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“Get a f***ing grip” just isn’t the response Sir Simon Clarke could have been hoping for from fellow Tory MPs when he launched a putsch against Rishi Sunak on Tuesday evening.
The long-standing ally of Liz Truss mentioned his get together risked an election “massacre” except the present prime minister is ousted and that Mr Sunak has gone “from asset to anchor.”
His plan to change Mr Sunak was given acquired quick shrift in a Tory WhatsApp group, with the beforehand talked about sweary riposte reportedly despatched by Tory minister Andrew Bowie.
Senior Conservatives additionally piled in to ship equally scornful verdicts on the Brexiteer’s plan, saying he has “lost his senses”, his coup try would “go nowhere”, and that he was a “self indulgent tosser”.
Former Brexit secretary Sir David Davis mentioned the cabal on the proper of the get together was “getting silly” and Dame Priti Patel mentioned Mr Clarke was participating in “facile and divisive self-indulgence”.
Tory MP Tobias Ellwood chimed in as properly, saying that Mr Clarke was “throwing his teddies in the corner” and that the intervention was “dangerous, reckless, selfish” and “defeatist”.
In truth no-one appears to rallied behind Sir Simon, even his shut ally and mental bedfellow Ms Truss has not joined the cabal to attempt to oust the prime minister.
So simply who’s Sir Simon, the Conservative MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland whose deliberate rebellion against the prime minister appears prefer it’s turning into a damp squib?
Sir Simon grew up in Marton, Middlesbrough, and after college went to Oxford University the place he graduated and later certified as a solicitor.
At college he was chairman of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 2006 and post-graduation would go on to work for Dominic Raab as a parliamentary assistant.
He was later elected as an MP in 2017 after which re-elected in December 2019 as former prime minister Boris Johnson swept to energy.
Sir Simon is a dedicated Brexiteer and submitted a letter of no confidence in Theresa May when she was prime minister in 2018 after her so-called “Chequers Plan” to go away Britain aligned with the EU.
Sir Simon’s loyalty to Mr Johnson was rewarded a few years later when he joined the Cabinet in 2021 as Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
However, Mr Johnson’s premiership got here to an finish after a sequence of political scandals and he was pressured out of No 10 on 6 September 2022 upon his resignation.
Sir Simon refused to be a part of fellow Tory MPs and condemn Mr Johnson, praising him for having “delivered Brexit when no other major politician would or could have” and praised his management throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.
After spending a while on the backbenches he returned to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, beneath Ms Truss’s quick premiership.
He was a dedicated supporter of Ms Truss to win the Tory management in the summer season of 2022 and shares a lot of her political concepts on low taxation, financial progress, slicing pink tape, immigration and the European Union.
After Ms Truss’s disastrous mini-budget financial insurance policies sparked a market disaster she resigned and Sir Simon adopted her in quitting to return to the backbenches.
Shortly after Ms Truss’s resignation he helped arrange the Conservative Growth Group (CGG) in order that allies of the former prime minister might push free market concepts fashionable in the additional proper of the Tory get together.
He is predicted to pay a vital function in Ms Truss’s new faction, the ‘Popular Conservatism’ group, which is being launched early subsequent month.
The new group, which can also be backed by former ministers Jacob Rees-Mogg and Ranil Jayawardena, is being shaped so as to push Mr Sunak’s manifesto additional to the proper prior to this 12 months’s normal election.
He’s additionally proved irritating to Mr Sunak in different methods, as he was one in every of 11 MPs who voted against the prime minister’s Rwanda plan, which succeeded in getting by the House of Commons.
Another notable factor about Sir Simon is his peak, he’s the second tallest MP in the House of Commons. He is 6’7, solely barely shorter than Daniel Kawczynski.
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