I WANT TO KILL OFF TORY PARTY

Astonishing claim by rebel MP as trio face backlash for deserting Mrs May

THREE Tory defectors faced a backlash last night as one of them threatened to destroy the Conservative Party.

Anna Soubry, Sarah Wollaston and Heidi Allen yesterday crossed the floor to join eight former Labour MPs in a new group demanding a second Brexit referendum. The trio announced their bombshell resignations just as Theresa May prepared to enter a critical period that will determine whether she gets her Brexit deal over the line.

In an extraordinary press conference, the rebels said the Conservative Party had been taken over from ‘top to toe’ by hardRight Brexit extremists.

They accused the Prime Minister of a ‘dismal failure’ to stand up to a ‘Purple Momentum’ or ‘Blukip’ movement they said had infiltrated the party.

Asked if she could envisage returning to the Tories in future, Mrs Allen suggested they wanted to supplant their former party. She

replied: ‘I can’t imagine it, I just can’t. Not least because, if we do our jobs right, there won’t be a Tory party to go back to.’

Last night she told ITV’s Peston that many Tory MPs shared her frustrations. Asked if there were tens like her, she said: ‘Oh yes, more than that, I’d say a third of the party.

‘Whether or not they feel what we’re proposing is the right solution is a different conversation.’

But she added she did not want them to join the newly-formed Independent Group because she did not want to trigger a general election.

The defections were timed for maximum impact, less than an hour before Mrs May appeared in the Commons for Prime Minister’s Questions and just a few hours before she flew to Brussels for the latest round of last-ditch negotiations with the EU.

Last night, the three rebels faced criticism for claiming they were being pushed out by anti-EU ‘entryists’ and the threat of de- selection, when they were choosing to turn their backs on the Tory manifesto they stood on just two years ago, which pledged to honour the result of the Brexit referendum.

Critics also pointed out that their departure had handed a gift to Jeremy Corbyn as he fights his own battle to

‘Brexit extremists have won’

keep the Labour Party together. Simon Hoare, the Tory MP for North Dorset, said: ‘It’s another distraction from what is the main game in town, which is extricating Britain from the EU with a good deal. Everything else is a sideshow.

‘I am sad at these departures because I believe in a broad church Conservative Party, but I don’t accept their description of the party that they have put forward today.’

The defection of the trio – who dubbed themselves the ‘three amigos’ – to the Independent Group is part of what is becoming the biggest shakeup of politics for a generation. The group now has the same number of MPs as the Liberal Democrat party and one more than the Democratic Unionist Party ( DUP). On another extraordinary day:

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable offered to work with the new group, hinting at a possible electoral pact;

David Cameron issued a statement hinting at his fears the Tory party could fracture over Europe and saying ‘everyone’ must ensure that it could continue to accommodate different views;

The new Independent Group surged to third place in the polls just three days after its launch;

Jeremy Corbyn was accused of a ‘Stalinist’ response to MPs Labour as he faced the threat of a fresh raft of resignations from moderates;

Derek Hatton was suspended from Labour just days after being welcomed back;

George Galloway dismissed Labour’s anti-Semitism row as a ‘lie’ as he applied to rejoin the party;

Labour looks set to lose control of a city council after one if its councillors defected to the Tories over anti-Semitism;

Mrs May defied the depar- tures of the three, insisting she had made ‘progress’ on the Brexit backstop.

Miss Soubry, Dr Wollaston and Mrs Allen announced their decision to leave in a letter to the Prime Minister shortly after 11am.

They wrote: ‘We no longer feel we can remain in the Party of a Government whose policies and priorities are so firmly in the grip of the ERG (European Research Group) and DUP. Brexit has requitting defined the Conservative Party – undoing all the efforts to modernise it.’

At a press conference later, Miss Soubry said the battle for the Conservative Party was ‘ over’ and the hard- Right Brexit extremists had won.

She appealed to ‘fellow one nation Conservatives’ and ‘like-minded Lib Dems’ to ‘please, come and join us’.

Last night she told BBC’s Newsnight that she was ‘really worried’ the Prime Minister has a ‘problem with immigration’. ‘The only reason why she will not agree to [continued membership of] the single market is because of free movement of people,’ she said.

Mrs May said she was ‘saddened’ by the defections, but she stressed the importance of sticking to her promise to respect the Brexit result. In Brussels, she said: ‘I’m determined that under my leadership the Conservative Party will offer the decent, moderate and patriotic politics that I believe the people of the UK deserve.’

ALTHOUGH an unwelcome distraction for Theresa May at this crucial time in her labours, the defection of Anna Soubry, Heidi Allen and Sarah Wollaston to the new ‘independent group’ of MPs can hardly have come as a surprise.

Despite being elected less than two years ago on a manifesto promising to honour the referendum result, they have since done everything in their power to reverse it.

Throughout their leader’s tireless struggle for an honourable and pragmatic Brexit deal, they have been a constant thorn in her side. They are serial rebels.

The self-styled ‘Three Amigos’ sought to justify jumping ship yesterday by asserting that their party – like Labour – was in the grip of an extremist takeover.

It had lurched to the hard-Right, they said, been infiltrated by Ukip ‘entryists’ and no longer cared about the most vulnerable in society. They had not deserted the party. The party had deserted them.

Yet for all their martyrish protestations, it was hard to escape the conclusion they were laying a smokescreen. This was overwhelmingly about Brexit.

It’s true, of course, that the hardline European Research Group is trying to force the Government into a harder Brexit, with some even favouring a No Deal departure.

This paper believes their disloyalty is harming both their party and their country and that they should see sense.

But it hardly places them on the far-Right of the political spectrum. Jacob Rees-Mogg is not Tommy Robinson.

By contrast, today’s Labour Party stands unashamedly on the hard- Left. It is controlled by a vengeful Marxist clique, riddled with anti-Semitism and any dissent is to be mercilessly crushed.

Then there are the two leaders. Jeremy Corbyn is an archetypal 1970s class warrior, an apologist for terrorism and has wilfully failed to stop the hounding of Jewish MPs by the anti-Semites who surround him.

Theresa May, a Middle England vicar’s daughter, is the very model of a compassionate Conservative. If anything, she has moved her party to the Left.

Her Cabinet could hardly be more OneNation. Do the defectors regard Jeremy Hunt, Amber Rudd and Philip Hammond as puppets of the hard-Right?

They may have convinced themselves the party has been overrun by extremists but it’s bunkum. They weren’t forced out. They couldn’t get their way so they bolted.

Significantly David Cameron, high priest of Tory modernism, criticised their actions yesterday, saying the party has always been perfectly able to contain different views on Europe. He said the splitters could and should have stayed to state their case.

As it is, they have not only let down their own party, they have taken all the pressure off Mr Corbyn over his own continuing rebellion. And despite their grandiose ambitions, the Parliamentary arithmetic on Brexit remains exactly the same.

Rather than disgruntled Tories, they have simply become disgruntled independents.

All they have really changed – for now at least – is their seats.