Tory MPs 'will be voting to lose next election' if they sack Boris Johnson, warns Ben Houchen

Writing in The Times, he said a "sense of proportion" is required and Sue Gray's findings will not be a priority for voters by the time of the next General Election.

It came as former No 10 advisor Nikki da Costa revealed to the same paper that part of the reason she is angry about Partygate is because the idea of bereavement support bubbles during lockdown were rejected on the grounds it would "send the wrong message to the public".

Mr Houchen said the Prime Minister is "a one-of-a-kind politician who is able to unite north and south like never before and who understands what really matters to voters and communities across the country".

He added: "This is why the nonsense of what’s happening within the parliamentary party is so infuriating. If they vote to get rid of Boris they’ll be voting to lose the next election.

"In the hot-house atmosphere of Westminster, this very obvious fact is being lost. MPs who only won their red wall seats because of the prime minister seem hypnotised by the repeated insistence of Remainer lawyers and mischievous talking heads that they are somehow required to stab him in the back because his wife popped downstairs during his working day to wish him happy birthday.

"As someone who spends his time in the cooler air of Teesside, I would suggest that they need to pause, think, and recover some sense of proportion."

Mr Houchen said the Conservatives would be judged on how they delivered on levelling up and dealt with cost of living challenges at the next election rather than the findings of the Sue Gray report.

But writing in the same paper, Nikka da Costa, a former director of legislative affairs at No 10 for both Theresa May and Boris Johnson, criticised the Government's failings over Partygate.

She said when she returned to work in Downing Street from maternity leave in October 2020, she was surprised at the "bunker mentality" and a "feeling of being cut off from the world" that had developed among staff that had been working from the office throughout the pandemic while imposing lockdown rules.

"In such conditions it is also easy to become distanced from the impact of the policy you are making," she said.

Ms da Costa, who left Downing Street in summer 2021, revealed that there was one particular policy decision that has made it hard for her to accept the Partygate revelations.

"As we prepared the road map out of lockdown in 2021, I and others pushed again for a policy that had been discounted previously because infection rates were so high: to allow bereavement support bubbles for those who had lost close family, suffered miscarriage, the stillbirth of a child or neonatal death," she said.

"It was worked up as an option for Step 2, the transmission impact would not have been significant, and it was included in a submission to the prime minister. Three days later it was unpicked.

"I wasn’t privy to the discussion but I was told that there was a concern that it would send the wrong message to the public — that an expansion of support bubbles would signal that everyone could relax their guard. I would have liked us to have trusted the public and to have explained why this cohort might be allowed support first. We didn’t. This was the reality of the brutality required for Covid decision-making.

"And this is why I am angry when I see some saying it’s important to get a sense of proportion, because if we in No 10 could be that hard-hearted because we thought it was the right thing to do, then those involved in those kinds of decisions also owed it to the country to be as hard on themselves and their own conduct."

She added that No 10 had failed "as a collective" in following the rules it set but has also let itself down more recently.

"There have been two failings here: what happened and how No 10 reacted. The decision not to be honest and upfront and the message that more junior people should be blamed reflect extremely poorly on the senior leadership."

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