A couple of days ago the Tories lost a Greater London Assembly Member (AM). Andrew Boff, an AM since 2008, had applied to be the party’s mayoral candidate, but was turned down because he openly rejected the party policy of ECHR withdrawal, painstakingly established by Kemi Badenoch a year ago. He resigned in protest, and will now sit as an independent.

It’s all very well to talk of the Conservative party being a broad church or a big tent: but there must be limits

It’s all very well to talk of the Conservative party being a broad church or a big tent: but there must be limits

This is being spun as a courageous assertion of principle over dogma, of moderation over a Conservative party that is still a group of zealots in thrall to right-wing extremism. In a waspish resignation statement, Boff referred to the Tories as a party that ‘cannot tolerate support for fundamental human rights’, said they had ‘abandoned’ Conservative principles, and that in any case the London Assembly had no jurisdiction over human rights and therefore his maverick views should have been irrelevant.

He is wrong, and Kemi needs to hold fast on the point of principle.

For one thing, his patrician suggestion that the........

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