Tories hit back at Sunak critic ‘to get behind PM or get lost’

Senior Tories have turned on Sir Simon Clarke, the former cabinet ­minister, after he called for MPs to oust Rishi Sunak, claiming that the party would be “massacred” at the next election if he remained prime minister.

Priti Patel, the former home secretary, accused Clarke of “facile and divisive self indulgence” and backbench Conservatives used WhatsApp groups to attack the former levelling-up secretary.

One said that critics of the prime minister should “get behind the PM or get lost”, while another described Clarke’s intervention as “profoundly self-defeating”. A senior Conservative source ­accused Clarke of a “self-indulgent ­attempt to undermine the government at a critical moment for the country”.

Clarke is understood to have written to Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 Committee of