ConHome sticks boot in Conway

Tory MP Derek Conway has faced a barrage of criticism for employing his undergraduate son as his parliamentary assistant at a cost to the taxpayer of £981 a month. What surprised me most, though, was where this incident was prominently displayed - as the lead headline on the Conservative Home website.

Admittedly ConHome is fiercely independent of the official party, and is the self-styled voice of the grassroots - but why make this your main story, I wondered? Why not leave that kind of thing to your political opponents?

Then, I remembered that Derek Conway was the first MP to write to the Whips office to trigger a vote of no confidence in the then Tory leader, the hapless Iain Duncan Smith. The editor of ConHome is (the very nice) Tim Montgomerie, who was IDS’s ultra-loyal political secretary in his final two months - hence the site’s sometime nickname, ContinuityIDS.

I guess some enemies are easier to forgive than others…