MP’S defection costs Tories their majority

BORIS JOHNSON’S working majority in the House of Commons was eliminated after Phillip Lee crossed the floor to join the Liberal Democrats.

During the Prime Minister’s statement on the G7 summit in the Commons yesterday, the former justice minister walked from the end of the chamber to sit on the Opposition benches.

There are now 309 Conservative MPS in the Commons, excluding the Speaker and one of his deputies, who are technically Tory MPS but do not vote. The Government has a confidence and supply agreement with 10 DUP members, giving it 319 of the 320 MPS required for a majority. Dr Lee, once hailed a future leader of his party, resigned after accusing the Government of using “political manipulation, bullying and lies,” and said it had “gone so far beyond reckless as to cease to be Conservative”.

“The party I joined in 1992 is not the party I am leaving today,” he said. He was welcomed to the opposition benches by Jo Swinson, leader of the Liberal Democrats, who praised his “10 years of parliamentary experience and decades of professional expertise”.

“He shares our commitment to prevent a disastrous no-deal Brexit and to stop Brexit altogether,” she said. Dr Lee is understood to have been in discussions with the Lib Dems for about a month. He voted against leaving the EU in the 2016 referendum, arguing that Brexit was against the business interests of his Bracknell constituency.

In 2018 he resigned as justice minister over Brexit. Earlier this year he lost a vote of no confidence at his constituency Conservative association, which took exception to his position on Brexit.

Joe Armitage, Dr Lee’s former researcher, said: “I’m astonished … he was always contemptuous of the Lib Dems.” His defection prompted Jennie Rigg, who chaired the LGBT+ Lib Dems, to quit, calling him a “homophobe, xenophobe and someone who thinks people should be barred from the country if they are ill”.