A Tory peer has hit out at the “loony Brexit road” the party has gone down since the referendum in 2016.
Ed Vaizey that while be supported “Conservative principles”, he could not back the party’s approach to its relationship with the European Union.
The former culture minister, who was made a peer in 2019, hit out as he appeared on the BBC’s Politics Live programme today.
He said: “I take the Conservative whip in the House of Lords but I’m not a government minister.
“I support Conservative principles, but I don’t obviously support the loony Brexit road that the Tories have gone down.
“I use the loony border controls that the Brexiteers have imposed on us as a good example of why this is a pointless debate. We’ve just apparently spent five billion quid on border controls near Dover.
“Governments will always find money for the things they have to spend money on. Taxes have gone up because of Covid and they’ve gone up because of the recession.
“The reason I am a Tory is because instinctively we are a party that would like to reduce taxes where we can, but I find the whole tax-cutting debate completely pointless because people forget Margaret Thatcher raised taxes in the early 80s in order to stabilise the economy as she saw it.”