A former Tory minister who quit over Brexit has launched a scathing attack on Theresa May’s spin doctor as he accused him of wanting to “destroy” efforts to find a cross-party consensus.
Nick Boles, who dramatically resigned after the second round of indicative votes on Monday, accused Robbie Gibb of trying to thwart efforts to find a compromise in the Commons.
“I am no longer a member of the Conservative Party. So I can be blunt where previously I may have been discreet,” Mr Boles wrote on Twitter on Wednesday evening.
“The Prime Minister’s head of communications Robbie Gibb is a hard Brexiteer who wants to destroy the Prime Minister’s new search for a cross-party compromise.”
Downing Street has not responded to the comments.
It comes three days after Mr Boles resigned the whip and slammed his former colleagues for refusing to compromise.
The MP, who represents Grantham and Stamford, had tabled a Commons Market 2.0 motion in the second round of indicative votes which proposed a Norway-plus style Brexit.
It failed by 21 votes after 282 MPs voted against the motion on Monday.
Addressing the Commons afterwards, Mr Boles said: “I’ve failed chiefly because my party refuses to compromise. I regret therefore to announce that I can no longer sit for this party.”
His motion had suggested the UK take membership of the European Free Trade Association and be part of the European Economic Area.
On his vote losing, he said: "I have given everything to an attempt to find a compromise that can take this country out of the European Union while maintaining our economic strength and our political cohesion."
Explaining his decision to resign, Mr Boles later told the BBC: “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."
