CABINET ministers blasted David Cameron yesterday after he accused Boris Johnson of backing Brexit only to boost his chances of becoming PM.
In more stinging criticism from his memoirs, the ex-Tory leader also claimed Boris once suggested reversing the Leave vote.
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The new PM said the Government could hold a second referendum to rejoin the EU after Britain’s membership is renegotiated.
After holding their tongues for the first 36 hours of Mr Cameron’s book serialisation, Mr Johnson’s allies began to snap yesterday.
Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay suggested Mr Cameron had written the controversial remarks to try to boost his book’s sales.
He told BBC Radio 5 Live’s Pienaar’s Politics: “When there’s a book to sell, there’s always excerpts to come from it.
“Everyone thought Remain would win. The easier career route would have been to back Remain.”
‘DARLING OF THE PARTY’
Home Secretary Priti Patel also slammed Mr Cameron for dwelling on the past.
She told BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show: “Obviously the referendum has happened, we’ve all moved on and we’re now working to deliver that referendum mandate. There’s no point going over the past.”
In his autobiography For The Record, Mr Cameron said then-employment minister and Leave campaigner Ms Patel’s attacks on the Government’s immigration record “shocked me most”.
He wrote: “She used every announcement, interview and speech to hammer the Government on immigration, even though she was part of that Government. I was stuck, though: unable to fire her, because that would make her a Brexit martyr.”
Mr Cameron also wrote that Mr Johnson wanted to be the “darling of the party” and “didn’t want to risk allowing someone else with a high profile — Leave chief Michael Gove in particular — to win that crown”.
He said: “The conclusion I am left with is that he risked an outcome he didn’t believe in because it would help his political career.”
Mr Cameron also called his former close friend and BoJo’s leadership rival Mr Gove “a foam-flecked Faragist” and accused him of “disloyalty” to both him and Mr Johnson.
And he said the death in 2009 of his eldest child Ivan, six, made him feel “as if the world stopped turning”. Ivan had Ohtahara syndrome, a rare form of epilepsy.
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