Having dodged any sanctions for his failure to declare business interests (sound familiar?), Gavin Barwell has returned to the House of Lords to be told he’s not welcome – by his own party.
WALTER CRONXITE, Political Editor, on how the Curse of Croydon Central has struck again
‘Wet as a flannel’: Gavin Barwell’s been cold-shouldered by the Tories
Gavin Barwell, the former MP for Croydon Central and sometime Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Theresa May, has had the Conservative party whip removed from him in the House of Lords.
Barwell, who was made a peer in May’s resignation honours in 2019, said today that he had not been informed that he was to be subjected to the ultimate indignity that a parliamentarian can suffer: being sacked by his own side.
Portrayed in the right-wing press as a “purge of the wets”, Barwell’s high-profile sacking is the latest episode in the spiralling decline of the Tories in a decade-long Brexit psychodrama that has seen the Conservatives reduced to a mere rump in Parliament.
And it appears that the Curse of Croydon Central has struck again, too.
Barwell’s defenestration means that all three of the MPs for the Croydon Central constituency between 1997 and 2017 have been subject to party disciplinaries: Geraint Davies (Labour) and Andrew Pelling (Conservative), like Barwell both former councillors in Croydon, also had the whip removed from them. In the case of Pelling, it was Barwell who made moves to ensure that his former Town Hall colleague could not be re-selected by the Tories for the 2010 General Election.
Losing patience: Kemi Badenoch
It appears that Badenoch has decided to make an example of Barwell. It is not much of a sacrifice for the Tories, as Barwell has barely attended the Lords for the past three years.
It is four years since Inside Croydon was reporting “Barren” Barwell as declaring himself to be “politically homeless”. Being politically jobless has not stopped “Barren” Barwell from raking in the cash from various positions and consultancies which lean heavily on his time in Downing Street or as housing minister.
In 2023, Barwell “did a Farage”, and took an indefinite leave of absence from the Lords after a critical Standards Commissioner review over undeclared business interests, which were exposed by Inside Croydon.
Barwell’s leave of absence (for never specified reasons) ended in October 2025. Now it has been decided that Barwell won’t have the party whip restored.
The move comes after Badenoch warned that former Tory MPs would not be reselected as candidates if they refused to back her bat-shit stance on issues like leaving the European Convention on Human Rights and abandoning Net Zero targets (in the middle of a deadly heatwave).
At the weekend, Badenoch said she was building a “party for the future”, not a “retirement home for failed politicians”. Meowww!
Sideline critic: Barwell has been critical of other Tory leaders, even during his ‘leave of absence’ from the Lords
Barwell has been outspoken about Badenoch repeatedly, describing her “poor strategic judgement”.
On ECHR, which was championed by Churchill, Barwell tweeted: “All my life until now the Conservative Party has supported membership of the ECHR. So the problem is not that I am a closet LibDem. It is that the Conservative Party has chosen to become a Reform tribute act.”
And he called Badenoch’s stance on climate change “a combination of bad policy and bad politics”.
Barwell wrote: “History will not judge abandoning efforts to avoid warming of more than 1.5C well.”
He doubled-down on his comparison with the Farage party. “There’s no future in being a Reform tribute act.”
Last week, as Britain sweltered in the third heatwave of the summer, he said the Tory climate policies placed them on “the wrong side of history”.
A letter from the Tories’ chief whip in the Lords, Baroness Williams, was leaked to the press last night. Barwell says he first saw it when a friend forwarded a journalist’s tweet.
Williams wrote: “In recent months, you have also made a series of public statements directed against both the Leader of the Opposition and the Conservative Party.
“Robust debate and differences of opinion have always been part of our party’s tradition. However, there is an important distinction between disagreement and conduct that undermines the discipline and mutual respect upon which any serious political party depends.
“I expect those who take the Conservative whip to uphold standards of collective responsibility, engage constructively with the party’s internal processes and treat colleagues with the respect necessary for effective teamwork. Your repeated public attacks on the party and your refusal to engage with those processes have fallen short of those standards.”
Whipping up a row: Baroness Susan Williams
Baroness Williams, promoted to the House of Lords for nothing more than being a former council figure in the north-west, appeared particularly put out that Barwell hadn’t come knocking at her office door to pledge his undying allegiance to St Kemi, to tug his forelock (if he had one) or some such moribund ritual. “When you took your leave of absence from the House of Lords,” her Ladyship wrote, “it followed that you did not receive the Conservative whip.
“Upon your return you did not afford me the courtesy of coming to see me, despite being asked to do so by your whip.” Oooo!
Today, Barwell wrote that his sacking “came as something of a surprise because no one had spoken to or messaged me to inform me of the decision and I was still getting messages from the whips telling me how to vote!”
According to official records, Barwell hasn’t voted in the House of Lords since January 2022. So removing, or not re-instating, the party whip is “the parliamentary equivalent of showing a yellow card to Jordan Henderson when he’s not even on the pitch”, according to one World Cup-fixated parliamentary aide today.
“As far as I can tell, my offence is having criticised Kemi on social media,” Barwell wrote, somewhat guilelessly.
“I can’t say I’m too bothered – I was a Conservative long before Kemi Badenoch joined the party and I will be a Conservative long after she is no longer its leader. It certainly won’t stop me speaking my mind.”
Overnight, the far right, fans of Liz Truss and Faragists gave Barwell a drubbing across social media. These included Michael “Wiggy” Fabricant, who called Barwell an “incompetent” and “rude” “pipsqueak”. Today, Barwell observed, “There are, after all, much bigger things to worry about (how we get our economy growing, the threats to our security, tomorrow night’s semi-final!).
“The only reason I think it matters is what it tells you about Kemi.
How did that work out?: Barwell has been trading on his contacts and influence. His political advice, not so much…
“In the tweet that appears to have got me in trouble, I questioned what message she was sending to the electorate by telling people who believe in Net Zero that they are not welcome as Conservative MPs. It’s bizarre politics when polling shows most Conservative voters support Net Zero. She should be trying to welcome people back to the Conservative Party. Instead, she seems to want to drive more people away.
And he continued: “The decision to take the Whip away from me also suggests an intolerance of criticism.” NSS!
“During my 30 years working for the party, I served John Major, William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Howard, David Cameron and Theresa May. None of them would have removed the whip from a colleague simply for being critical of the strategy they were pursuing.”
And Barwell tried to keep the door ajar on a possible return to Tory ranks. “No one has a monopoly of wisdom: Kemi will succeed if she builds a broad church and encourages a healthy debate about strategy. I hope it happens.”
This is all quite awks for Croydon Tories, who have said nothing publicly about the downfall of their former leading figure. Despite usually exhibiting verbal diarrhoea on their socials, neither failed Mayor Jason Perry nor Chris “Small Boats” Philp have made a peep about the disciplinary action taken by their party against their former colleague, and sometime friend.
Nor has one of Croydon’s newest councillors, nepobaby Jack Barwell, who’s failed to publish any message of sympathy for his old man. Who’d have thought Councillor Barwell’s “friend in high places” will have been removed from a position of influence in his party before Councillor Ellie Sandover’s Uncle Keir left Downing Street?
And what does Barren Barwell care? Handed a non-job for life, he can continue to trouser a daily wedge of public money for as long as he wants, to top up his blue-chip consultancy fees. Current Lordsrate is £371 per day for attending formal business, voting, or committee meetings. And the subsidised bars and restaurants are said to be splendid, too.
Trebles all-round!
Read more: Baron Barwell does a bunk from Lords after Standards breach
Read more: ‘Barren’ Barwell is not fit to sit on housing association board
Read more: Business is booming for housing lobbyist ‘Barren’ Barwell
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An impressively comprehensive and well-informed article. I heard Lord Barwell saying on the Today programme this morning that he thought that he had been denied the whip because of his tweet in favour of Net Zero by 2050. If the Conservative Party is no longer a broad enough church to hold people who support that view, particularly after a summer of record breaking heat waves, it has shot itself in the foot and made itself unelectable, a “Reform tribute act” indeed.
Margaret Thatcher at the United Nations in 1989
In the good old days when the Tories were led by a lady with a STEM degree
There are a lot of well-meaning people in politics whichever side they lean to, and then there are people like Barwell. I remember the old phrase well, which is unfair to teachers; “if you can, do. If you can’t, teach”. However the one for politics – “if you can’t, become a politician” – is possibly closer to the truth for some.
Regarding the Conservative Party, for the last decade or more it seems rather than Cameron’s attempt at “compassionate conservatism”, It’s more like “complacent conservatism”. Any morality within the party seems to have evaporated whilst money making on the side has filled the remaining vacuum.
As previously mentioned, there are many well-meaning politicians who are very important to at least try to keep the greedy and lazy ones in check. It’s good to see Kemi Badenoch making an example of people like Barwell and I hope that there can be some weeding out of no-gooders throughout parliament on all sides.
Are you filling in for Chris Myers? What’s happened to him?
Well Barwell has lost one part of his money collection service as a lobbyist by losing any influence on the extreme right Tories. This may in the long run benefit him as Badendoch will soon be ruthless removed as she is failing to make the Tories anywhere near electable again. I heard one excuse that they must have been sending emails to an out of date address since Barwell had not received any communications with Tory high command. This would constitute his standard inane excuses for incompetence and negligence that he has used from the Arab Girl fiasco to the ignoring of fire danger warnings in High Rise buildings.