‘Thrasher’ Mitchell never far from the assassin’s dagger

AS A no-nonsense Chief Whip, Andrew Mitchell never hesitated to throw his weight around to enforce loyalty to party leader David Cameron. Mitchell learned the black arts of party discipline in the whips’ office when John Major was Prime Minister and fighting a losing battle with his MPs over Europe. Mitchell’s mentor then was the deputy chief whip, one David Davis.

The pair have been close friends ever since, and now Mitchell stands accused of plotting to install Davis, the Brexit Secretary, in 10 Downing Street in place of Theresa May, whom Mitchell is alleged to have written off as effectively ‘dead in the water’.

It’s reported that during a secret Commons dinner last month, Mitchell said May was weak and had lost her authority, and that the party needed a new leader.

Mitchell has never been a fan of May. He backed Boris Johnson in the last Tory leadership contest. And after May became PM, he was disappointed and surprised not to be recalled to the frontline like David Davis, who had been on the backbenches since 2008.

‘Mitchell is still sore about that,’ says one senior Tory. ‘He’s always harboured grudges.’

Usually, former chief whips are an invaluable reference point for party leaders who hit difficulties.

So FoR Mitchell to be associated with moves against a weakened Prime Minister at such a delicate point in the Brexit process is damaging for his reputation.

But he has form. When Iain Duncan Smith was leader between 2001-03, and the subject of repeated plots against him, the hand of Mitchell was never far from the assassin’s dagger.

Though Mitchell – a vocal supporter of foreign aid – had been a campaign manager for Davis in the 2005 party leadership contest, when Cameron won he swiftly switched allegiances and was rewarded with a frontbench role.

Moved to Chief Whip in 2012, he relished the revival of his old nickname Thrasher, which dates back to the days when he was a prefect at Rugby School.

Talking tough to wayward MPs is one thing. But Mitchell, whose flashes of anger were legendary, overstepped the mark when he raged at police officers in Downing Street in the infamous ‘Plebgate’ row. They were merely doing their job in telling him to use a different gate. And despite his denials that he used the public school insult ‘plebs’, many fellow MPs said it was entirely in keeping with his character. The courts agreed. In 2014, Mitchell lost a High Court case against The Sun over what he’d said to the Downing Street police, which cost him a small fortune in legal fees. Mitchell, 61, who resigned after the Plebgate row, certainly enjoyed a gilded youth that ensured he has an unshakeable certainty about his place in the world: Rugby School, president of the Cambridge University Union Society, the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, the fourth member of his family to become an MP. Today, he leads a comfortable life – the product of family wealth and a preWestminster career with the investment bank Lazard. In 1879, his ancestors set up El Vino wine merchants, which has two bars in London that are favourites with lawyers and City figures. It was sold more than ten years ago, and Mitchell banked £630,000 for his 9 per cent stake. He loves to flaunt his knowledge of wine, and has a magnificent cellar in his £3million house in one of the most fashionable squares in Islington, north London. He and his doctor wife Sharon, one of his most vocal supporters, also have a property in the Midlands. With most Tories expecting May to soldier on, it’s now clear that even if Mitchell’s old pal Davis is the next PM, there is no guarantee he will go straight back into Cabinet. Davis is ‘irritated’ by Mitchell’s latest political misjudgment. As a result, the former party enforcer might have to ‘thrash’ around on the backbenches a little longer as a punishment for his disloyalty to the Tory leader.