Image of Sunak stabbing PM in the back not part of Truss campaign, says Coffey

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Nadine Dorries “chose” to retweet a mocked-up image of Rishi Sunak stabbing Boris Johnson in the back with a knife, not Liz Truss’s campaign, Therese Coffey has said. But I’m really here to talk about Liz Truss.” It’s not even a year since the stabbing of Sir David Amess at his Southend constituency surgery, so I think this is very, very bad taste, dangerous even Greg Hands The former chancellor was asked about accusations he is a “backstabber” on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, but said he would not comment specifically on “what others are choosing to say”. “Because it wasn’t working as it should, and crucially the Government found itself on the wrong side of a very serious ethical issue, and, for me, also going down the wrong economic path, and that’s why in the end more than 60 MPs at the last count, I think, resigned from the Government, of which I, after a lot of deliberation and months of standing by the PM, was one of them.” Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Ms Dorries accused the former chancellor of “planning a coup for a very long time” and said she commented on his dress sense to “alert Tory members not to be taken in by appearances in the way that happened to many of us who served with the chancellor in Cabinet”. Business minister Greg Hands described Ms Dorries’ actions as “distasteful” and “dangerous”, telling Sky News: “I’m sure Liz Truss would disown this kind of behaviour.