Tories accused over Carlton Club plot to bring down Suella

A BITTER Tory row was raging last night over allegations of a plot by party backbenchers to oust Suella Braverman, just two days after she was accused of a speeding points cover-up.

Senior Conservative MPs are said to have gathered at the Carlton Club – the party’s spiritual home in London – to talk about how to get rid of the outspoken Home Secretary.

There were even suggestions that the plotting began at a private dinner with Sir John Major, although sources insist the former Tory prime minister was not involved in any anti-Braverman briefing.

The alleged Carlton Club conspiracy took place just two days after The Mail on Sunday revealed how Ms Braverman was accused of trying to cover up being caught speeding last year by asking officials to organise a private speed awareness course to avoid publicity.

The Home Secretary, who insisted ‘nothing untoward’ happened and who eventually took three speeding points, has now been cleared of breaking the ministerial code, with backers complaining of a ‘witchhunt’ against her. However, some Tories said last night that the party’s Left do ‘want her gone’ – not over the speeding issue but for what they claimed was her decision to ‘attack her own Government’s immigration policy’ at a controversial National Conservatism rally, organised by US think-tank the Edmund Burke Foundation earlier this month.

Allies of Ms Braverman deny she criticised the policy, saying that in making clear migration numbers had to come down, she was merely endorsing the party’s own 2019 manifesto.

But last night one source claimed that at the dinner with Sir John Major, senior MP Alicia Kearns raised the issue of senior Ministers, including Ms Braverman and Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove, speaking at the NatCon event.

The source said: ‘Alicia did raise it – she made it clear that it was out of order for Suella and Michael to be attending that event. Sir John’s a diplomat, of course, and he didn’t get involved.

‘But there’s a lot of unhappiness among Tory MPs with the harder Right members of the Government. As for Suella, the Left in the party just want her gone.’

However, friends of Ms Kearns insisted last night that at the dinner, attended by about 15 Tory MPs, she had only raised the issue of the NatCon conference indirectly.

They said she had questioned how to stop evangelical Republican conservatives from the US getting into the Tory Party.

Last year, Ms Kearns was accused of being one of the ring-leaders in a plot to oust the-then PM Boris Johnson – with the conspiracy dubbed the ‘Pork Pie Plot’ as she represents Melton Mowbray, home of the traditional pork pie. But yesterday Ms Kearns dismissed talk of an anti-Braverman plot at the Carlton Club as nonsense.

She said: ‘There is absolutely, categorically no plot.’

Other sources said last night that far from talking about Ms Braverman, the ‘roundtable discussion’ with Sir John had focused on party unity and the need to support Rishi Sunak.

A friend of Ms Braverman said that MPs who wanted to oust her ‘would better serve their constituents by supporting the Government and its manifesto pledge to cut migration numbers. Suella has strong support in the party.’

‘The Left in the party just want her gone’