Dr Andrew Murrison, the Conservative MP for South West Wiltshire and Foreign Office minister has criticised former Chancellor Philip Hammond’s comments over the current state of the Conservative Party as ‘unalloyed nonsense’.

Mr Hammond, who lost the Tory whip after working with the Opposition in a bid to force prime minister Boris Johnson to seek yet another extension on the UK’s exist from the European Union, said on Sunday that ‘Conservative Party has been taken over by unelected advisors, entryists and usurpers who are trying to turn it from a broad church into an extreme right-wing faction. Sadly, it is not the party I joined.’

But Dr Murrison, who describes himself as a ‘centrist socially liberal Brexiteer’, Tweeted on Monday: ‘Unalloyed nonsense. I served under ‘funereal Phil’. His departure shifts party towards the centre, not the right.’

He also described the former Chancellor as a ‘right-wing unreconciled Remainer’ and linked to an  article which stated that back in 1994 Mr Hammond had published pro-hanging literature during a by-election.