The former chancellor has pledged to challenge his expulsion from the Conservative Party by “unelected Downing Street advisors who are not Conservatives and who care not one jot whether the party has a future”.
In a strongly-worded article for his local newspaper, The Surrey Advertiser, Philip Hammond said he was in the process of consulting lawyers on the legality of Boris Johnson’s decision to withdraw the whip from him and 20 colleagues who rebelled against the government last week.
Claiming that the Tory ranks have been infiltrated by “entryists and usurpers”, the former chancellor declared that he won’t “have my party taken from me”.
The Runnymede and Weybridge MP added that he has written to the Chief Whip asking him to provide a formal statement of the reasons for the removal of the whip, the process by which that decision was made and the procedure by which it may be challenged.
“We must get Brexit done – and our Bill provides the Prime Minister with the time needed genuinely to negotiate a deal, and leave in an orderly way as soon as possible,” Hammond wrote.
“The National Interest must come before party or personal interest – but I am saddened that the Conservative Party (run by people who were serial rebels under Theresa May) has resorted to purging anyone expressing dissent. We all know only too well where that road ends up”.
Hammond, who resigned as chancellor once Boris Johnson became PM, was one of 21 Tory rebels to be sacked by Johnson after joining a cross-party alliance to block a no-deal Brexit.
The Tory rebels helped opposition MPs inflict a bruising Commons defeat on the government on Tuesday night.
Winston Churchill’s grandson, Nicholas Soames, was among the rebels, as were a number of Tory grandees, including Ken Clarke and Oliver Letwin.
Greg Clark and Rory Stewart, who just weeks ago were ministers under Theresa May, are also among the group now unable to stand as a Tory candidate at the next election.
On Thursday, Chancellor Sajid Javid said Boris Johnson should allow the MPs he purged from the Conservative Party a way back in.
“I would like to see them come back at some point,” he said. “But right now the prime minister had no choice,” Javid told LBC.