The me, me, me traitor addicted to the limelight
EveN by the standards of the increasingly poisonous war of words raging among the Tories over Brexit, Anna Soubry’s comments were particularly venomous.
This self-appointed Tory Remainer-in-Chief made herself available to the BBC (ever eager to give a platform to any anti-Brexit Tory) to give unsolicited and unhelpful advice to her boss, Theresa May.
ever since the referendum, many of her colleagues have regarded the Nottinghamshire MP as a traitor.
She seems increasingly detached from the Conservatives. While canvassing in last year’s General election, the word ‘Conservative’ was consigned to the bottom corner of ‘vote Soubry’ posters in her constituency. This spoke volumes of the 61year-old’s sense of loyalty. The emphasis was on herself – me, me, me.
The former Tv journalist is certainly not shy of the camera or microphone. She’s always willing to give a quote and generate a headline. Sometimes her love of the limelight goes too far. For example, some years ago she said that the then Ukip leader Nigel Farage ‘looks like somebody has put their finger up his bottom and he enjoys it’. She was duly forced to apologise.
Ms Soubry emerged as the Tories’ cheerleader for very Soft Brexit just days after the vote to leave the EU when she addressed a rally near Parliament. Her voice cracking with emotion, she said: ‘My mother is 84 and she wept, just like my 24- and 25-year-old daughters shed tears because we made a terrible mistake by voting to leave the EU.’
There was a swift response from fellow Tory backbencher Nadine Dorries who said: ‘I saw Anna Soubry leave the bar before she went outside. She was inebriated, not emo- tional.’ Ms Soubry denied she was drunk and warned such comments were defamatory. However, alcohol has been linked with her belligerent mood on other occasions. For example, after she was one of a minority of Tories to rebel and inflict defeat on the Government’s Brexit Bill in December, Ms Soubry was spotted drinking wine in a Commons bar toasting victory.
By her own admission she likes a drink. In her first interview after being made a minister in 2012, she boasted that she ‘drank too much’ in celebration. She added that she liked gin, champagne and beer – an odd admission for a health minister.
Brought up in Worksop, her mother was an NHS radiographer and her father a garage owner. After comprehensive school, she studied law at Birmingham University and joined the Tory Party. She was the first woman Conservative to be elected to the executive of the National Union of Students.
However, in the early 1980s, at the high point of Margaret Thatcher’s radicalism, Ms Soubry quit the party. She was then named as one of eight young Conservatives who sent a statement to the Times newspaper announcing that they were defecting to the Social Democratic Party (SDP), which had been formed by a breakaway group of Labour politicians. When asked about it last night, she denied joining the SDP.
On Monday, she claimed the only way
the Tories could avoid a mass exodus of members was by becoming what it once was – ‘One Nation, centrist, and socially liberal’.
HER memory must be playing tricks. The Tory Party that Ms Soubry rejoined in 2002 was led by Iain Duncan Smith, whose policies were fiercely right-wing and anti-Europe. It seems her return to the Tory Party owed more to ambition than political conviction. She wanted to be an MP and hoped to capitalise on her local fame as a presenter on regional TV such as Granada’s This Morning show. However, much to the glee of her Labour rivals, old TV footage of her made embarrassing viewing.
Video was unearthed of her back in the 1990s, complete with big hair and brash jewellery. Take her appearance on the quiz programme Celebrity Squares.
Presenter Bob Monkhouse saucily said to her: ‘We all know you from This Morning. I wish I knew you from last night.’ Ms Soubry tried to laugh off the innuendo.
Having failed to be elected in the 2005 election, she was one of David Cameron’s much-ridiculed A-list of parliamentary candidates (designed to parachute women, gays and ethnic candidates into winnable seats). When Ms Soubry was duly elected as an MP in 2010, she was a single mother of two teenage daughters with two failed marriages behind her.
Most ambitious, new Tory MPs cite Thatcher, Churchill or Disraeli as their inspiration. But Ms Soubry chose Europhile former Chancellor Ken Clarke, saying: ‘I am from that side of the party. Ken is a hero, brave, and with a brain the size of a planet.’ They have much in common apart from their passionate Remainer views. Both attended state school in Nottinghamshire. Both are trained barristers, love cricket and beer. Also, both can deploy a colourful turn of phrase.
While trying to expose some anti-EU voters’ hypocritical attitude towards foreigners, she said: ‘Some of these people are the ones who say, “I don’t like all that foreign muck, what are we having for tea tonight? I know, chicken tikka masala”. And then go off for an Italian but then say, “but we don’t want all these foreigners”.’
She was rebuked for insensitivity when, as health minister, she said people seeking help to die should be allowed to obtain assistance in the UK. She said it was ‘ridiculous and appalling’ that Britons had to ‘go abroad to end their life’. She rejected euthanasia, but said ‘you have a right to kill yourself’.
She survived such controversies – not least because she assiduously cultivated Cameron and then Chancellor George Osborne.
THEY pair stood by her after a row when Labour accused her of a conflict of interest. She tabled amendments to liberalise the Sunday trading laws but it was pointed out that her partner was a nonexecutive director of Morrisons supermarket which lobbied for the law to be changed.
Ms Soubry never declared this fact in the Commons but it was mentioned in her Ministerial List of Interests. Regardless, she was sacked in Mrs May’s first reshuffle as prime minister.
Now, she sits on the backbenches alongside other sacked ministers such as former education secretary Nicky Morgan. A champion of even more immigration, she is a founder of Open Britain, which has Labour members and campaigns for a soft Brexit.
Last night a veteran Tory MP fed up with the latest bout of headlinegrabbing by Ms Soubry said: ‘If she wants to quit the Conservative party, let it happen. She can always stand as Labour MP for Brussels!’