MP quits, saying he’s ashamed to be a Conservative
So is he missing his £750K QC’s salary?
A TORY MP quit yesterday saying he could no longer live with being called a Conservative.
Pro-Leave backbencher Stephen Phillips resigned claiming ‘irreconcilable policy differences’ with the Government over Brexit.
The departure, slashing Theresa May’s Commons majority to eight and triggering a by-election, raised speculation she will have to call an early general election next year.
But Tory MPs cast doubt on Mr Phillips’ claims to have quit his safe Lincolnshire seat on principle – instead saying he had decided to earn a fortune as a QC after being passed over for a job by Mrs May.
Insiders rubbished the idea that further resignations could follow. One said: ‘It’s not like there’s a group of them plotting. He wanted to resign and has done it in this way in order to make trouble and look principled.’
Christine Talbot, a member of the executive at his constituency association, said: ‘Constituents are really angry with him. He owes us all an explanation…It’s almost like a tantrum. It’s as though this is just because he didn’t get his own way.’
In a letter to his constituency chairman leaked last night, Mr Phillips – a barrister who once made £750,000 in a year from legal work, while an MP – said he could no longer live with the label of being called a Conservative.
He attacked Mrs May’s Government for not doing more to help child refugees, not consulting Parliament over Brexit, and reforming the way international aid is spent. He wrote: ‘Some will label me a quitter or no doubt worse. Those are labels I can live with – the label Conservative no longer is.’
Privately, some Tory MPs said Mrs May would have no choice but to call a snap poll to give her the increased majority needed to implement Brexit. It follows public warnings by ex-ministers Iain Duncan Smith and Dominic Raab that an election could prove unavoidable if Parliament blocks or delays Brexit. Interim Ukip leader Nigel Farage said: ‘I don’t trust Parliament on this. The neatest, cleanest way to finish this off is for May to call for an election.’ Number Ten publicly rejected the growing clamour.
The PM also faces a by-election in Richmond after Zac Goldsmith quit over the Heathrow expansion. Rival parties are expected to contest both seats on a promise to neuter Brexit.
Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said: ‘I don’t see any appetite for an early general election … The next election is not due until May 2020, the Prime Minister has made that very clear.’
Mr Phillips, elected in Sleaford and North Hykeham in 2010, voted for Leave – but claimed Mrs May’s refusal to give MPs a vote on Brexit was ‘fundamentally undemocratic, unconstitutional and cuts across the rights and privileges of the legislature’. His statement yesterday said: ‘It has become clear to me … my growing and very significant policy differences with the current Government mean I am unable properly to represent the people who elected me.’
Mr Phillips was said to have told friends the Tories have changed and that his values ‘are not the values of the current Conservative Party’.
Allies claimed he had pondered remaining as an independent MP, but as he had been elected to a Tory Party he now believes has ‘Ukip-lite’ values, he believed the ‘honourable course’ was to resign.
However, a senior Tory MP said Mr Phillips had ‘an enormously high opinion of himself’ and believed he should have a top Government job.
Sources said he believed Mrs May, whom he backed to be leader, was going to offer him a job. When it did not materialise, he decided he would be better served returning to law and making ‘big pots of money’, an MP claimed. There were also rumours surrounding his personal life.
Mr Duncan Smith said: ‘I would suspect … there are issues around what has happened to him personally in politics.’ He suggested Mr Phillips might want to return to his ‘very suc-
‘Didn’t get his own way’
cessful’ legal career. The barrister and judge, 46, seems to have been going through something of a midlife crisis after separating from wife Fiona, mother of his three children – and appears to be living with a young blonde South African economist, Keightley Reynolds.
Miss Reynolds, 33, has been registered to his two homes, in Islington, north London, and Thorpe-on-theHill, Lincolnshire. The pair seem to have met when she worked for the Civil Service from 2010 to 2013.
Mr Phillips has been one of the highest paid MPs after being appointed as one of the country’s youngest QCs at 39. On his website, now deleted, he stressed his legal work – for which he earned more than £140,000 in the past 12 months alone – was ‘largely’ when the Commons was not sitting. He always argued his earning ability meant constituents were lucky to have him.
George Clark, chairman of Mr Phillips’ Conservative Association, reminded him he had voted Leave, and praised Mrs May as a ‘strong new prime minister’.
A Tory Party spokesman said: ‘Stephen Phillips has been a valuable member of Parliament since 2010 … we are sorry he has chosen to step down. We thank him for his hard work and wish him every success in the future.’