FORMER Government minister Jesse Norman has branded Conservative leadership candidate Robert Jenrick’s Party conference speech “lazy, mendacious, simplistic tripe”.

The Hereford and South Herefordshire MP, whose constituency includes Ross-on-Wye, weighed into his party colleague after Mr Jenrick told the conference in Birmingham he would end illegal migration, take Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights, and stand up for British culture.

In a speech pitched to the party’s right, the Newark MP name-checked former Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher, the day after revealing he had given one of his daughters the middle name ‘Thatcher’.

But Mr Norman tweeted afterwards: “I am very sorry to have to say it, but that speech of Robert Jenrick’s was lazy, mendacious, simplistic tripe.”

Among nearly 500 replies, Coun Diana Toynbee, the new Green leader on Herefordshire Council and the party’s unsuccessful opponent of Mr Norman at the general election, replied: “Hear, hear.”

Mr Norman has previously backed Kemi Badenoch to take the helm of the party, who also addressed the conference alongside the other two candidates, Tom Tugendhat and James Cleverly, on Thursday.

Mr Jenrick, who owns Eye Manor near Leominster, has so far garnered the most support from parliamentary colleagues.

But pundits concluded that Mr Cleverly’s speech, focusing on his track record inside and outside of government, came across as the strongest.

Writing inThe Independent in a no holds barred opinion piece, Mr Norman earlier warned “it is quite possible that without drastic remedial action the Conservative parliamentary party will be wiped out altogether come the next election in 2028-9”.

He said the party now needed to “rediscover its own duties” and not simply serve “as a vehicle for individuals’ personal ambition”.

And he suggested future party candidates should have to “demonstrate that you were a real conservative, and show us that you made a meaningful commitment to public service, before you sought public office”.