Oh dear. While no one has officially announced that they’re standing for the Tory leadership, prospective candidates are already rocking the boat. Mr S wrote on Wednesday that shadow showing secretary Kemi Badenoch had blasted ex-PM Rishi Sunak and said that former home secretary Suella Braverman seemed to be having a ‘very public’ nervous breakdown – and now Braverman’s other colleagues are turning on her too.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised if Suella defected to Reform in the next few months if she doesn’t get into the leadership race,’ one former Tory MP told the i newspaper. A current Conservative MP was a little more crude, commenting: ‘She’s lost all her mates and p****d off the gays…so I think she will b****r off to Reform. She has no chance of being leader and she thinks she is bigger than she is so what is there left for her?’ Golly. No love lost there, then…
The row comes after Braverman’s National Conservative conference speech in Washington, in which she blasted identity politics and attacked potential rival Robert Jenrick. Former Braverman backer Danny Kruger has already said he will endorse Jenrick for the leadership, with another Tory describing her campaign as being, er, ‘dead before it even started’. Hitting back at her critics, Braverman tweeted:
The liberals are having a meltdown about my speech. Basic truths about our party are not easy to hear. But I’ll keep telling them on behalf of the common sense, patriotic, conservative majority.
Meanwhile other Conservative politicians have been left fuming over the election of the new 1922 Committee chair, with many demanding a rerun of the election after claiming it a ‘stitch-up’. One backbencher reportedly raged: ‘The 1922 Committee is incapable of organising a social event in a beer production factory.’ Good heavens. So is Britain in for yet another toxic Tory leadership race? Watch this space…
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