Luke McGee is a senior producer at CNN based in London.

London (CNN) The race to become Britain's next Prime Minister has taken a turn for the surreal, as a popular TV presenter best known for interviewing minor celebrities and dispensing lifestyle advice became involved in a public spat with one of the candidates.

Lorraine Kelly, a mainstay of British morning television who combines a sunny outlook with plain-speaking Scottish patter, delivered an unusually pointed series of barbs over two days, directed at one of the outsiders in the 10-strong field to succeed Theresa May as leader of the governing Conservative Party.

File photo of presenter Lorraine Kelly (center) meeting Prince Charles, Prince of Wales and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall during the royal couple's visit to ITV's This Morning show.

The spectacle began on Monday when viewers of ITV's "Good Morning Britain" saw Kelly's decidedly lukewarm reaction to an interview with Esther McVey, a hard-Brexiteer who, before becoming a Member of Parliament, was an anchor on a previous incarnation of the same show. After a day of social media comment, "Good Morning Britain" host Piers Morgan brought it up on Tuesday, in a live tease for Kelly's subsequent show, the eponymous "Lorraine."

"Yesterday, Piers, I'll be honest with you, I just got sick to the back teeth of the whole toxic political atmosphere," Kelly replied.

"I strongly disagree with her on LGBT rights, I just thought, I've had enough of this, we've had two-and-a-half years of going round in circles and not sorting Brexit out, and now we've got a state in Britain where people are at each other's throats, and it's got to stop." Then Kelly took aim at McVey's poor voting record on equality issues. "I strongly disagree with her on LGBT rights, I just thought, I've had enough of this, we've had two-and-a-half years of going round in circles and not sorting Brexit out, and now we've got a state in Britain where people are at each other's throats, and it's got to stop."

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