Sajid Javid should have been sacked from the Cabinet after criticising the bombshell Brexit High Court ruling, claims a Tory grandee
Lord Patten said the Communities Secretary 'should have been out on his ear' for his remarks after the bombshell verdict
SAJID Javid should have been sacked from the Cabinet after he criticised the shock High Court ruling blocking Theresa May from kick-starting Brexit, claims a Tory grandee.
Lord Patten of Barnes, who served as a minister under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, said the Communities Secretary "should have been out on his ear" for his remarks in the aftermath of Thursday’s bombshell verdict.
The judgment said the Prime Minister must seek the approval of MPs and peers to trigger Article 50, throwing her timetable for exiting the EU into disarray.
Asked last week if the High Court decision flew in the face of democracy, Mr Javid replied: "Yes, it does."
He added: "This is an attempt to frustrate the will of the British people, and it is unacceptable."
This morning Lord Patten, a former Conservative Party chairman, told ITV's Peston On Sunday the comments made them look “mean and nasty”.
Questioned if Mr Javid would have been ticked off in a Major government for his comments, the peer said: "I think there would have been quite a lot of us who would have been very reluctant to sit around a Cabinet table with him.
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"Theresa May is a brave and decent woman, she made her reputation in politics by condemning the Conservative Party for looking like the nasty party.
"Here we are with a debate in this country that is starting to make us look mean and a bit nasty.”
He added: "The sort of things that (Tory MP) Dominic Grieve who's a very sensible, level-headed former attorney general was saying the other day are alas true.
"Theresa May should make it absolutely clear that she doesn't like the way that tabloid editors have been pushing this debate, that we actually need to be, to behave more decently to one another with a great deal more respect.
"As a couple of bishops have been saying, it's for Theresa May to give that sort of leadership."
Pressed on the issue of whether Mr Javid should be sacked, Lord Patten said: “I certainly don’t think he should say, if he doesn’t know what the rule of law means in politics.
“Look, I used to have his job, when I was negotiating with the Chinese over Hong Kong I remember trying to explain to my opposite number what the rule of law meant, and I said to him ‘look when I was a Cabinet minister the courts would occasionally turn down things which I had decided and I had to accept it’.
“And this Chinese bureaucrat thought I was killing him, thought I was pulling his leg, but that’s what the rule of law actually means.
“Parliament is supreme, the courts can actually intervene when they think the executive has made a mistake.
“I thought that’s what this referendum which I was on the losing side of - and that’s a fact, that’s happened - was all about.”