Tory leadership contender James Cleverly has denied ever calling plans to deport migrants to Rwanda “batshit”.
New Home Secretary Yvette Cooper accused Mr Cleverly, who was tasked with handling the Conservative government’s flagship asylum seeker scheme when he was home secretary, of calling the plan “batshit crazy”.
But Mr Cleverly told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday: “Yvette Cooper keeps throwing that accusation without evidence.”
Asked if he was denying it, he said: “I’ve never described the Rwanda policy using that word.”
Labour has scrapped the plan to deport some migrants to the African nation.
Mr Cleverly on Tuesday became the first Conservative MP to confirm he would be standing to be the party’s next leader.
He warned that the Tories must “get out of that habit” of political infighting following the mauling the party received at the general election.
“We’ve also got to recognise that at this general election those things we have achieved were overshadowed by a number of negatives, so we didn’t get the cut-through for our successes and the criticisms really, really landed,” he said.
“I think one of the reasons why the criticisms landed, and the good work didn’t get cut-through, is we’d spent too much time rowing amongst ourselves, which gave the impression - the wrong impression - that we were more focused on ourselves than serving the British people. So we have to get out of that habit.”
Nominations to replace Rishi Sunak open at 7pm on Wednesday and will close at 2.30pm on Monday.
Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, Tom Tugendhat, Priti Patel, Suella Braverman and Mel Stride are also expected to announce they are running.
To be considered each contender will need the backing of at least ten Conservative MPs.
The parliamentary party will narrow the list down to four candidates, who will make their case to members at the Conservative Conference in the autumn.
Two final two candidates will then be subject to a vote by party members and the winner announced on November 2.
