David Cameron will seek to reassert his grip on the Conservative Party today as he returns from holiday attempting to draw a line under the most damaging confrontation of his leadership.

Conservative MPs and grassroots members dismayed after 20 days of turmoil over the party’s position on grammar schools will look to the Tory leader to end the row and restore party morale.

But Graham Brady, the MP who quit the front bench after being rebuked for defending grammar schools, said that Mr Cameron’s circle of advisers was too tight and called for a change of approach. “These are things that don’t lend themselves to easy solutions that can be thought up behind closed doors by one or two people having a eureka moment,” Mr Brady told Sky News.

It also emerged that another member of the front bench, Greg Clark, MP for Tunbridge Wells, received an assurance that one or more new grammar schools could open in his area.

When Dominic Grieve, MP for Beaconsfield, sought a similar assurance last week, Conservative officials said that the policy had always been to allow a small number of new grammar schools to accommodate population growth in areas with a selective system, but were unable to show where the policy had been set out.

Mr Cameron said he wanted a long-term education policy that gave opportunity to all. “I’m determined to see the . . . party get to the right place on these issues,” the Tory leader wrote in The Sunday Times. A survey by the Conservative-home.com website suggested that grassroots members blamed David Willetts, the Shadow Education Secretary, for the row, not Mr Cameron.

Another ICM/Sunday Telegraphpoll showed that Gordon Brown led Mr Cameron by 54 points to 29 on competence, and by 53 to 33 on being a strong leader, although Mr Cameron was seen as more likeable and caring and Mr Brown was only narrowly ahead, by 45 to 43, on who would make the best Prime Minister.

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