Being sacked by Rishi Sunak after 49 days in the cabinet was “brutal”, a top Tory has said.
Kit Malthouse was briefly Education Secretary while Liz Truss was Prime Minister - but said there was no point trying to sugar-coat his exit from the top team.
And he slammed the decision to let MPs claim Christmas parties on expenses, saying any member who chose to do so would be “out of their mind.”
“It is a brutal game,” he told GB News’ Gloria De Piero.
“I mean, look, he (Rishi) was very polite about it, and I was offered another position, but it wasn't something that I wanted to do.
“And I don't think it's any secret that over the previous year there had been a kind of divergence of view, should we say, about economic policy.
“In this game you’ve always got to have your bag packed. And, you know, it is brutal.”
Mr Malthouse revealed the newly installed PM offered him a different job, but he turned it down because it “would have been interpreted as a demotion.”
He added: “But you've always got to have your bag packed, and you’ve always got to have a Plan B.”
He said the upside of returning to the back benches was that “views that I was giving in private can now be given in public.”
Mr Malthouse went on to say plans announced by expenses watchdog IPSA this week to allow MPs to claim food for staff Christmas parties were “totally bonkers.”
He said: “I don't understand where this has come from. I don't know a single MP who's asked for this. I think any MP who would claim some kind of party on IPSA expenses is out of their mind.”
- “Gloria Meets…” is on GB News on Sundays
