Former business minister says she won’t stay in a party ‘taken over by Rees-Mogg and Johnson’

Leading pro-Europe Conservative MP Anna Soubry has told the prime minister to “sling out” arch Brexiters as she threatened to quit the party and form a new political alliance.



The former business minister claimed Theresa May would face the same fate as David Cameron and John Major unless she stood up to Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Soubry told BBC2’s Newsnight: “If it comes to it, I am not going to stay in a party which has been taken over by the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson. They are not proper Conservatives.

“And if that means leaving the party, form some new alliance, God knows I don’t know. But we just simply cannot go on like this any longer.

“Something is going to have to give because if it doesn’t, not only will we get Jacob Rees-Mogg as our prime minister, we will get a devastating hard Brexit which will cause huge damage to our economy for generations to come.”

Soubry added: “Unless Theresa stands up and sees off these people she is in real danger of losing huge swathes of not just the parliamentary party but the Conservative party.”

She called for a re-evaluation of what the Tories represented, stating: “Labour’s frontbench itself is ideological. My frontbench probably isn’t, but it is in hock to 35 hard ideological Brexiters who are not Tories.

“They are not the Tory party I joined 40 years ago and it is about time Theresa stood up to them and slung ‘em out. They have taken down Major, they took down Cameron, two great leaders neither of whom stood up to them.

“We have to get a Conservative party which is what it has been for decades, the party I joined 40 years ago – proper, One Nation, centrist, small ‘l’ socially liberal, fiscally sensible, economically sound Conservatives.”

The Tory former chancellor and prominent leave campaigner Lord Lamont told the BBC: “I think that’s quite ridiculous, frankly. I don’t want to be rude about Anna Soubry, but I think she does sometimes tend to go over the top.”

May’s Brexit “war cabinet” is due to meet on Wednesday and Thursday to continue discussions on the “end state” relationship that the UK will seek with its former EU partners.