An angry exchange of texts between former minister Nicky Morgan and one of Theresa May’s top aides has been leaked, threatening to reignite a row over the prime minister’s £995 leather trousers.

On Friday, the Guardian reported that Morgan, the former education secretary and leading advocate for a less harsh Brexit, had been cut from a list of moderate Conservative MPs due to meet May at Downing Street.

Morgan had been included in a group comprising Alistair Burt, Nicholas Soames, Nick Herbert and Anna Soubry, who were to see the prime minister to discuss the strategy for handling the upcoming article 50 negotiations.

However, Morgan had her invitation rescinded after she raised doubts about May’s decision to be photographed in the leather trousers, fellow backbenchers said.

“I don’t have leather trousers. I don’t think I’ve ever spent that much on anything apart from my wedding dress,” Morgan had said.

According to the Mail on Sunday, the invitation was rescinded after May’s joint chief of staff, Fiona Hill, who had held initial talks with Morgan and Burt at Downing Street to discuss Brexit, was enraged at the trouser comments.

“Don’t bring that woman to Downing Street again,” Hill texted Burt, the paper said.



This prompted an equally furious reply direct to Hill from Morgan: “If you don’t like something I have said or done, please tell me directly,” she wrote. “No man brings me to any meeting. Your team invites me. If you don’t want my views in future meetings you need to tell them.”

Hill’s response in turn was: “Well, he just did. So there!” – seemingly to indicate that Burt had, indeed, brought her to the earlier meeting. It was three days later, the Mail reported, that Downing Street staff officially told Morgan that she was not invited to see May.

Downing Street has refused to discuss the issue, saying only that May “meets and engages with colleagues all the time”.

The publication of the texts risk prompting more mutterings among some Tory MPs about the perceived tendency of May and her staff to exert rigid and occasionally very public discipline over her ministers and MPs.

Boris Johnson was also dressed down by May last week. She very publicly distanced herself from the foreign secretary’s comments about Saudi Arabia leading “proxy wars” across the Middle East.

While Johnson’s comments were a breach of the standard government line over Saudi Arabia, some of his fellow MPs felt the open put-down illustrated an over-controlling tendency within Downing Street, with miscreants slapped down too publicly.