Backbenchers embrace blue on blue

It’s been a pretty bad-tempered leadership race thus far but at least most of the scrapping has been done by high profile ‘outriders’ of the two main candidates. Now though it seems that this penchant for ‘blue-on-blue’ attacks has spread to the backbenches too as Tory MPs take to Twitter to attack each other’s campaigns.

First up this morning was Michael ‘Fabbers’ Fabricant launching one of his by-now routine attacks on Rishi Sunak, suggesting that everything about his campaign is ‘stage managed, preplanned, and never authentic.’ It prompted Simon Hoare, the standbearer of the Tory left, to fire off a terse response that seemingly poked fun at Fabricant’s infamous blonde hair: ‘Keep your hair on and your hypocrisy to yourself.’