Bungling Tories fail to chuck out Brexit Bad Boy

Amid the drama of the Tory leadership contest, the party’s membership has swollen by tens of thousands to a six-year high of 180,000.

But two controversial members have — to the party’s embarrassment — caused that number to rise slightly higher still.

Arron Banks and Andy Wigmore, the so-called ‘Bad Boys of Brexit’ who ran the campaign group Leave.EU, both joined last year.

Businessman Banks, who has given around £13 million to the anti-EU cause, tweeted at the time: ‘Let’s back a Brexiteer and make this country great again!’

Yet Tory chairman Brandon Lewis, swiftly made it clear the duo were not welcome.

A party spokesman added Banks and Wigmore’s ‘applications for membership . . . have not been approved’ because they were both Ukip supporters’. However, i have learned that Wigmore remains a After three years of theresa May as leader, the tories are so desperate for cash they are raffling a meeting with the new leader at just £25 a ticket. there will be ten ‘lucky’ winners. Cash for access for the price of a new cookbook — what a bargain! Tory member and was not, as Lewis insisted, kicked out.

To add insult to injury, he is a member of david Cameron’s own Conservative association in Witney, Oxfordshire, and voted for Boris Johnson from there.

Wigmore, a former diplomat and Commonwealth Games shooter, tells me: ‘They will make a big thing of cancelling me again. But they’re so incompetent that if Boris fails to deliver Brexit and is forced out, i suspect i’ll still be a member. That means i can vote for his successor.’

Someone at Tory HQ might want to act pronto.