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Tory modernising wing has been destroyed, say defecting trio of MPs Conservative split as rebels denounce grip of hardline Brexiters
(about 5 hours later)
Three Conservatives have quit their party to join the new Independent Group of MPs, declaring that hard Brexiters have taken over and that the modernising wing of the party has been “destroyed”. Three Conservative MPs who resigned to join a new independent group on Wednesday said Theresa May had allowed their former party to fall prey to hardline Brexiters and declared that the Tory modernising project had been destroyed.
Anna Soubry, Sarah Wollaston and Heidi Allen explained their decision to join the new group, founded this week by seven Labour MPs, who also left their party.
In a devastating critique of Theresa May’s handling of the Brexit negotiations, the three MPs said, at a press conference Wednesday afternoon, that the Tories had lurched to the right, adopting Ukip policies and pursuing a hard Brexit.
Their move reduces May’s already tenuous working majority to eight, raising still more questions over her authority amid rumours that there could be further Tory defections to come.
Allen, who represents South Cambridgeshire, said she felt “so excited, in a way I haven’t felt since I was first elected ... I, we are prepared to dare to dream that this could be possible”. She said she was driven out of the party not only by Brexit but by the Tory record on austerity. “I believed I was part of a party that worked collaboratively, welcomed knowledge and had the capacity to feel, but I have slowly realised that I have not.”
Wollaston, who represents Totnes in Devon, said she had come to the conclusion she would no longer recommend that people voted Conservative. “Would I have joined the party in 2009 … if the party had looked then as it did today? And the answer is no,” she said. “And if I wouldn’t encourage others to vote Conservative in a general election, then how can I possibly continue with the Conservative whip?”
Soubry, elected as MP for Broxtowe in Nottinghamshire, said the decision had come “with a great deal of thought and a considerable amount of heartache” and that other Conservative MPs were close to the edge.
“You don’t join a political party to fight it … The truth is the battle is over and the other side have won,” she said. “Dear friends, now former colleagues, who share those one-nation values and principles will deny it. But I believe in their heads and in their hearts that they know it is over. Brexit now defends and shapes the Conservative party. I’m not leaving the Conservative party, it has left us. The modernising reforms that had taken years to achieve were destroyed.”
The three resigned in a letter to the prime minister on Wednesday, writing: “We no longer feel we can remain in the party of a government whose policies and priorities are so firmly in the grip of the ERG and DUP. Brexit has redefined the Conservative party – undoing all the efforts to modernise it. There has been a dismal failure to stand up to the hardline ERG, which operates openly as a party within a party, with its own leader, whip and policy.”
'We can no longer act as bystanders. We are honour bound to put our constituents’ and country’s interests first.' Read the letter to the Prime Minister from @heidiallen75 @Anna_Soubry and @sarahwollaston #ChangePolitics pic.twitter.com/1HxHOULbft
The Independent Group was formed on Monday by the erstwhile Labour MPs, who include Chuka Umunna, Luciana Berger and Chris Leslie. Joan Ryan became the eighth MP to quit Labour and join the group on Tuesday night. The MPs said they felt it necessary to leave Labour because of the leadership’s Brexit policy and failure to tackle antisemitism in the party.
In a statement, Theresa May said she was disappointed by the decision of the three to leave her party. “I am saddened by this decision. These are people who have given dedicated service to our party over many years, and I thank them for it,” she said. “Of course, the UK’s membership of the EU has been a source of disagreement both in our party and our country for a long time. Ending that membership after four decades was never going to be easy. But by delivering on our manifesto commitment and implementing the decision of the British people we are doing the right thing for our country. And in doing so, we can move forward together towards a brighter future.”
The prime minister added that she was determined the Conservatives would still offer the “decent, moderate and patriotic politics that the people of this country deserve”.
At the press conference all three of her departing MPs said they had lost faith in the politics of compassionate Conservatism, championed by David Cameron, which had drawn them to the party.
Allen said she had been inspired by Cameron and the party’s “competence and compassion” but said she had found herself “so often going over the top, fighting for compassion in our welfare system” and that the party had “deepened rather than fixed” people’s suffering.
Wollaston, chair of the health select committee, said she had originally hoped May would be able to change things. “The prime minister hasn’t delivered on the pledge she made on the steps of Downing Street to tackle the burning injustices,” she said.
The group said they intended to sit as independents, like the eight MPs who have quit Labour. “There will be times when we will support the government, for example, on measures to strengthen our economy, security and improve our public services,” the three MPs said in their letter. “We will continue to work constructively, locally and nationally, on behalf of our constituents.”
Before their press conference, Soubry, Wollaston and Allen entered the chamber of the Commons together and went to their new colleagues on the opposition benches. All 11 MPs sat together during an occasionally surreal prime minister’s questions, where both May and Corbyn studiously ignored the defections in their exchanges.
Tory sources suggested the Conservative associations of the three MPs would be free to start selecting new Conservative candidates. A No 10 spokesman said, however, that it was not insisting the MPs fought byelections and that it was hoped one day that the trio would return.
The resignation of three Tory MPs is a dire warning to the party | Andrew GimsonThe resignation of three Tory MPs is a dire warning to the party | Andrew Gimson
Phillip Lee, who quit as a justice minister to back a second referendum, had been tipped as another potential Tory departure, but he ruled out the move Wednesday morning. Sam Gyimah, who also resigned as a minister over the government’s position on Brexit, ruled out joining the Independent Group on Tuesday. In the latest evidence that Brexit is reshaping the political landscape, Heidi Allen, Anna Soubry and Sarah Wollaston, all outspoken critics of May’s stance on Europe, said that the Conservative party as they had known it under David Cameron was dead.
Others who have previously been critical of the Tory approach to Brexit, including Nick Boles and Antoinette Sandbach, both ruled out quitting the party. “I’m not leaving the Conservative party, it has left us,” said Soubry, at a hastily-convened press conference around the corner from the House of Commons. “The modernising reforms that had taken years to achieve were destroyed.”
A Labour source said the defections meant “the Independent Group has now become a Tory establishment coalition”. The source added: “What unites the 11 MPs is their business-as-usual support for austerity, corporate tax cuts and big-money corrupting politics.” The dramatic resignations – announced shortly before May confronted Jeremy Corbyn at prime minister’s questions – sent shockwaves through Westminster, where MPs had barely digested news of the Labour split.
And the move reduces May’s already tenuous working majority to eight, raising still more questions over her authority amid rumours that there could be further Tory defections to come.
The arrival of former Conservatives in the Independent Group, alongside breakaway Labour MPs including Chuka Umunna and Chris Leslie, was immediately seized on by the Labour leadership, which stepped up attacks on the defectors.
“The fact is they have formed what is effectively an establishment coalition based on the failed and rejected policies of the past, austerity corporate tax cuts, privatisation,” Corbyn’s spokesman told journalists.
“It’s precisely because those policies were seen to have failed and were rejected that the direction under the Labour party has changed since Jeremy was elected. And we demonstrated at the general election that a different approach has mass electoral appeal.”
'We can no longer act as bystanders. We are honour bound to put our constituents’ and country’s interests first.' Read the letter to the Prime Minister from @heidiallen75 @Anna_Soubry and @sarahwollaston #ChangePolitics pic.twitter.com/1HxHOULbft
Shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon, a close ally of Corbyn, compared what he called “Chuka’s coalition” with the national government formed by Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald in 1931, which implemented “deep cuts and attacks on working class communities”.
However, some senior Labour figures have taken a markedly more sympathetic tone towards the departing MPs. Tom Watson told a caller to LBC on Wednesday: “We’ll fight those antisemites, we’ll deal with those bullies. We’ll bring half a million Labour members together and we’ll go out on the doorsteps and try to make this party electable.”
The Independent Group was formed on Monday by the erstwhile Labour MPs, who include Luciana Berger and Chris Leslie, as well as Umunna.
Joan Ryan became the eighth MP to quit Labour and join the group on Tuesday night. The MPs said they felt it necessary to leave Labour because of the leadership’s Brexit policy and failure to tackle antisemitism in the party.
The eleven-strong parliamentary grouping formed by the breakaway MPs is not yet a formal political party but its founders hope to swell their numbers further in the coming days. Several potential defectors told the Guardian they were not ready to join the group – “yet”.
Soubry said she and her Tory colleagues had picked up the baton handed to them by Umunna; and were now holding it out to other “one-nation Conservatives”, dismayed by May’s failure to take a no-deal Brexit off the table.
“Dear friends, now former colleagues, who share those one-nation values and principles will deny it. But I believe in their heads and in their hearts that they know it is over,” she said, adding, “the battle is over, the other side has won”.
“The right wing, the hardline, anti-EU awkward squad that have destroyed every leader for the last 40 years are now running the Conservative party from top to tail – they are the Conservative party.”
The group has not yet published any policy proposals, just a set of values, including supporting “a diverse, mixed social market economy” and removing the barriers of “poverty, prejudice and discrimination” to ensure inequalities can be “reduced through the extension of opportunity”.
The challenges of uniting them around a joint policy position were underlined at Wednesday’s press conference when Soubry was asked about the spending cuts of the 2010-15 coalition government, in which she was a minister.
“I think the things we did to the economy were absolutely necessary at the time. I don’t have a problem with that,” she said. Leslie, who as shadow chancellor criticised the 2015 Labour manifesto as too leftwing, later said the party was keen to be forward-looking.
Wollaston pointed out that after the prime minister lost the meaningful vote on her Brexit deal by an unprecedented margin of 230 votes last month, she promised to seek a cross-party solution – but the first group she consulted was the ERG.
In their joint resignation letter, the three MPs said": “We no longer feel we can remain in the party of a government whose policies and priorities are so firmly in the grip of the ERG and DUP. Brexit has redefined the Conservative party.”
But Allen, who represents South Cambridgeshire, said of the new grouping that she felt “so excited, in a way I haven’t felt since I was first elected ... I, we are prepared to dare to dream that this could be possible”.
The latest defections are unlikely to change the parliamentary arithmetic in next week’s crucial votes, because the eleven MPs were already confirmed Brexit rebels.
But they underlined the sense that both May and Corbyn have struggled to contain the deep divisions in their parties, on Brexit and beyond.
A string of ministers are privately warning that they are prepared to vote against the government and back Yvette Cooper’s bid to force an extension to Article 50, rather than allow May to continue using the threat of a no-deal Brexit as a bargaining chip.
Before flying to Brussels for talks with Jean-Claude Juncker on Wednesday, May said she was “saddened” by the decisions of Soubry, Allen and Wollaston to resign, saying they were “people who have given dedicated service to our party over many years, and I thank them for it”.
Despite the divisions over Brexit, she said: “I am determined that under my leadership the Conservative party will always offer the decent, moderate and patriotic politics that the people of this country deserve.”
Work and pensions secretary Amber Rudd tweeted that she was keen to continue to work with the departing Tory MPs on “a number of important issues”, including Brexit, in the future.
Soubry suggested she and her colleagues would support the prime minister in any future no-confidence vote in the government, because now was not the time for a general election. May survived a no confidence vote with a majority of 19 last month.
Despite the extraordinary drama, neither party leader mentioned the resignations at prime minister’s questions, as the 11-strong independent group sat perched high up on the opposition benches.
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