‘Like Napoleon marching in Moscow, Boris cannot hold his position because he has now cut off his own support'

AS THE “pork pie plot” by Conservative MPs to oust Boris Johnson began to unfold last Tuesday, Government whips were deployed to save their boss.

- David Maddox and David Williamson

Responsible for party discipline, the whips get their name from the 18th century, when MPs spent more time fox hunting than legislating.

A “whipper-in” was a huntsman’s assistant, who kept the hounds from straying by driving them back with a whip into the main body of the pack.

But with the Prime Minister turning into the quarry over the Downing Street party revelations, Chief Whip Mark Spencer, a farmer not adverse to riding to hounds, is understood to have ordered his team to do what was necessary to prevent a coup.

One strode up and angrily berated a rebel MP: “I can’t believe your disloyalty to the PM!”

The object of his ire, Andrew Bridgen, calmly responded: “I have a handwritten letter from Boris from 2016 when I was one of the 26 MPs to stick with him for his leadership bid after Michael Gove did the dirty on him. He said in that letter ‘I will never forget your loyalty’. Well, since he became Prime Minister I have never been offered a job, my constituency has been denied the levelling up money and HS2 is still going to run through it.

“I think it is quite clear that he has forgotten my loyalty.”

Mr Bridgen is not an embittered Remainer but one of the Brexit spartans who held out against Theresa May’s compromise and paved the way for Boris Johnson to become leader.

He has been willing to do the hard yards of defending the Government in sticky crises, appearing on programmes such as Channel 4 News, which are seen as anti-Tory.

“I don’t think Boris knows who his friends are,” Mr Bridgen ruminated afterwards. Another Red Wall MP added: “I’m not sure he has any real friends. The problem is he just relies on a very small clique.”