Conservative leadership election: Tory infighting intensifies as Andrea Leadsom attacks Theresa May in migrants row

On the attack: Andrea Leadsom
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Tory infighting intensified today as Andrea Leadsom attacked Theresa May for using migrants as “bargaining chips” and Michael Gove was confronted by an MP who called him a “backstabber”.

The temperature rose as voting began among Conservative MPs in the second ballot to choose two names who will go forward to a vote of 300,000 party members.

Ms Leadsom had a boost when former party leader Lord Howard endorsed her and said that Mr Gove’s dramatic betrayal of Boris Johnson last week had cost him his support.

However, she cut short a speech to supporters and refused to take questions from reporters who wanted to quiz her over accusations that she had exaggerated her City experience in a CV and in public statements. Addressing supporters at Millbank Tower this morning, she took aim at runaway favourite Theresa May for refusing to give a guarantee that European Union nationals living in the UK would retain their rights to stay.

Frontrunner: Theresa May is favourite to win the contest 
Will Oliver/EPA

“I tell you today, I will not use people’s lives as bargaining chips,” she said. “People need certainty and they will get it. I say to all who are legally here, that you will be welcome to stay.”

Tory MPs backi ng her then staged a “march” to Parliament to vote in the ballot, chanting: “What do we want? Andrea Leadsom!”

Her bandwagon was shaken by the row over her CV, though, and her team published a corrected version which they said made clear her seniority in banking had not been exaggerated.

Under fire: Michael Gove 
EPA/Will Oliver

Sources revealed a drama behind closed doors at a hustings in front of more than 200 Conservative MPs last night, where Mr Gove came under fire for destroying Johnson’s campaign by withdrawing his support at the last moment.

The Justice Secretary made an emotional speech about how being adopted had affected his life. But when he told the meeting, “my name is not really Michael,” an MP heckled: “no, it’s Brutus!” Later he was attacked by Graham Stuart, a May backer, who said: “Mich-ael, you promised your support for the leadership and then betrayed him.

“You have just claimed to represent the best traditions of the Tory Party and said we should vote for whoever we think would make the best prime minister, yet you and your supporters have spent the day doing the opposite.”

The latter comment referred to a text sent by Gove campaign chief Nicholas Boles to May supporters which asked them to vote tactically to keep Mrs Leadsom out of the final two.

Mr Stuart — who some MPs claimed used the term “backstabber” — said he had admired Mr Gove but added: “It is clear to me you are not fit for the highest office.”

Lord Howard cited both the Boris affair and the Boles text as black marks against Mr Gove. He told BBC radio: “I have a high regard for Michael ... but I’m afraid the events of last week made it very difficult, I’m afraid, to support him and they appear to have been compounded, I’m afraid, by the text.” Mr Boles’s text to May supporters had said he was “seriously frightened” that if Ms Leadsom made the final two she might win, just as Iain Duncan Smith beat Kenneth Clarke in 2001.

The message said: “What if Theresa stumbles? Are we really confident that the membership won’t vote for a fresh face who shares their attitudes about much of modern life, like they did with IDS?”

Mr Boles has apologised for the text and said Mr Gove knew nothing about it. Mrs May enjoyed the loudest applause at the hustings when she was asked about Kenneth Clarke’s unguarded comment that she was “a difficult woman”.

The Home Secretary mused: “I suppose I can be — and Jean-Claude Juncker will be the next person to find that out!”

Ms Leadsom told the hustings she would not be releasing her tax returns, as other candidates have, unless she made the run-off.

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