A Tory leadership candidate has revealed the bizarre middle name he gave his daughter as a tribute to a former prime minister.
Robert Jenrick admitted the youngster’s middle name is Thatcher because she was born in 2013, the same year her famous namesake died.
“I thought it was a good way of reminding her of a great prime minister,” he told a question and answer session at the Tory conference in Birmingham.
Margaret Thatcher was prime minister between 1979 and 1990, winning three general elections along the way.
Jenrick is currently the bookies’ favourite to succeed Rishi Sunak as Conservative Party leader.
However, he has been at the centre of a major row after claiming in a campaign video that the SAS kill terrorists rather than capturing them because they could be released by the European Court of Human Rights.
He has been condemned by his leadership rivals James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat, both of whom served in the Army before entering politics.
Appearing on stage after Jenrick this afternoon, Cleverly said: “I’ve never accused the British armed forces of murdering anybody…anyone who makes that assertion better back it up.”