It’s the first of the Tory leadership television debates tonight, as the candidates vying to be the next prime minister (minus Boris, who chose not take part) spar over Brexit and their suitability to lead the country in the next stage of the negotiations.
And while it might seem like not that long ago that the candidates were talking about a ‘clean’ campaign pledge, it didn’t take long for blue on blue warfare to break out on live television.
One of the first to go on the attack was Home Secretary Sajid Javid. Asked by host Krishnan Guru-Murthy if he would consider suspending parliament through prorogation to allow a no-deal Brexit, Javid gave an impassioned speech in defence of British parliamentary democracy. And, in a not-so-subtle dig at Dominic Raab (the only candidate arguing for prorogation this evening) he added that:
‘you don’t deliver on democracy by trashing democracy. We are not selecting a dictator of our country, we are selecting a prime minister.’
Raab, meanwhile, was not pulling his punches either, and said that Michael Gove would ‘buckle’ in any negotiation with the EU, because of his refusal to suspend parliament, saying:
‘You would buckle, because you have shown you would take another extension, you would take no-deal off the table…’
Gove in response said that ‘I will defend our democracy’ – implying of course that it needed defending from the likes of Raab.
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