Tory minister’s wife calls Carol Vorderman an ‘attack dog’ and accuses her of ‘inciting hate’

Former Countdown mathematician turned Conservative critic Carol Vorderman is continuing to ruffle Tory feathers this week, with the wife of a cabinet minister claiming the process of her holding electing politicians accountable is, in fact, “inciting hate”.

Felicity Cornelius-Mercer - who is married to Johnny Mercer, the veterans minister – has previously made headlines for branding shortest-serving prime minister Liz Truss an “imbecile” after she dropped Mr Mercer from his ministerial role last year.

She made the comments in a Twitter post back in September, attaching an image which compared Ms Truss to Beaker from the Muppets.

Ouch.

Now Ms Cornelius-Mercer has turned her attention to Ms Vorderman, after the broadcaster criticised the minister’s “car crash” interview on Sky News this week in which he said food bank usage is about “personal decisions” concerning “how people are budgeting”.

After Mr Mercer labelled criticism of his remarks as “collective bed-wetting”, Ms Vorderman clapped back that she was “not sure this abusive tone is right for a minister”.

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Commenting on the Plymouth MP’s defence of Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, she suggested he was “living on a different planet to all polls and the rest of us”.

The spat escalated when the Plymouth MP accused Ms Vorderman of possessing a “warped yet very cosmetic hatred” and called her a “grim” and “deeply unpleasant person”.

Ms Cornelius-Mercer waded in on the situation during an episode of Global’s Difficult Women podcast hosted by Rachel Johnson, the sister of former prime minister Boris Johnson.

Describing Ms Vorderman as a “celebrity attack dog”, she said the TV star “drives me up the f***ing wall”.

Because of course, comparing someone to an animal is absolutely not hateful in the slightest and is absolutely the right way to respond to alleged "hate"...

She continued: “For me, it’s this idea of celebrity attack dogs that know nothing about politics.

“I understand everyone has an opinion on politics, but for me, it’s this blanket hatred… it’s like inciting people to hate all Tories.

“You can’t blanket hate - this is what Vorderman seems to be doing. She keeps using words like ‘disgusting’.”

That’s true. The Pride of Britain Awards host has issued several tweets condemning what she considers “disgusting corruption” in the Conservative government.

She also once compared Mr Johnson to a “dose of diarrhoea’.

Lovely image to picture there.

Ms Vorderman appears to be unphased by Ms Cornelius-Mercer’s comments, though, as she’s since tweeted out a claim that Mr Mercer pays his wife between £35,000 and £40,000 in her role as his principal secretary in his parliamentary office - sharing a screenshot from the unofficial MP Expense Report website.

The site draws upon data from the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, the body responsible for setting MPs salaries as well as the pay of their office staff.

“The Neil and Christine Hamilton of today? Johnny Mercer and his wife.

“[Mr Mercer] pays her in his office £35-40k. She’s paid more than [an] army officer and twice more than [a] young soldier,” Ms Vorderman wrote.

Its latest financial dataset, for the year 2021 to 2022, actually lists Ms Cornelius-Mercer as receiving a salary of between £40,000 to £49,000.

Ms Vorderman also retweeted a tweet critical of Mr Mercer’s comments on BBC Politics Live, in which he insisted water companies are “accountable” over sewage polluting English rivers.

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