UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has sacked senior MP Julian Lewis from the Tory party for “colluding with Labour and the SNP” to get the position of Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament (ISC), reports The Daily Mail.
According to a cited government source, Lewis was stripped of his whip “because he worked with Labour and other opposition MPs for his own advantage”.
In a move confirmed by a Conservative party spokesman, Lewis, MP for New Forest East, was appointed to the powerful position at the last moment on support of all four Labour and SNP members of the Conservative-dominated committee in what was dubbed a “Westminster coup”, trumping the perceived No 10 choice, former justice and transport secretary Chris Grayling.
All Tory MPs had been expected to back Boris Johnson’s allegedly hand-picked candidate to head the body that oversees MI5, MI6 and GCHQ operations, writes the outlet, despite some questioning the expertise of the former minister, whose career had earned him the nickname “Failing Grayling”.
Former national security adviser Lord Ricketts had been cited as suggesting that Grayling did not “match up” to the reputation of former chairs.
Earlier, Johnson had been criticized for taking months to appoint the committee, which had not met since the last parliament was dissolved in November 2019.
Last week, however, the prime Minister nominated five Conservative MPs for the committee, endowing them with a majority.
Grayling had nominated himself the previous day and was believed not to have anticipated a challenge.
‘Failure of Intelligence’
Labour Party deputy leader Angela Rayner branded the removal of Lewis as "grubby" as she went on Twitter to question who had ordered that the long-serving MP be booted.
Condemning the move by Downing Street, Labour former frontbencher Chris Bryant was quoted as saying:
"It's a momentous failure of intelligence when a PM takes months to handpick Intelligence and Security Committee members so as to deliver the Chair he wants and they refuse to do his bidding. To then chuck the new chairman out of the party is to lose control/the plot."
SNP defence spokesman Stewart McDonald MP was similarly deprecatory of the move.
“With his abysmal record of failure as a Tory minister, Chris Grayling is the only man who could lose a rigged election but it is right the committee has elected a chair and it should now get on with the crucial job of ensuring scrutiny and oversight of security matters, after months of delay,” McDonald was quoted as saying.
The ISC is now expected to meet today and agree to publish a long-awaited report into alleged Russian meddling in the UK's democratic electoral process as early as next week, initially delayed from publication so as not to interfere in last year's parliamentary elections.