BLEATING OF THE SHEEPISH SABOTEURS
DURING an unusually sheepish performance on Radio 4’s Today programme, Andrew Bridgen, one of Theresa May’s fiercest Tory critics, gave the first clear sign the saboteurs were in retreat.
Bridgen, who in July was one of the first Tory MPs to reveal he had sent a letter to the 1922 Committee demanding a vote of confidence in the Prime Minister, repeatedly refused to say she should go.
Presenter Nick Robinson brandished yesterday’s Daily Mail front page with the headline about those ‘out to knife Mrs May’ and asked: ‘Are you one of the saboteurs?’
The usually forthright Bridgen, who is a regular fixture in radio and television studios, crumpled, saying: ‘Toppling the Prime Minister is not the only solution.’
Challenged four times why he had sent the letter in July if he did not want her to quit, Bridgen replied: ‘I did it publicly to put pressure on the Prime Minister to move her political position. I wanted to raise the stakes.’
Bridgen had gone on air to emphatically deny he was the MP who anonymously told The Sunday Times this weekend of Mrs May: ‘The moment is coming when the knife gets heated, stuck in her front and twisted. She’ll be dead soon.’
A Tory MP also said anonymously in The Mail on Sunday that if Mrs May attended this week’s meeting of the backbench 1922 Committee – which was being called a show trial – she should ‘bring her own noose’.
Robinson pressed Bridgen as it became clear at Westminster that Tory MPs had started heeding the Mail’s warning not to force a damaging leadership contest.
One senior Tory figure and prominent Brexiteer I know had been telling colleagues to abandon talk of a challenge as he believed Mrs May would secure a deal ‘which Parliament could accept’.
This might explain why Bridgen, a member of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s hardline European Research Group, pulled his punches. Usually he thrives on controversy. In fact, he seeks it out.
At the weekend, for instance, he was quoted saying: ‘Theresa May will find that she is drinking in the
Yesterday’s front page last chance saloon. The bad news for her is that the bar is already dry.’ And when he lodged that letter in July, he said: ‘We either change the Prime Minister’s policy or we have to change the Prime Minister.’
He’s got form for challenging Tory leaders. In the summer of 2013, with the Tories lagging behind Labour in the polls, he revealed he had written a letter to the 1922 Committee seeking a vote of confidence in the then party leader David Cameron. A year later Bridgen had changed his mind and sent a public letter informing Cameron he no longer posed a threat to his premiership.
But then Bridgen is used to causing a political stink. Quite literally. In 2014, villagers in his constituency complained that odours from the vegetable processing company AB Produce, which he founded with his brother Paul, were making their eyes water and throats sore.
The smell was caused by waste water from the vegetable preparation process, and Bridgen invested £2million in equipment to treat it.
Bridgen likes to describe himself as Westminster’s first ‘pre-washed potato magnate’.
In June he was in trouble again when he posted a raunchy film clip on a private WhatsApp group used by Cabinet ministers, including the then Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, and Environment Secretary Michael Gove. The video showed provocative close-ups of a woman’s cleavage as a young man tried to impress her with a flashy sports car. The film was posted mistakenly, insisted Bridgen after what he described as a ‘fat finger’ blunder at his computer keyboard.
Bridgen is always willing to give pithy comments on a range of issues, so it was no surprise when he popped up on Sky News after Johnson had said women wearing burkas looked like letter boxes. He said: ‘I feel uncomfortable speaking to a woman in a burka as you can’t see their reaction and it goes against millions of years of human evolution.’
An indefatigable campaigner, Bridgen has pursued Labour’s Keith Vaz, a fellow Leicestershire MP, over Sunday newspaper revelations two years ago of him paying rent boys for sex and allegedly offering to buy them illegal drugs. Vaz is now being investigated by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards after a complaint by Bridgen. He is also leading moves for Speaker John Bercow to be investigated over allegations he bullied his former private secretary.
In the Commons, Bridgen has one of the best attendance records, having taken part in 92 per cent of votes last year. He made a name as an opponent of the HS2 rail project which slices through his North West Leicestershire constituency.
Eyebrows were raised when he sold his eight-bedroom Georgian rectory for £1.9million to the Government department building the rail link. Complete with swimming pool and tennis court, it was sold under the ‘Exceptional Hardship Scheme’ for homeowners whose properties are blighted by the high-speed line.
ONEof his first brushes with adverse publicity came in 2011 when he was arrested after Ukip official Annabelle Fuller made allegations that Bridgen, a father of two, groped her on the balcony of his Westminster flat. The case was dropped within days as there was no evidence. The incident put further pressure on Bridgen’s already troubled marriage, which ended in 2014.
As Bridgen continues to deny he had anything to do with the anonymous quotes about Mrs May, it’s worth recalling a year ago it was yet another Tory leader in his sights. Bridgen took up the case of Sir Edward Heath, the former Prime Minister, after he was the subject of a police investigation into unproven historic child sex abuse allegations. Even though supporters of Heath regarded the inquiry as a smear, Bridgen stuck to his guns. ‘It’s right accusations against Edward Heath should be investigated,’ he said.
As Mrs May and Mr Cameron can testify, Andrew Bridgen is nothing if not persistent.
Enoughisenough.The peacockingsaboteursoutto knifeMrsMayaredragging theirparty—andtheir country—towardstheabyss