Nice, Claire Perry
A senior Tory has attacked her own backbenches as "zealots" who talk "bollocks."
After Conservative MP Christopher Chope blocked an FGM bill in the Commons, energy minister Claire Perry let loose in a party WhatsApp group stating that the Tories were condemning themselves to opposition.
Chope has blocked other bills that would have pardoned Alan Turing and made upskirting a criminal offence.
In the messages, reported by
BuzzFeed News, Perry wrote that Chope and his fellow backbenchers Peter Bone and Bernard Jenkin "didn't give a toss."
She said: "They are not politicians they are zealots for whom winning an argument beats winning an election.
"It’s the same with the backstop.
"Is anyone else bored to sobs with fighting this posse of old buffers who have achieved their dream of taking over the party again?", before warning that the Tories would lose the next election and become an opposition party 'of the white shires and shores'.
She added: "Here’s my prediction: mass exodus of Tory talent at the next election just like the last (both voluntary and involuntary) so we can retreat to being an oppo party of the white shires and Shores and we can talk to each other all day long about utter bollocks!
"Oh and those Bally Europeans! A plague on them too! We showed them! Hilarious if it were not so tragic. I’m off to try and help win a by election. Talking to real people not these antediluvian old sods. Have a jolly day ladies!"
She also wrote that Theresa May was "killing herself" to achieve a Brexit deal while a "bunch of old white men no doubt are enjoying their morning coffee served to them by their long suffering wives."
After the leak, Perry said: "As you know I never comment on leaks to the media and I think it’s a good time to stick to that rule.
"But I will say that I have spoken to 3 different associations and two business groups in the past 36 hours and the overwhelming view is that we should back the PM, deliver the deal and avoid a disastrous no deal Brexit that a number of people on the hard right of my party appear to crave."
