A vice chairman of the 1922 committee of Tory backbenchers made incendiary claims that her “Muslimness” was raised at a meeting in Downing Street that led to her sacking in a 2020 reshuffle.
Following a series of allegations by other MPs of bullying by party whips, Nusrat Ghani, said that, following her dismissal as transport minister, she was told of concerns that “I wasn’t loyal to the party as I didn’t do enough to defend the party against Islamophobia allegations.” A government source strenuously denied the allegations.
The claims are likely to reignite Labour’s claims about Islamophobia in the Conservative Party, after an independent report last year found that anti-Muslim sentiment “remains a problem” within the party.
Ms Ghani is the latest member of the 1922 executive to hit out at the party’s leadership, at a time when the committee could be days away from overseeing a vote of no confidence in Boris Johnson, and has discussed ditching the ban on more than one such vote per year.
William Wragg, her co-vice chairman, was one of the first Tory MPs to call for the Prime Minister to stand down, while Gary Sambrook, one of the 1922’s executive secretaries, has said: “I would expect anyone who is found to have broken the law to seriously consider their position in Government, and that includes the Prime Minister.”
On Saturday, Labour MP Chris Bryant, who is chairman of the Commons Standards Committee, claimed a dozen Tory MPs had allegedly been blackmailed by Government whips – and even by Boris Johnson himself.
“I have even heard MPs alleging that the Prime Minister himself has been doing this,” Mr Bryant told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
“What I have said to all of those people is that that is misconduct in public office. The people who should be dealing with such allegations are the police.
“It is illegal. We are meant to operate as MPs without fear or favour. The allocation of taxpayer funding to constituencies should be according to need, not according to the need to keep the Prime Minister in his job.
“The levelling up funds that have been introduced in the last two years are an open opportunity for Government ministers to corruptly hand out money to some MPs and not to others.”
A spokesman for Downing Street said that an investigation into the allegations of blackmail would only be launched “if there was any evidence” to support the claims, despite calls from Labour and Tory MPs.
A spokesman for the Prime Minister said: “We’re not aware of any evidence to support what are clearly serious allegations.
“If there was any evidence to support it, it would of course be looked at.”
