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Theresa May's communications chief is 'hard Brexiteer' who wants to 'destroy' bid to reach compromise, ex-Tory MP claims

After resigning party whip, Nick Boles says he 'can be blunt where previously I might have been discreet' 

Henry Austin
Thursday 04 April 2019 08:00 BST
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A former Conservative MP has launched a scathing attack on Theresa May‘s head of communications.

Nick Boles, who dramatically quit the party after series of votes on Brexit earlier this week, accused Robbie Gibb of being “a hard Brexiter who wants to destroy the PM’s new search for a cross party compromise.”

“I am no longer a member of the Conservative Party. So I can be blunt where previously I might have been discreet,” he tweeted, before making the accusation.

Downing Street would not comment on his claims.

Mr Boles resigned from his party’s whip on the floor of the House of Commons, seconds after MPs rejected alternatives to Theresa May’s EU withdrawal deal on Monday.

“My party refuses to compromise,” he said. “I regret therefore that I can no longer sit for this party.”

He later tweeted that he would “sit as an Independent Progressive Conservative.”

The following day the Grantham and Stamford MP told the BBC: ”There are some fine people in the cabinet, genuinely, people who would have been in a cabinet in any age, but this is the worst cabinet collectively not only in my lifetime but I think probably in recorded history.”

He added that Ms May’s successor as prime minister “should not be anyone who is or has been in the cabinet” since 2017.

“None of them in my view has earned the right to lead the country after Brexit – they are all compromised by their collective failure to lead, to unite, to get behind one plan, to sell that plan, to communicate,” he said.

Explaining is decision to resign from the party, he said: “I found myself there, looking around the House of Commons, seeing that the party that was least willing to compromise... was my own. I guess that was when it snapped.”

The highly-critical remarks came after Mr Boles’ Norway-style Brexit proposal was rejected.

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