Conservative peer Lord Andrew Cooper suspended for backing the Lib Dems

Corruption Level: 10

Content:

David Cameron's former strategy chief became the second Brexit-bashing Tory peer to be suspended by the party after backing the Lib Dems – as John Major warned the party is "losing its way".

Cooper was booted out the Tory parliamentary party for pledging to vote for the Remainer party in the EU elections. Lord Cooper - Cameron's former strategy chief - was the second Tory big beast to desert the party and throw their backing behind the Lib Dems.

Arch-Remainer Michael Heseltine was the first to be suspended for doing the same.

The Tories expected to suffer a bloodbath in the Euro elections as voters punished the crisis-hit party for failing to deliver Brexit. And as the Tory civil war deepened, John Major furiously tore into his kparty for kicking out Remainer rebels. He lashed the "blinkered" decision to suspend the Tory whip from Lord Heseltine.

John Major - one of the poster boys for the failed Remain campaign - raged "I am not the only Conservative who will be dismayed by this decision, which highlights yet again how far our party is moving away from the compassionate and moderate One Nation policies that have enabled the Conservatives to dominate politics for so long." adding "If the views of the Michael Heseltines of our party are no longer tolerated within it, then our party has truly lost its way."

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A Tory spokesman said "Publicly endorsing the candidates of another party is not compatible with taking the Conservative whip in Parliament."