Brexit humiliation was avoidable, Tory rebel says

One of the Tory rebels who helped inflict the embarrassing defeat on Theresa May said the backbench revolt was avoidable.

Stephen Hammond said there was “dismay” on both sides that the situation ended as it did, with 11 Tories rebelling in the Prime Minister’s first significant Commons defeat.

The Wimbledon MP was sacked as Conservative vice-chairman after backing the rebel amendment calling for Parliament to be guaranteed a meaningful vote on the Brexit deal.

“I think, frankly, last night was avoidable and there is dismay on all sides that it got where it did,” Mr Hammond told BBC Radio 4’s Today.

Defending the amendment, he said: “During the campaign last year I thought one of the key tenets of the campaign was that Parliament had sovereignty… what we did last night was to ensure that — not giving great new powers to ministers, not saying that Parliament can’t have a say, but saying that Parliament can have a say.”

He added: “Nothing that happened yesterday stops Brexit, nothing that happened yesterday actually undermines the Prime Minister.”

It emerged that tempers frayed between Tory rebels and Government loyalists in the aftermath of the vote.Former minister Andrew Percy said “there were words” after a band of Tory rebels gathered for a celebratory drink in a tearoom at Parliament.

Mr Percy said: “I told them to pipe down because there’s people sitting there having a quiet drink and they are all cheering and clapping and I don’t think that was appropriate.

“I don’t think them swilling a lot of booze — because they were quite merry — is an appropriate thing.”

However, Anna Soubry, one of the rebel MPs, denied claims published online that they had been “quaffing champagne”, saying: “Nobody drank champagne, not on these benches.”

Tensions spilled over into this morning when Conservative MPs pointedly stood up and left their table when a leading Tory Remainer arrived to have breakfast.