Number 10 reins in rising star Dehenna over Farage tribute
THE ‘poster girl’ for the new wave of Tory MPs has been warned by No 10 to rein in her media appearances after seeming to give Nigel Farage, rather than Boris Johnson, credit for Brexit. Dehenna Davison, the 26- year- old MP for Bishop Auckland, infuriated Downing Street by saying that Mr Farage deserved a peerage for his anti-EU campaigning, when the party line is that Mr Johnson should be credited for his work on Vote Leave and then winning a parliamentary majorit y to deliver Brexit. She has also been an outspoken opponent of the high-speed railway line HS2 – at a time when the PM is agonising over whether to go ahead with the project.
But Ms Davison is not alone among the so-called ‘109 club’ of new Tory MPs in ruffling Westminster feathers.
Many of the fresh intake are privately complaining they are being ‘bossed around’ by a sub-group of new MPs who run the ‘109’ WhatsApp group – led by Stafford MP Theo Clarke, a niece of Jacob Rees-Mogg, and Alicia Kearns, MP for Rutland.
After a meeting of the new Tories in the Commons last week, one critic said: ‘There’s a real “them and us” attitude among the 109 group. People such as Theo and Alicia, who were always expected to win on December 12, seem a bit put out that so many other Tories got in on the back of Boris Johnson’s landslide.
‘They’re trying to lord it over us. It’s bloody irritating.’
Ms Clarke and Ms Kearns were unavailable for comment yesterday but friends said: ‘It’s nonsense that anyone is trying to lord it over anyone in the 109 group.’
And allies of Ms Davison insisted she had not been trying to give Mr Farage more credit than the Prime Minister for achieving Brexit.