Prime Minister Theresa May will reprimand feuding Tory MPs for leaking and briefing against one another, Downing Street has said. A civil war is alleged to have broken out in the party over Brexit.
May’s spokesperson said she would use a meeting on Tuesday to remind her deputies that they should be “having discussions of government policy in private,” according to the Independent.
The intervention comes after ministers targeted Chancellor Philip Hammond by leaking comments he is reported to have made in a recent cabinet meeting. One said he called public-sector workers “overpaid” while another claimed he said driving modern trains is so easy “even a woman can do it.”
On Monday, the Telegraph cited an anonymous cabinet colleague who said Hammond and the Treasury “want to frustrate Brexit” and that pro-Leave ministers are “pirates who have taken [me] prisoner.”
In another briefing, an unnamed ally of Hammond told the Sun that Michael Gove, the environment secretary, was the source of some of the leaks from last week’s cabinet meeting. This has been denied by “friends” of Gove.
In a bid to end the rows, the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs told May they would back any discipline she saw fit, including firing ministers who have routinely gone off message or publicly contradicted each other since the election, according to the Daily Mail.
“She has been informed that the membership are tired of self-indulgent ministers plotting or going AWOL on collective responsibility and that she should tell ministers this,” a senior party source told the newspaper.
