Soubry warned this week that her party is at risk losing “a generation” of voters and being consigned to the “wilderness”.
The former minister said her party was now in a “terrible mess” and had allowed Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party to be seen as the party of business, as the Tories brace themselves for heavy defeats at the local elections in May.
“We are actually finding that John McDonnell is more accurately reflecting the views of British business, McDonnell, more accurately reflecting their views, their demands of Brexit, than us as Tories - the party that always that stood up for business. It is indeed absolutely shameful,” she told a Tory Reform Group meeting.