, which would indicate that things are truly bad and the Committee's meetings may well start resembling those of Tower Hamlets Council.

Modernisers hope the group, which has traditionally acted as a “safety valve” for the party, will now form greater links with Tory HQ and its volunteers around the country.

They also hope meetings can be moved from Wednesday to Monday so MPs can unite around key events in the Parliamentary week, and want the 1922 to become an “umbrella” for other policy groups right across the party.

New executive member George Hollingbery said the election had shown an “appetite for change” but stressed the new MPs wanted to work with colleagues on the changes.

“This stuff will all take time, none of this will happen overnight,” he told the Standard. “The ’22 has been here a lot longer than I have and will be here for a long time after I’ve gone.”

So the plan is to use the Committee, which is supposed to be the voice of the backbenchers separate and, sometimes, against the leadership, to establish complete control of the Parliamentary party and local associations by the leadership. Time for a 2012 Committee, perhaps? After all, the 1922 was created at a time of a creaking coalition.

Not all is smooth sailing, though. It seems that the Treasurer of the "influential 1922 backbench committee" has criticized William Hague for "criticizing British firms", which is hardly the Foreign Secretary's job and neither is addressing the CBI Conference. Instead, Mr Binley thinks, Mr Hague should be doing more to free British business from EU red tape, though he does not actually explain how that can be done. Clearly, the intelligence level of the new Executive Committee is not spectacularly high.

A thought comes to one: does this mean that Conservative MPs will be allowed to attack Mr Hague to show their supposed independence of the leadership?

It is almost a given in certain political circles, especially but not exclusively, eurosceptic ones that the problem with the political system of this country is the lack of conviction politicians. It was all so different in the good old days, many of them wail, without bothering to find out much about those days.

Setting aside the historical inaccuracy of a narrative that presupposes politicians were different at any time in the past en masse, let us ask ourselves whether we really want politicians of convictions.

I was mulling over the subject because of a discussion on another thread with a friend, whose only fault is that he is a member of the Conservative Party and rather approves of the Boy-King, on another thread. We ranged over a number of subjects and eventually arrived at Edward Heath on whom we largely agreed. Except that the word traitor cropped up.

Heath, I said reasonably as always, was not a traitor but a man of his time. The belief in the efficacy of larger units and uselessness of small ones was in the air for decades after the Second World War: larger counties, larger boroughs, larger police forces, larger schools and, of course, larger political states. I wrote about it all in my obituary on EURef, my erstwhile blogging home, and have only one thing to add: Edward Heath was most definitely a politician of conviction. His conviction, particularly as regards of Britain's need to enter the Common Market was so strong that he was prepared to do anything and tell any lie to achieve it. To be fair, politicians rarely consider telling lies a problem (and the electorate would be horrified if they did not) but in Heath's case it was done in order to achieve something he fervently believed in.

The much derided Ken Clarke, incidentally, has some convictions but as they consist of supporting the EU and the idea of Britain one day entering the eurozone (though even he must realize that it is a remote possibility) these are dismissed as being political buffonery. Sadly no: they are the expression of political conviction.

The wishful thinking that makes people sigh for politician of conviction without considering that those convictions might not be ones we want is akin to the one that assumes that the solution to our problems is "asking the people", possibly in a referendum, because the people are bound to give the answer we want. Well, no, the people might not give the answer we want and politicians of conviction might not have the convictions we approve of. Might it not be time to rethink that particular mantra?

After all, only socialists would think of spending millions of pounds of taxpayers' money to advise parents how to change nappies and make funny noises to their babies. Am I not right?

Two weeks ago this blog mentioned that David Cameron and the Whips were once again trying to undermine the 1922 Committee, this time by putting up a slate of candidates for the Executive Committee from the 301 group, all people who can be relied upon not to rock the boat too much (and that goes for the much-lauded but ever so cautious Ms Pritti Patel).

Since then I have been told by a veteran Tory MP that while this was undoubtedly a plot by the Whips it was not going to go anywhere as long as the Cameroonie loyalists did not get any of the important positions. To be fair, Graham Brady remains Chairman and John Whittingdale, one of the Vice-Chairmen.

Well, we have had the election. Who won, who lost and what will it mean for the parliamentary party, formerly known as Conservative? Reports are somewhat mixed. The Guardian, who, as readers will recall, broke the story of the slate, thus managing to annoy a lot of Tory MPs, says that it was win some, lose some for Cameron.

Supporters and opponents of David Cameron achieved a score draw in elections to the executive of the 1922 committee on Wednesday, which were seen as a test of Tory backbench mood amid fears that Downing Street is losing its touch.

A bold move by loyalists to achieve "seismic change" in the elections, by removing "bloody rude" members of the old guard, achieved partial success when some critics of the prime minister were unseated. But the modernisers on the 301 Group, who had published a slate of candidates that was handed out to MPs as they voted on Wednesday afternoon, also suffered some setbacks.

The main battle for the two coveted secretary posts on the executive of the 1922 executive resulted in a draw. Karen Bradley, who was on the 301 Group slate, won a post. But Charlie Elphicke, a Cameron loyalist, failed in his bid to take the other.

That post went to Nick de Bois, a popular figure with all wings of the party who was not on the 301 Group slate. But the Thatcherite Chris Chope, who had been strongly supported by the traditional right, was unseated.

And so it goes: Bernard Jenkin survived, Peter Bone did not; some MPs got in with the support of the 301, some like Robert Halfon, part-time rebel, without it and Ms Patel managing to get the support both of the Cameroonie loyalists and of his opponents.

James Forsyth in the Spectator thinks that 301 Group have managed to purge the 1922 Committee, though he acknowledges that Bernard Jenkin and Nick de Bois (the non-slate candidate who got one of the secretarial positions) managed to win because of personal popularity and despite not being part of the slate. There is no mention of Robert Halfon.

Curiously enough, Mr Forsyth thinks this makes the 1922 Committee more powerful because it now definitely represents the parliamentary party as a whole. The fact that the Executive is now full of Cameron loyalists who stood specifically to ensure that the Committee, from now on, toed the line, seems to him unimportant.

Paul Goodman on ConHome is clear: it is a victory for the 301 Committee. He sees it as a change of generations, though he does mention that undoubtedly glasses are being raised in Downing Street and the Treasury. Their boys and girls have won and will ensure that there will be no undue opposition to the leadership that the backbenchers will not have an organization through which they can express their discontents.

Incidentally, it is interesting to note that the definition of a rebel is now someone who voted for that benighted and pointless EU referendum. As this blog and EURef noted at the time, the referendum is a means of fudging the issue. Vote for it and you are a "rebel" though it is meaningless. The fact that most of those MPs, including the fragrant Ms Patel have never put their heads over the parapet on any issue that matters, becomes irrelevant.

The commenters on ConHome who ask whether there really is nothing more important going on in Britain fail to see the point. As far as the Boy-King and his camarilla are concerned the most important matter is controlling everything they can: party, Commons, backbench committees and, soon, the Lords. Nothing else matters to them.

Somebody should tell the German authorities that. They are preparing, once again, to ban the NPD, a seriously nasty neo-Nazi organization that seems to have been behind a series of murders of mainly Turkish immigrants. It is unlikely to get past the German Constitutional Court and, in any case, the NPD is already preparing to go to the European Court of Human Rights. Above all, it is a very stupid idea.

So says Der Spiegel. Man the barricades - those evil Germans are on the move again, talking sense at last.

Baroness Cox has once again introduced her Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill, whose aim is "to make further provision about arbitration and mediation services and the application of equality legislation to such services; to make provision about the protection of victims of domestic abuse; and for connected purposes". First Reading was on May 10 and the hope is that there will be a Second Reading before the summer recess.