Andrea Jenkyns tells Tories who don’t want Brexit to ‘sod off to Lib Dems’
Andrea Jenkyns tells Tories who don’t want Brexit to ‘sod off to Lib Dems’
Tory MPs who refuse to get behind Brexit should “sod off to the Lib Dems”, Dame Andrea Jenkyns has said.
Taking aim at Damian Green after he warned against Tory MPs “leaning too far to the right”, the deputy chair of the Brexit-supporting European Research Group claimed “One Nation” policies belonged with the Liberal Democrats.
She told Patrick Christys on GB News: “This One Nation Group make up the majority of the Parliamentary party but these are the ones who didn’t want Brexit, who didn’t want Boris, who didn’t want Liz Truss, so they’re not really in tune with the British public.
“Isn’t Damian Green the one who got deselected by his own association back in February?
“I don’t think the Tory party are going far enough [to the right] actually. If you look at the group, they’ve never accepted Liz [Truss], they never accepted Boris and it’s about time that we started having policies that were in our manifesto and that speak to people.
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“If you look at 2015, which is when I was elected, that was Cameron, who is back in Government, and I have said that I like Cameron, but not for this time and place.
“But back in 2015, we only won six seats off the Labour party with this One Nation type of Conservatism. To me, some of these policies belong with the Lib Dems.
“It was in 2019 we won all these seats off Labour so we need to go more centre-right; it’s obvious if we want to keep these seats. This is what we got elected on.
“They clearly want to obliterate the centre-right out of the party, which is why they got rid of the last two leaders
“I want to stop net zero, I want strong borders, I want strong policing like the 80s where they used to drag protestors off the streets.
“We want strong policies and Damian Green, as I said, got deselected himself but you can see it happening with other MPs or them not winning their seat if they carry on down this road of Lib Demism rather than true Conservatism, in my books.”
Responding to the question that some might say that she is a fringe radical’, she said: “Sod off to the Lib Dems.”
Dame Andrea’s blistering intervention comes after Mr Green suggested the Tories were learning too far towards the right in a bid to win back voters.
In a radio interview on Sunday, the MP for Ashford said: “If you read all the papers this morning, then practically every tax in the country is going to be cut on Wednesday…I hate to spoil everyone’s day, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
Stephen Hammond, the MP for Wimbledon and a member of the One Nation group, said: “For too long we have been too quiet and these ideas are the fresh start of renewal for our caucus.”
He added: “Our voice should be heard because our voice resonates with the voters. One Nation Conservatism must be the leading light for our party, ensuring sensible, pragmatic politics leads our party. Without this, we risk falling into an unrecoverable position with most of the voters.”
But Dame Andrea has called for the Tory Party to find its true values again to “kick start the economy” and put Thatcherism at its heart.
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She said: “We want our party back, we want Thatcherism to be at the heart of our party, we want low taxes, strong on immigration, strong on policing and let’s kick start the economy again. It should be about social mobility as well.”
Dame Andrea also agreed with the idea that the country is too afraid of offending certain elements of the British Muslim community.
She said: “100 percent. When the Batley school teacher – it was ridiculous that he was having death threats and he still hasn’t gone back to school and he was hiding because he had offended certain elements of our community.
“It goes against free speech. Surely the whole point is that we should be able to debate topics.
“It’s a sad state of affairs when our school teachers fear being able to speak out.”
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