The Tories are battling bad press almost every day now, what with rumours of rebellions and leadership challenges on top of a number of unflattering polls. The party might have hoped, then, that if former Conservative MPs wanted to raise party-specific concerns they would do so in private — rather than adding publicly to the party’s woes. Not so. Today, former government minister Sir Alan Duncan gave a fiery media performance to LBC when he came out gunning for certain Tory bigwigs — and even called for security minister Tom Tugendhat to be sacked. And now, in a further development only hours after his outburst, Duncan has been placed under investigation by the Conservative party. Crikey.
Duncan launched into the furious tirade on Nick Ferrari’s morning programme when discussing the subject of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine. ‘There are a lot of people at the top of our own politics who refuse to condemn settlements, and therefore are not supporters of international law,’ he told Ferarri. ‘And I think the time has come to flush out those extremists in our own parliamentary politics.’ Strong stuff.
The former government minister continued:
The Conservative Friends of Israel has been doing the bidding of Netanyahu, bypassing all proper processes of government to exercise undue influence at the top of government. So what you have is a lot of people now sitting around Rishi Sunak who are giving him appalling advice.
Comparing Lord Polak and Lord Pickles (respectively the honorary president and the parliamentary chairman of Conservative Friends of Israel) to the comedy duo Laurel and Hardy, Duncan said the peers should be ‘pushed out together’. He also also pointed the finger at Robert Jenrick, Suella Braverman, Michael Gove, Oliver Dowden and Priti Patel, before moving onto Tugendhat and his, er, Wikipedia page:
If you pick up Wikipedia and you read the entry from Tom Tugendhat who is our security minister, it says, and I’ll read it out: he condemned the United Nations Security Council for its official criticism of Israel’s building settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. Now, that may have been some years ago, but he’s never removed that, he’s never changed his view. How can you have a security minister in the British government who does not believe in international law when all this is going on? I think he should be sacked.
Watch the full clip here:
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