Join the Tories and we’ll start a grassroots revolt, urges Rees-mogg
JACOB REES-MOGG has urged Tory supporters opposed to the Chequers deal to join the party and help change it from within in a grassroots rebellion.
The Prime Minister is facing a backlash from Conservative associations across the country over her proposed Brexit plan, which Eurosceptic MPS and Leave voters have described as a “betrayal”.
Several Tory association chairmen are openly calling on the Prime Minister to stand down, while some members have posted pictures of themselves ripping up their membership.
However, Mr Rees-mogg suggested that Conservative voters should instead join the party in order to affect change. He told The Daily Telegraph: “People shouldn’t leave the party at a moment like this. It is our party. It isn’t Theresa May’s party, it wasn’t David Cameron’s party, it is our party. People should consider joining or rejoining so we can take back control of party policy and ensure that we get the right Brexit.”
Andrew Bridgen, a Eurosceptic Tory MP who has submitted a letter of no confidence in the Prime Minister, said: “We’re fighting for the heart and soul of the party, and the deal we agree with the EU will be in perpetuity.”
Conservative Party membership, which costs £25 a year, enables people to have a vote in any leadership contest. Frustration is growing among Conservative backbench MPS over the agreement reached by Mrs May’s Cabinet on Friday last week, which has so far seen five members of her Government – including Boris Johnson and David Davis – resign in protest.
The deal, due to be set out in a White Paper today, has been condemned by Mr Johnson, while two vice-chairmen of the party have warned the concessions offered to Brussels would hand “Jeremy Corbyn the keys to No10”.
At least two Tory MPS have submitted letters of no confidence to Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 Committee, while more than a dozen are believed to have held back in the hope that Mrs May can be forced into a reversal.
Ed Costelloe, the chairman of Grassroots Conservatives, the campaign group, said: “Mrs May has a choice between a Remain that Brexiteers can live with, or the Brexit that the majority voted for in the referendum. If she chooses the former she will lose the support of many core Conservative supporters, donors, members and canvassers at the grassroots and the trust of many others. It will become a party of the elite with little grassroot support.”
John Thorne a Somerset county councillor and executive member of Taunton Deane Conservative Association said: “I will now not be going out campaigning and running myself into the ground at the next general election like I have done for the past several elections if Theresa May is still leading us. I probably will not even vote Conservative if I even vote at all.” A senior source in the East Midlands Conservative Party said that membership subscriptions had “imploded” in recent months, adding that Mrs May’s Brexit negotiating was driving people away.
“We experienced a drop during and after the referendum when Remainers left,” the source continued. “But now this deal risks p----- off the people who have stuck with the party, the vast majority of whom voted to leave.”
Peter Bone, the MP for Wellingborough and Rushden and former chairman of Grassroots Out, said: “I strongly recommend that Conservative members stay and resist the urge to tear their cards up in anger, because that is self-defeating.”