The most important MP you may never have heard of

Graham Brady is the most important man in the new parliament of whom you might never have heard. The fact that David Cameron invited him into Downing Street for talks last Friday - just one hour after the new prime minister presented himself to the Queen - is an indication of his influence.

Mr Brady is chairman of the Conservative party backbench 1922 committee and with a Commons majority of only 12, Mr Cameron knows how important it is to keep Mr Brady and his troops on the Tory benches sweet.

The start was positive: after Mr Brady's Number 10 meeting, Mr Cameron later addressed a packed gathering of "the '22", where he was greeted by a thunderous banging of desks.

But in an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Brady suggests relations may not always be so cordial: Europe, English devolution and Mr Cameron's plan to shrink the House of Commons from 650 to 600 MPs could all be areas of disagreement.

The 47-year-old Salford-born grammar schoolboy admits that relations between PM and party were not easy in the last parliament. Conservative MPs were invited to Downing Street drinks and barbecues but felt marginalised as Mr Cameron and Nick Clegg, his Liberal Democrat coalition partner, took decisions behind closed doors.

"I think the prime minister is delighted not to have to deal with another party, the new colleagues are obviously thrilled to be here, and the rest of us are delighted to have so many new colleagues," Mr Brady says.

He expects Mr Cameron to consult the 1922 on decisions and to use it as "a more effective sounding board". He adds: "Having a majority government, I think, presents an opportunity to do things better and to be more open."

<

The tabular content relating to this article is not available to view. Apologies in advance for the inconvenience caused.

"Trying to encourage a civilised, polite, constructive debate usually pays more dividends than trying to screw a lid down and force people into positions that they simply can't adopt," he said.

Mr Brady also believes the prime minister needs to be more ambitious in dealing with the strains on the UK by pushing for a federal model, giving English MPs much more say over English affairs than currently envisaged.

He says a separate English parliament might be seen as too costly, but Westminster could be adapted: "You might have English MPs sitting two days a week doing English things and two days a week doing United Kingdom things."

"The debate is between those who think that doing as little as possible and treading as carefully as possible is the best way of doing that, and those who think that you've got to grasp this and come to a more developed solution." Mr Brady indicates that he thinks Mr Cameron is in the former camp.

Meanwhile, Mr Brady is also opposed to Mr Cameron's plan included in the Tory manifesto to enact a boundary review that would reduce the size of the Commons, a move that would be to the advantage of the party but would make some of Mr Brady's colleagues redundant.

"I think it would be easier and simpler to maintain the house at its current size at the moment," he says. "There are so many big constitutional questions that need to be tackled. It seems to me it might make sense - if the size of the House of Commons was going to be changed - to address that at the point at which we know what the shape of the United Kingdom is."

Some have speculated that Mr Brady might be a leadership contender when Mr Cameron steps down. He smiles and says this is "a shocking suggestion" and that he is a firm believer in backbench power.

If that does not exactly sound like a denial, Mr Brady is more categorical in his assertion that this new parliament will not descend into the kind of Europe-fuelled infighting that hampered John Major's government from 1992-97.

He says the planned EU referendum in 2017 is a safety valve for the party. "Colleagues here and people in the Conservative party outside are really very determined not to repeat an experience of what I think was a very bitter period," he says.

© The Financial Times Limited 2015. All rights reserved.
FT and Financial Times are trademarks of the Financial Times Ltd.
Not to be redistributed, copied or modified in any way.
Euro2day.gr is solely responsible for providing this translation and the Financial Times Limited does not accept any liability for the accuracy or quality of the translation