International trade secretary Liam Fox’s warning that some Tories will “have to live with disappointment” has drawn a sharp rebuke from fellow leading Brexiteer Iain Duncan Smith.
After days of Tory turmoil over the government’s Brexit strategy and questions over whether Theresa May can remain as prime minister, Dr Fox called for an end to the Conservative briefing war.
He told the Sun: “It doesn’t help us for people to be involved in this sort of briefing they were over the weekend against individual colleagues because nothing that would happen would change the parliamentary arithmetic.
“We don’t have a working majority, other than with the support of the Democratic Unionists, and we need to accept the reality of that.
“I know that there are always disappointed individuals but they’re going to have to live with disappointment.”
In response, former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith told Dr Fox that the situation would be improved if Cabinet ministers said less and stuck to Mrs May’s stance.
The former self-styled Quiet Man told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I don’t quite know what he means by disappointment. My view is leaving is the right thing to do and we will benefit from it in due course.
“I have a very simple message for my colleagues, generally: people should just calm down. The reality is this was always going to be bumpy.
“I think the best message I might send to Liam Fox and others is that, actually, if Cabinet ministers said a little less and speculated a little less about where they were, and stuck to what Theresa May has said, we might not have all of these disagreements.”
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