The Mail on Sunday

Now he vows: I’ll sue over rebel ‘purge’

- By Glen Owen

PHILIP HAMMOND hit out yester- day against the ‘purge’ of his fellow Tory rebels – and warned that he was taking legal action about the ‘lawfulness of the actions’ taken against him by Boris Johnson’s beleaguere­d administra­tion.

The former Chancellor, who was thrown out of his party for voting on Tuesday to back the bill blocking a No Deal Brexit, told his local newspaper: ‘This is my party, and I am not going to be pushed out of it by unelected Downing Street advisers who are not Conservati­ves and who care not one jot whether the party has a future. Nor will I have my party taken from me by entryists and usurpers who have infiltrate­d the party ranks in an attempt to turn it from a centreRigh­t broad church into an extreme Right-wing faction’.

The MP for Runnymede and Weybridge added in the Surrey Advertiser: ‘I am currently taking legal advice with regard to the lawfulness of the actions taken against me and my colleagues last week and the processes that have been followed.

‘In the meantime, I have written to the Chief Whip, asking him to provide a formal statement of the reasons for the removal of the whip, the process by which that decision was made and the procedure by which it may be challenged.’

Mr Hammond added: ‘ I will decide in due course how I intend to proceed and my colleagues will reach their own decisions. We must get Brexit done – and our Bill provides the Prime Minister with the time needed genuinely to negotiate a deal and leave in an orderly way as soon as possible.

‘The national interest must come before party or personal interest – but I am saddened that the Conservati­ve Party, run by people who were serial rebels under Theresa May, has resorted to purging anyone expressing dissent.

‘We all know only too well where that road ends up.’

Mr Hammond won his reselectio­n vote in his constituen­cy only shortly before his rebellion, and has vowed to put up ‘the fight of a lifetime’ over the attempt to kick him out.

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