Rory Stewart: Why I Left The Conservatives

4 October 2019, 17:08 | Updated: 4 October 2019, 17:16

Rory Stewart told LBC why he had been thinking of leaving the Conservative party "for some time".

Eddie Mair asked Rory Stewart at what point he felt the Conservative Party wasn't for him anymore.

Stewart said: "I think it's been coming for some time. The first thing was the slow realisation through the leadership campaign that the kind of message I was trying to sell, a message of compromise, arguing the Conservative Party should be in the centre ground, in the end didn't work.

"I couldn't convince enough of my colleagues or my party of that vision."

He then said his decision was reinforced after being thrown out of the Parliamentary party and then sitting in the House of Commons during a "very depressing debate" after the Supreme Court judgement, where everybody was "shouting at each other."

"I began to think really the time has come to get out of Parliament and return to doing something much more practical on the ground and to do it as an independent."