Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Finally, the Tory whips are cracking down on open dissent

Lurk around the Palace of Westminster today and you might hear a strange creaking noise. It’s not the Commons air conditioning, which has broken and is making appropriately eerie noises ahead of an urgent question on the Bilderberg meeting. No, that creaking sound is the Tory Whips’ Office finally limbering up to do something about wayward MPs.

Sir George Young summoned backbencher Andrew Bridgen for an urgent meeting today after his letter of no confidence was leaked to the Mail on Sunday and he wrote an op-ed for the same paper saying ‘there is a credibility problem with the current leader’ and that the current situation was ‘like being in an aeroplane’ which ‘the pilot doesn’t know how to land’.

There were suspicions reported in today’s Times that it was in fact the Whips who leaked the letter, given Bridgen had told them he had sent it.

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