Two Tory MPs with close links to Baroness Thatcher are tipped as favourites to become the “shop steward” of Conservative backbenchers at Westminster, in an illustration of her continuing influence in the upper reaches of the party.

Chris Chope and John Whittingdale are said by colleagues to be preparing to stand for the chairmanship of the 1922 Committee, the fabled “Men in Grey Suits” with legendary powers to make or break the careers of Tory politicians.

A third candidate from the party’s left is also expected to run: Richard Ottaway, who supported Michael Portillo’s unsuccessful modernising campaign for the party leadership in 2001. But owing to the predominantly right-of-centre profile of successive intakes of Tory MPs, backbenchers believe that a candidate associated with the left is unlikely to be elected and the two contenders from the Thatcherite right start as front-runners.

Both remain close to Lady Thatcher. Mr Chope is chairman of the Conservative Way Forward, the most avowedly Thatcherite of the pressure groups on the party’s right, of which Lady Thatcher is president. Mr Whittingdale also has long links to the former Prime Minister. He worked as her political secretary in her final period at No 10 and ran her private office for a further two years.

Sir Michael Spicer, who has been chairman of the 1922 Committee for seven years, is standing down at the next general election but some MPs want him to quit the post well beforehand to avoid asking newly elected backbenchers to vote for candidates whom they may not know.

David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative Party, has chipped away at the autonomy of “the ’22”, as Tory MPs call it, by arranging regular meetings with backbenchers himself.

But the chairman remains an important power-broker within the party and a summons to a struggling minister to attend and explain his or her position can prove politically fatal if they are unable to withstand a grilling. Leon Brittan quit as Trade Secretary the day after a mauling by the 1922 Committee at the height of the Westland affair in 1986.

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