The wife of a Conservative minister has accused Carol Vorderman of “inciting people to hate all Tories” and has described her as a “celebrity attack dog”.
Felicity Cornelius-Mercer, the wife of Johnny Mercer, who is responsible for veterans’ affairs, claimed the former Countdown presenter knows “nothing about politics.”
Vorderman has previously referred to Conservative MPs as disgraceful and wants to see the party “wiped out” at the next election.
Speaking on the Difficult Women podcast, hosted by Rachel Johnson, Cornelius-Mercer said Vorderman “drives me up the f***ing wall and I do not usually get stressed out by people”.
She added: “I understand that everyone has an opinion but for me, it is these celebrity attack dogs that know nothing about politics. It is this blanket hatred to incite people to hate all Tories. If you dig deeper there are so many Tory MPs that are different. There are a huge range of personalities, different opinions, views and principles.
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“You cannot blanket hate and that is what Vorderman is doing. She keeps using words like ‘disgusting’.”
Vorderman, who was appointed MBE in 2000, has more than 800,000 followers on Twitter, where she has repeatedly called the Conservative Party corrupt, cruel and claimed they “take from the poor and they give to the very rich”.
She said that some Tory MPs were “ashamed” of their own party after claiming that ministers had no reference to Conservatives in their social media profiles. In this year’s local elections, Vorderman publicised a claim that out of 98 Tory MPs, only 28 mentioned they were Conservatives on Twitter.
Vorderman, 62, also made claims that voters needed to be careful of Tories pretending to be the Green Party after tweeting about campaign leaflets that she said had no reference to the Conservatives.
Speaking on Difficult Women, Cornelius-Mercer defended her husband’s decision not to mention his party on social media because he wanted to serve everyone in his constituency.
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She said: “If the first thing people see is Conservative MP in his Twitter bio people will think ‘well, I voted Labour so is he the person I am supposed to go to?’ People do not know how it works and if they can come to Johnny for help.
“A lot of MPs do it this way because they are serving all their constituents, it does not mean they are embarrassed and everyone knows that Johnny is a Conservative MP. Vorderman seems to be going after all of this stuff.”
In response, Vorderman said she would “let her tweets do the talking for me”. On Twitter she further criticised Mercer, 41, for his comments that service personnel did not need to go to foodbanks.
