Theresa May hit out at arch Tory Remainer MP Ken Clarke at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday.
“When I was Home Secretary and he was Justice Secretary, I used to say that I locked ‘em up and he let ‘em out,” she said.
The Prime Minister spoke in response to a question from Labour’s Angela Eagle who said Clarke had compared May to Alice in Wonderland over her plans for Brexit.
Clarke said last week: “Apparently you follow the rabbit down the hole and emerge in a wonderland where suddenly countries throughout the world are queuing up to give us trading advantages and access to their markets that previously we’ve never been able to achieve.”
Eagle said May made an “interesting choice for Alice” and asked her to clarify her post-Brexit trade plans.
Twitter user Nigel Fletcher pointed out that May has been using her joke for some time and that it had been written about in Clarke’s memoirs.
Clarke was caught on camera calling May a “bloody difficult woman” during her campaign for the Tory leadership in July.
“Theresa is a bloody difficult woman, but you and I worked with Margaret Thatcher,” he said during a conversation with the party’s former Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind.
“I get on all right with her and she is good. She’s too narrow on her department ... She’s been at the Home Office far too long, so I only know in detail what her views are on the Home Office. She doesn’t know much about foreign affairs.”