Wellington puts the boot in: now Duke quits Tories

HAS Boris Johnson met his Waterloo? The PM has already bidden farewell to Winston Churchill’s grandson, Sir Nicholas Soames, who was ejected from the Conservative Party following last week’s crucial Brexit vote.

Now, I can disclose that Johnson has shed another Tory grandee.

Arthur Charles Valerian Wellesley, 9th Duke of Wellington, whose forebear routed Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, has resigned from the Conservative Party in the House of Lords and will henceforth sit as a ‘non-affiliated’ peer.

The 74-year- old, who succeeded to the dukedom on his father’s death in 2014, was elected to the Lords the following year in a byelection, after the retirement of a Tory hereditary peer.

The only voters were other Tory peers, who may now think that the Duke should stand down, enabling another by-election to be held.

But Wellington, who is married to Antonia von Preussen — a greatgranddaughter of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who led Germany into World War I — has appeared a probable defector for some time.

He was one of 19 Tory peers who voted against Theresa May in May last year, forcing her to reopen talks with the EU if MPs rejected her proposed deal with Brussels.

Tory MP and ardent Brexiteer Ian Liddell-Grainger was so angered by the Duke’s anti-Brexit shenanigans that he challenged the him to a duel — with kippers.

In July, Wellington argued that ‘leaving without a deal is, at best, very high risk and, at worst, would have dire consequences’.

Unlike his father, who was awarded the Military Cross in World War II and eventually retired as a brigadier, the Duke eschewed the Armed Forces in favour of a business career, becoming a director of tobacco giant Rothmans and chairman of Dunhill, as well as deputy chairman of Vendome Luxury Group.

Aside from his British dukedom, he holds a number of hereditary continental titles, originally conferred on ‘the Iron Duke’.

In Spain, he is recognised as the Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo. It was at the family’s Spanish estates near Illora, close to Granada, that his youngest daughter, Lady Charlotte, married Colombian-American billionaire Alejandro Santo Domingo in 2016.

Perhaps the Prime Minister will find a way to persuade him to put his feet up at his hacienda — for good.