Former Conservative chairwoman Sayeeda Warsi has resigned the Tory whip with a stinging blast at the party over its attitude towards Muslims.
The former minister, who is now a peer, has long been at odds with the party over what she once said was ‘institutional islamophobia’ in its ranks.
But in a post on X today the 53-year-old said that the current Tories were now ‘far removed from the party I joined and served in cabinet’ as the party’s first female Muslim minister.
It comes ahead of an election to choose a new leader in the wake of its defeat by Labour on July 4.
The campaign is expected to see a leader from the right of the party installed, after it lost millions of votes to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
Last month Baroness Warsi branded candidate Robert Jenrick ‘a tool’ for suggesting people who say ‘Allahu Akbar’ should be ‘immediately arrested’.
‘My decision is a reflection of how far right my party has moved and the hypocrisy and double standards in its treatment of different communities,’ Baroness Warsi said.
‘A timely reminder of the issues that I raise in my book Muslims Don’t Matter.’
Mr Jenrick was speaking about claims that far-right riots last month had been dealt with more harshly than other recent unrest, pointing to the policing of pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the capital.
But she responded on X, saying: ‘Every day before we start parliamentary business in the Commons and Lords we say a prayer and praise God – we say our parliamentary version of Allah hu Akbars at the heart of democracy – a process Robert Jenrick is a part of.
‘This language from Jenrick is more of his usual nasty divisive rhetoric – he is such a tool.’
She had also previously criticised Mr Jenrick’s former boss at the Home office, Suella Braverman, after she made comments on small boats crossing the Channel, and singled out British Pakistani men over concerns about grooming gangs.
Baroness Warsi was never an MP and was made a peer in 2007 after failing to win Dewsbury at the 2005 election.
She later became a foreign office minister but quit in 2014 over a previous Gaza crisis.
The first Muslim to sit in Cabinet, she stepped down saying government policy towards Israel was ‘morally indefensible’ and warning it could increase the threat of home-grown terrorism from radicalised youths.
However, sources suggested the real reason was her failure to land a plum job in a recent reshuffle – with one saying she even had the ‘ego’ to believe she could have been made Foreign Secretary.