Rory Stewart, former Tory leadership hopeful, quits Conservative party
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The former Conservative leadership candidate Rory Stewart has said he will stand down at the next general election after resigning from the Conservative party.
He announced his resignation in front of an audience of thousands on Thursday night at an event where he read out a letter in which an Eton housemaster described Boris Johnson as being guilty of “a gross failure of responsibility”.
Stewart – who ran to be Tory leader earlier this year but subsequently lost the whip over his opposition to a no-deal Brexit – appeared as a surprise guest at Letters Live, an evening of readings of correspondence.
It’s been a great privilege to serve Penrith and The Border for the last ten years, so it is with sadness that I am announcing that I will be standing down at the next election, and that I have also resigned from the Conservative Party.
At the event, Stewart told the audience that his appearance “constitutes my resignation from the Conservative party”, before reading the 1982 letter to Johnson’s father, Stanley, from his teacher Martin Hammond.
